Last Sunday we went to the pumpkin patch for two reasons. The first was to pick out pumpkins, and we did that at the start of our visit. First Richard tracked down a huge orange one all covered in scars, and then I found one that looked as if it had been punched in the side, and there was quite the ordeal getting both pumpkins onto a cart – especially since we had to swap out carts with someone else because our super large pumpkins would not fit in the cart with sides, and the other people had only tiny little pumpkins and squash for their flat bed cart.

In the end, however, my side-punched pumpkin was significantly large enough that it was going to cost an arm and a leg, so after all that hassle, we left it by the side of aisle and found me a slightly smaller one, which I liked even better because this year I was taken with the white pumpkins instead of the orange ones.

The second reason for going to the pumpkin patch is, of course, the corn maze. In previous years we have either been in a hurry, or else have had other people with us – specifically other people with small children – so we have not been able to just wander aimlessly as we would have liked. This year, however, the only other members of our group decided to forego the corn maze in favor of picking out their own pumpkins. So we decided to do the right turn method of navigating – you turn right at each intersection with the theory that eventually this will lead you out. I did point out that this would only work if there were no squares in the maze made of intersecting perpendicular paths, but the chances of that being in a corn maze were fairly slim so we weren’t too worried.

It’s kind of fun to wander around in a corn maze, especially this year when the corn was so very tall and all you could see all around you were stalks and the path stretching forward and behind. We wandered aimlessly for quite a while, but eventually thirst got the better of us and we finally broke down and consulted the map.

The pumpkins (along with a few warty gourds) have been sitting on our front porch all week. This afternoon, we finally took care of that, and when it got dark out, we put in candles just to make sure they would look okay.

The one on the left is mine; the one on the right is Richard’s. They both stand a few feet tall and removing the slimy innards did not noticeably change how heavy they are.

Because I’m not at all familiar with the city, my brother-in-law very nicely walked over from his office yesterday evening and met me at the Starbucks that’s nestled in the corner of the building where our Seattle office is located. I settled myself onto an outdoor table and pulled out my latest sock project (because what else does the obsessed knitter bring on a business trip but socks?), just as a horse (carrying a policeman and waiting for the crossing sign to change) relieved itself on the sidewalk. The policeman looked around, saw the mess, and then, with a weary smile, rummaged around until he pulled out an extremely large pooper scooper, with which he dispatched the still steaming pile of horse poop before anyone could step in it. The entire thing was done in complete silence, while the horse stood there patiently the whole time, seemingly not even aware that it had created the mess in the first place.

I had a wonderful visit with my little sister and her family. My brother-in-law and I took the train out to Tukwila and met my little sister and my niece there (since it was a good halfway point for all of us, and then we all piled into the car and went to dinner. My niece started kindergarten this year, and she looked every inch the school girl (“I’m five now!” she reminded me, when I commented how much she has grown). In the car after dinner she sang me her collection of color and spelling songs, and when it was time to go she gave me a huge hug. My little sister drove me back to my hotel in Seattle, with a detour for lattes and chai on the way because we were both tired and in need of something a little sweet. She’s in her last semester at school, and just recently started a new job, so she’s stressed and too busy and I won’t get to see them again until Christmas, which seems impossibly far away. So it was lovely to get this unexpected chance to visit with them, even for only a few hours.

The hotel room was large and comfortable, and had free high-speed internet. I didn’t sleep well, but then I rarely do in strange places, especially when I have an early morning meeting the next day and am paranoid that the wake up call will not come through, or the alarm clock will not work. A coworker from the Seattle office picked us up this morning and we arrived on the University of Washington campus just as the sun started to rise. As we unloaded the car and walked toward the building where the meeting was to be held I could smell rain and autumn and pine.

The flight home was uneventful. I amused myself by flipping through the Skymall catalog and looking for things that I surely could not live without (and the number of iPod accessories now available is mind boggling. Did you know, for example, that you can get a full sized massaging, reclining *chair* that comes complete with speakers and a charging station for your iPod?), and tried very hard to convince my sinuses not to implode. By the time we landed it was dark outside, and I felt as if that is how I spent the past two days, going to and from places in the dark, and only catches glimpses of daylight through windows in offices and taxis and cars.

This morning I flew up to Seattle. It�s a business trip, of course, since we�ll only be up here for two days, and both will be full of meetings. But I�m taking advantage of the location to work in a quick visit to see my little sister and her husband, and of course my very favorite little girl in the world (that would be my niece).

