More Katrina

Katrina is here. Rain; solid, steady rain, but that's all. Possibly some localized flooding, but nothing more. Powerless now, after all the destruction. A short, fierce life and a slow death.

Peace.

Katrina's Aftermath

Stunned. Shocked. Saddened. Tragedy, of both human and animal suffering, on a scale unimaginable. Lives, both literally and figuratively, have been eliminated. Scenes of heroism and depravity have occurred. Months, perhaps years, will be required to recover from the devastating effects of the hurricane. And there is so little that we can do to help. A truly humbling and heartrending demonstration that our civilization is, in the face of the power of nature, so remarkably fragile.

Peace.

Aftermath

Not everyone is able to help those in need, but for those who can, we offer two websites where you can make donations:

www.redcross.org and www.noahswish.org.

The good people who belong to these organizations will be glad and happy to accept whatever help that you can offer. Thank you.

Peace.

Katrina

Our hearts, thoughts and prayers go out to those whose lives will be irrevocably altered by this latest manifestation of the unstoppable fury of nature. May all be well with you.

Peace.

Reality Bites

For me, it has become the moment that every senior (or incipient senior) dreads - that time when one's own teeth must give way to the modern marvels of dentistry. My paternal family has always had a genetic predisposition to bad teeth (my father used to claim that the condition is known as acidic saliva - as to that, I can't say), I have had more than my share of misery over the years, including abscesses and impactions, and I have had quite enough.

Through the years and visits, my dentition has come to resemble the inside of an amalgam mine (did you know that amalgam is composed partly of mercury, a substance known to be poisonous in large quantities? I should properly be dead) and I am certain that I have put a few dentists' children through college.

The latest folly involved the dislodgement of an amalgam insert and the snapping off of a goodly portion of tooth remnant, leaving a knife's edge and a spear point which lacerate and penetrate my tongue each time I attempt to chew or swallow. I am at present sipping soup and coffee through a straw (laugh if you must) and a 3-stick wad of gum lodges in the gaping cavity and covers the offending hypodermic of enamel, until I can prevail upon some kindly dentist to remove from my mouth every last one of these instruments of torture.

It will not be easy. Most have insisted that all I require is a partial bridge to make all as good as new. No. I want them all gone, so that I might never after be bedeviled by bouts of agony. If I am very lucky, I will locate the kindly and compassionate soul who will agree to release me from pain, and I will have, at long last, relief.

And eventually, when I can eat solid food again, my inaugural meal will be prime rib with a liberally buttered baked potato and freshly grilled vegetables.

Peace.

Ask Me Anything!!

I have borrowed this from Marti, aka Sunnyside 46, proprietess of the journal Midlife Musings. Stop by and say hi.

The game:  ASK ME ANYTHING !!

Here's how we play:

- Ask me 3 questions. Any 3, no matter how personal, private or random.
- I have to answer them honestly. I have to answer them all.
- In turn, you post this message in your own blog or journal and you have to answer the questions that are asked of you.

i got this from my dear friend Kori at Single and Searching...Come play!

Sounds like fun.

Peace.

Well, i already asked about your screen name, so I am going to cheat & use that as one
2.when were you & your wife married?
3. and how did you meet?
Marti
Comment from sunnyside46 - 8/26/05 10:18 PM

Gosh, Marti, you made this too easy! You can find the answer to #2 here and the answer to #3 here. As for those who haven't heard the sn story, as I told Marti, I wanted something cute, with numbers and shorthand, and the b4i8 was pretty obvious, and the clover part came from I know not where.

Peace.

Mess O' Potamia (w/apologies to The Daily Show)

Wow! I have had a complete change of heart regarding the intelligence of the President. He now stands revealed as a genius. Consider this:

After the terrorist attacks of 2001, his first knee-jerk reaction was to send troops to Afghanistan to hunt down and destroy Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. What he did not count on was their ability to rapidly disperse and hide where we could not locate them. His advisers presumably alerted him to the fact that since we had made Afghanistan untenable for the terrorists, they might begin to come to the U.S. in even greater numbers and wreak more havoc.

The President quickly realized that to prevent that from happening, he needed to provide the terrorists a place in which they could congregate, a place where we could keep a close eye on them. He began to cast about for a small, poorly defended country which we could overpower and pretend to liberate, knowing that unrest and turmoil would draw the terrorists like flies, keeping them from coming here by fighting them "over there". Of course he realized that the American people would be wary of starting a war in support of such a brilliant plan, so he and his advisers cobbled together their masterful "WMD" strategy to convince the Congress that we were in imminent danger of attack.

It worked! The terrorists are now enmeshed in a web of the Administration's devising, and in 4, 6, or maybe 10 years, we will have wiped them out! Is this not genius?

Peace.