When my sister and her family visited from Seattle, they had packed plenty of gear to distract their young children: plastic bags full of small, hard toys with sharp edges we are still finding, usually in the middle of the night with our bare feet; decks of various juvenile playing cards such as “Rat-A-Tat-Cat”; books after books; and a portable DVD player with a postcard-sized screen, “just for the flight.”

I don’t know if they were shocked at first by our relative lack of stuff, but they came to appreciate the simple life we represented to them. At least they said they did. Maybe they felt like Harrison Ford when that Amish chick saves him in “Witness”.

They even made plans to get rid of their TV when they returned home. “We don’t really watch it all that much anyway,” they said.

I don’t know if they’ve done that yet, but as soon as they left, we ran to the supermarket and bought a portable DVD player.

You were talking in your sleep.
You said, “oh no.”
I touched your head and you stopped.

No idea whether this chart is genuine, or accurate, or whether a statistician would find it significant, but some other people think it shows that whenever Bush’s approval ratings drop, another terror warning is issued, causing the approval rating to improve a little. Not sure if those little blips are statistically significant. What I find interesting is the fact that his approval rating is now down below what it was prior to 11 September 2001, which if you’re into conspiracy theories, or just generally wacko, or cynical could lead you to conclude we’re late for another major terrorist strike.

Paper trail? We don’t need no steenking paper trail.
On the other hand, the OSCE is going to monitor the presidential elections in the US this November. It’s so cool the way Bush is turning the US into a third world banana republic.

Tourist helicopters and limousines.
Every time I watch people eat, or shop for food, I wonder how secure the chain of food production, processing, packaging and delivery is.

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Not sure about the rest of me, but my skin made it through the generations from my original cave-dwelling, nocturnal Irish ancestors unchanged: pale as hell. In summer, I go from lily-white to burn straight to carcinoma, skipping the tanning phase entirely. So when I actually acquired a little color this summer vacation from all the time spent outside in all the wonderful weather we got, I was quite happy and even proud.
Which frame of mind resulted in this conversation when I returned to work and a plump and saucy young co-worker welcomed me back to work.
PASYCW: Weren’t you on vacation?
Me: Yeah. [??]
PASYCW: But… I thought you’d go somewhere south or something.
Me: [??] Huh?
PASYCW: Cause your skin… you’re not very brown. [Note: she is Asian, and therefore tans quite easily and deeply]
Me: Are you kidding? This is the brownest I’ve ever been. [Hold out arm, pointing out contrast between white sleeve and sort of tan arm]
PASYCW: [Raises eyebrows skeptically]
Me: BTW, I had a dream about you.
PASYCW: Really? What did I do?
Me: [Oops] Eh, nothing really.
PASYCW: How interesting. [Cute smile]
Me: I mean, not much was going on.
PASYCW: Uh huh.
Me: It was just, you had fat legs in the dream. [Elephantine, actually, in the dream.]
PASYCW: Really. [Looks down at her own legs]
Me: Heh! Only in the dream, heh. It was just a dream!
PASYCW: Fat legs.
Me: Just in the dream! You have really nice legs. Not fat.
PASYCW: Well, I’d better distribute these documents.
Me: Sexy legs. Not fat. Bye!

All of us went to the mountains. My family, my sister’s family. We stayed in these apartments we stay in when we go skiing. We went swimming and hiking. We had fun. Down the road from where we lived was a Gasthaus, this inn, where we had dinner sometimes. The first time, walking back in the dark after (a chaotic) dinner, we saw fireflies for the first time. My wife’s family had seen them before, as my brother-in-law spent several years in Pennsylvania and they still visit relatives there. Later he told us stories about seeing thousands – the firefly is the Pennsylvania State Insect (what is the New Jersey State Insect, I wonder? What is your state insect?). All we saw that night were several dozens, but they were magical.

It was pitch dark and we were walking up this gravel road we knew from memory, a nice warm evening walking through the trees when we see all these little soft green stars. Some were stationary (the females) and some were hovering around, moving in slow lazy arcs (the males). If you want to know exactly which sort of stars they resembled most, go to the tenderloin and touch a Hell’s Angel’s bike (thanks Jessica) – fireflies are the stars you see when someone punches you in the head with a certain vigor.

That’s what I think now, anyway, sitting here in my office in bright sunshine. At the time, we watched in silence as they moved, also silent. Just light, no buzzing. Just cool green bioluminescence employed to spread around that Photinus Pyralsis DNA.