It�s very different being here. Our office in Sacramento is in an old building with a somewhat funky layout, and sits right beside the river. So when I look up from my computer in my office in Sacramento, through the huge picture window directly next to me,I can see docks and boats and trees and water, and sometimes a river otter or a pair of coyote puppies or a tree vibrantly alive with an entire flock of tiny sparrows. In Seattle, the office is in the heart of downtown, only a block away from the eclectic new library building (which in itself takes up an entire city block). When I look out the plate glass windows here, I can still see water, but it�s off in the distance, and the view is instead mostly buildings � an assortment of architectural styles and sizes. Directly across the street there is a man swinging from ropes as he washes the windows. Considering that I am currently in an office on the 17th floor, and that as we left to go get sandwiches for lunch he had reached our level, and that the building he is attached to goes up many floors further than ours, I imagine that this is a task which takes days to complete. Assuming, of course, that a person can actually handle the thought of dangling from ropes down the side of a 17+-story building (definitely not something I would volunteer to do).

I wandered the office a little bit, before settling in to do actual work, just to check out the views from all three sides. The view that was the most distracting was toward the bay, because a few blocks from the office they are building the new extension for the art museum, atop which is a high rise office building. It was sometimes very hard to remain focused on the person talking to me when over their shoulder I could see building materials being slowly raised 20 stories above ground, or watch the tiny little blue construction elevators slipping up and down the side of the building, tiny figures of people visible through their steel mesh walls. I asked someone how he managed to not be constantly distracted by everything going on � the crane, the building, the window washer � and he shrugged and said that after a while it�s no longer interesting. Still, even though I see the same old scenery out my office window back in Sacramento, I can still be momentarily arrested by the site of the blue heron gliding down to land in the tangle of downed trees across the river, and the entire office will come to a complete stop every time someone spots the turtles on the bank below our balcony. So maybe, even here, occasionally someone pauses mid-sentence as the window washer hoists himself ever upward, or the crane hoists another load of mirrored wall panels to its destination somewhere within a high-rise-to-be, and sometimes, once in a while, someone pauses on their way to pick up sandwiches for lunch, and looks up at the amazing buildings that surround them, and is reminded of just how beautiful a place it is to be.

I have been toying with this idea for a while, and I finally realized that if I am ever going to get back into writing on a regular basis, I needed to revamp the format of this journal into something that lets me be more flexible when I write. I’m not going to turn this into a snippet blog, because I cannot stand them myself. But this format has been working far better for me over at Knit One, Purr Too for over a year and I guess it just took me longer to accept that I needed to make a few changes over here too. Hence the brand new look – at least for the main page. The individual entry pages will remain as they are for now, since I am picky enough to prefer to leave entries from each incarnation of the journal just as they were when I wrote them. I am hoping to eventually figure out a way to ‘freeze’ the last few years, yet still use Movable Type. I suspect this is going to require me learning certain code languages I have heretofor avoided.

Anyway, I like this new format. It’s less colorful than anything I’ve used before, and there are certainly fewer graphics, but I think that somehow it suits me.

Welcome to the new look.

In preparation for the upcoming season premier next Wednesday, Richard and I have been watching one or more episodes of the first season of Lost the past few days. And with each episode we watch I am reminded not only how much I really do like this show, but also how truly weird some of those characters are. I think it’s safe to say that every single one of the people they’ve profiled so far have some serious issues, but there are some that are more ‘off’ than others. Locke, in particular, is one creepy, seriously weird guy. I just hope that they spend some time focusing on some of the other characters who only got a brief nod, or who have only shown up peripherally here and there, because really, is there anyone out there who is not yet so sick of episodes about poor, misunderstood Kate that they will not yell and throw things at the TV if the series inflicts yet more on us this year?

It is at least good knitting television because even though I am paying attention and looking for details I might have missed the first time around, we have still seen all of these before. Plus earlier this week the yarn arrived for the felted messenger bag I’m going to make for Richard (he asked for one) so I immediately cast on and managed to plow through a significant chunk of it during three episodes of slightly creepy TV.

Another premier is coming soon � on September 30th, to be exact � but this one we�ve actually managed to already see. One of the leaders of the writers� group Richard attends is heavily involved in the local Browncoats organization, and got wind of a sneak preview of Serenity, mere days before it happened. Last Wednesday night we drove out to Roseville, tracked down the theater, and got our number assignments for the free screening. Luckily we got there early, mainly because we wanted to make sure there was time to get some dinner first, because by the time we got back to the theater the line had grown exponentially. For barely two days notice, word spread fast enough to pack the theater by the time the movie began.

