Tomorrow should prove to be an interesting day. I'm headed 'cross the border again to That Town. Friend getting married. Staying in a hotel for jah's sake, a cheezy Super 8, in the town I lived in for ten years of my life.

It's like I'm on Life Part IV:
I) Childhood
II) College
III) First job
IV) Second job, i.e. now

So weird. Parts 2 and 4 intersected at the end of July; parts 3 and 4 will intersect this weekend.

Parts 1 and 4 collide all the time. It's like I'm four different people, but I'm not.

So weird.

Wedding should be a good time, though. It's a couple of former co-workers and they're both really great people. They're getting hitched on the beach at sunset, and I'm sure it's going to be just beautiful. It's likely to be a hell of a party. They know fun people, and I've more than once closed a place down while in their company. I'm also hoping to see loads of former co-workers. I miss that place sometimes. The feeling of family. I've yet to find that here, with work, at least. But I can consider my two closest co-workers friends, I think, and that's a good start.

"There’re only six things you need if you want to snag a good woman: A guitar, chicken, wine, a car, running water, and some permanent markers. If you don’t have a guitar, a lute will do. You get those six things and you’re Don Juan, trust me."

-Creed Bratton

So my cat just lost my jump drive. That I got from work. Yesterday. *sigh* That's what I get for putting a nice tempting chord on the end of it. I now have three jump drives - one for work I just received, one work gave me in the bag of chords I also got yesterday to go with my other new computer toys (I think they'd forgotten they already gave me one), and the personal one I bought two years ago before work finally got with the times. Oh - two squirrels are chasing each other around the tree outside. Maybe this'll distract the cat enough to give me the opportunity I need... ah yes, there it is. Right under her butt. Lovely.

I got a bunch of toys yesterday, which was quite nice. The folks who organized these things did a great job idiot-proofing it all. The chords are labeled which end goes in to which end, we have instructions online, we practiced it in the lab at the office, etc. My problem is needing to write a grant and jump through a ton of hoops in order to get stuff I should be getting anyway. Drives me nuts.

Headed out to the Fair today. Met H and M at a park and ride at the U. H and I have been doing this almost every year for a long time. It was fun to have an 8 month old along - M especially liked the poultry barn. I didn't even get pooped on. The food was yummy as always. Had a deep fried candy bar, which I haven't had in a while. Mmm. Fried fruit was new this year, and different than I thought it would be. Decent, though. The fruit was a little tasteless. Lost something in the frying process. A cousin of mine entered knitted socks and won a blue ribbon, which is pretty cool. I'm happy for her. She makes awesome stuff, and deserves to be recognized. Someday, I hope to have both the guts and the skill to do that myself.

A sad little update - they think they've found everyone now and we're up to 13 dead. That plus the 7 dead in flooding this weekend makes for quite a couple of weeks around here. Between the drought, the floods, and the bridge, I wonder how much geography is currently listed as a federal disaster area.

The painters are still here, still sitting around on the steps of the building opposite, smoking (leaving butts everywhere of course), and making crude comments really loudly. Sure wish they'd get things done and go bother someone else.

Had a good time at the family reunion. Cousin of mine showed up unexpectedly, and it was nice having the prodigal back home. He stayed with his sister and drove up a little late, just to surprise them. Could only stay for a few hours as he had to fly out again. He made some serious points with his folks, that's for sure. Cold as heck, though. We baked last year and froze this. Ugh. Predictable, I suppose.

Song of the day: Hey There Delilah by the Plain White T's. I know, I know, it's been everywhere lately. Boring. But I swear I liked it before it hit heavy rotation. Combo of acoustic guitar and strings, I think. Gets me every time.

I got pooped on today.

How, you may ask, is that different from any other day? Ah, because I was pooped on with real poop instead of metaphorical poop. Pea green baby poop, to be precise, all over my left leg. Thankfully, the leg was covered with pants at the time, but it was a small comfort. This after the same child grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled it forward to look down. And I'd never even met him before! Kids these days. Just too precocious.

Tomorrow morning I have to be at the folks' at 7:30 for the trip up north for the family reunion. Will be nice to see the fam, but not nice that early in the a.m. on a Saturday. Eesh.

Today I had to travel about an hour south of here to go to a workshop for work.


Different bridge (obviously). Different river. Same road.


It was a little disconcerting.




More bodies were pulled out today, bringing the total officially to 6 identified; the other remains they're not sure, but they think it might be of two other people.

"They're not sure." "It might."

Can't say I would want to be one of those divers.




At the workshop this afternoon, one of our presenters named Bridget was telling a story. She quoted a conversation she had with someone. "Bridge..."

The whole room tensed. You could feel us all take a collective breath. It took us a second to realize she was referring to the other person's nickname for her, not a slab of concrete and metal that should be suspended 60 feet above a river but instead is a part of it.




It's no longer the lead story on CNN. Local news reports are talking about the lack of rain again, and discussing training camp for college football. We're moving on, or trying to.


I'm thinking people are going to be jumpy for a while yet.

SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

"It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards."

(Or, as it is often shortened to: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.") - Søren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (1813-1855). From Journalen JJ:167 (1843)


So here I sit on a rainy (for once) Saturday morning, the cat's tail firmly planted on my keyboard as she sinks down low, only her ears and alert whiskers showing out the window to the two crows causing a ruckus outside. She tips her head up so she can see and doesn't move a muscle, barely breathing. This is Great White Hunter mode, and I see it fairly often due to the abundance of squirrels and birds of various sorts around here. What she thinks she'd do with these crows if she got them I don't know, and I don't want to know. Yesterday we had a squirrel on the deck, munching on one of my plants that I have a hard enough time keeping alive as it is, thank you very much. They both sleeked down into Hunter Mode, the one flat to the floor in front of the patio door, the other pasted to the back of the couch, only eyes moving, an occasional ear twitch. The squirrel just sat there calmly eating lunch, its front two paws shoving the stolen goods into its mouth, for whatever reason not realizing that there was a deadly predator less than 8 feet away. It got done and made to run across the deck, and that's when it finally noticed it was being stalked. Squirrel panic! It shot a couple of feet back and forth in indecision, then down the corner pole and away. The cats seemed disappointed. But there's always another creature to stalk. Perhaps next time they'll really kill the Big Bad Milk Jug Ring before it escapes. One never knows. It pays to be prepared, always.

29 folks in the hospital, 8 still missing and presumed dead. The NTSB figures the south end of the bridge shifted 81 feet but they're thinking that's not the cause of the problem. What that means, I don't know. Dubya spent time today crawling around on the wreckage, or doing whatever his Secret Service people and his spin doctors felt he should do. Unfortunate that more couldn't have been done before, instead of all this flurry after. But then, that's the way it always happens, isn't it?

Wow. Just. Wow.

There's...

There's been a bit of a disaster. Of pretty serious proportions.

A bridge collapsed. They don't know how bad it is yet. Bumper to bumper traffic at the time, and the thing just went down. It looks like an earthquake hit. But we don't have earthquakes around here. Cars in the river, semi trailers on fire, school bus full of kids with the front end smashed in.

Pray.