Blue Nettles

Hunting Island SC

I got back from visiting Dave and Pam in South Carolina on Sunday. Lots of hayfever down there since they are getting into thier spring already. One day we went to Hunting Island, a jungley barrier island in the southern corner of South Carolina (see picture above) that is slowly being eroded by the Atlantic. I'll add more pictures later.

I spent all of yesterday and part of this morning getting my computer running again. I had a corruption on one of my operating systems but I backed up most of my stuff before it went completely bad. Now it's back to 99% operations. I just can't get the sound to work. I'll probably just have to buy a new sound card since the old one is six years old and there is no software on the internet to support it. I can just think of the new sound card as my first step in building a new computer - which I was planning to put off for another year.

This morning, when I went out to run my erands, my car's battery was dead (new battery six months ago) so I have another project for the week. I'm off this week also and I was worried that I wouldn't have anything to do. But the deus ex machina provides.

On my time off, I've been thinking how I could participate more on this blog. My day-to-day work is either deathly boring (just admit how little you care how the Commerce Dept. pays for its travel services) or is sooo interesting it is inappropriate for me to discuss publicly.

But I do live in this strange parrellel universe of Washington DC. And I do follow International and National politics very closely (I even have some silly degrees in that stuff, for what it's worth) ... so I might as well share my views and opinions (oh so insightful they are) with you all.

Here is a blog on what is happening in Lebanon. An interesting quote:

Later, inside a different tent, a young woman took me aside. And she said: "I must tell you something. If we didn't think we had American support we would never have done this. They would kill us. We need you. It is just a fact."