I have become less and less enamored of going to movies in the past few years because it seems that more often than not there is some idiot with a loud cell phone who feels the need to not only answer it during the movie, but carry on a conversation, or there is someone who lets their kids run around the theater being obnoxious, or a cluster of people who feel the need to talk loudly or make rude noises or comments during all the intense parts. But there was something amazing about being in that theater that night. We knew we were surrounded by a few hundred other people who were just as crazy about Firefly as we were. It�s the first movie I�ve been to in a long time where no one had to go track down an employee to fix the damn tracking, or plot mental murder for the jerks throwing popcorn or talking or answering their cell phones.

And the movie itself was amazing. Joss Whedon is a genius at gathering together casts who mesh seamlessly. He proved it with Buffy and with Angel, and also with the very short-lived Firefly, and he proved it even more so by transferring Firefly to the big screen. It�s a space movie, yes, and you could even call it a space cowboy movie, but one of the biggest plusses about it is that it is a space movie with no aliens, and even though the whole thing takes place in the future it still feels very human throughout. Things were explained, there was laughing and shocked gasps and reminders that in any Whedonverse, no one is safe and nothing is ever formulaic because in reality no one is safe either, and things do not always go according to plan.

We will be going back on September 30th (or shortly thereafter), not only to support the movie when it�s officially released (because if things go well, there will be two more sequels) but also because it is a damn good movie, and those sorts of films are few and far between.

While waiting for Richard to get home from his meeting after work I was camped out in the living room knitting, and looked up through the front windows to dinner to see activity on the side of our lawn. So I went out to see how things were progressing with the neighbors’ pipes.

A little back story – two nights ago the doorbell rang at shortly after 10pm � it was our next door neighbor, concerned because there was a very large quantity of water pouring down from right where our two properties meet. I hollered up to Richard to put on some shoes and grab a flashlight, and then went outside to peer at the water. Eventually his wife came out too, and with a few small flashlights, we eventually figured out that the water was coming from his side of the line. In fact, we could see it bubbling up right behind a tree, only a foot or two away from the water main (where the meter is). Our neighbor removed the water main cover and tried to feel around through the water with a wrench, hoping to figure out how to turn the water off, but since the main happens to be set into the ground, in a spot downhill from where the water was pouring, it was pretty much impossible to see anything at all.

Since I was the only one in bare feet and shorts, I sloshed through the mud and felt around the hole. We�d been hoping it was just a busted sprinkler pipe, but no such luck � the hole was substantial, and also quite deep. So he called the water department (for future reference, there is an emergency number on your water bill � just something to keep in mind), they sent someone out to turn it off, and we all went to bed.

Yesterday when I came home I was confronted with a very odd and very loud noise that reverberated through the entire house. I eventually tracked it down to the water spigot in the backyard, which had been left on. I followed the hoses and found that someone had attached our hose to the neighbors� hose, which was still attached to their house. I immediately panicked, turning off the water and detaching our hose because I couldn�t figure out why someone had done that and I was worried that it would be damaging to someone�s pipes � either theirs or ours. They came home a little later and immediately came to talk, and it turns out they were the ones who�d set up the hose connection, on the advice of their son. Home owners, take careful note here. When the city turned the main water off, that meant they had no water to their home � not such a big deal except that they have several house guests, so not being able to do things like flush a toilet was kind of a big deal. Then their son suggested this little trick. They basically had to turn the water off in their house, and then hook up the hoses, so that, from what I understand, it creates kind of a negative pressure within the hoses, so there would be enough water in the pipes to flush the toilet and so on. Very clever. And once I figured out what they�d done and why, I had no problem letting them hook back up again � although this time to the front hose spigot because it has less of a tendency to �sing� than the one in the back.

So back to tonight. In order to get to the broken pipe (which turned out to be just far enough �downstream� from the main line that the city wouldn�t fix it), they knew they were going to have to take down the tree, because there was just no other way to reach the pipe. Luckily their son either owns, or has access to, the sort of large equipment necessary to take down the huge tree, which was ultimately responsible for the break, so when I walked outside the first thing I noticed was that the tree was gone and all that was left was one poor bush, precariously balanced on several uneven piles of still slightly soggy dirt. They’d dug a rather impressive hole down to the pipe and he showed me the piece that had been punctured. It’s an odd concept to wrap your head around, that something as flexible as a tree root can actually bore its way through thick PVC piping, enough to create not only a sizable hole, but also to completely crack it in two. But this does mean that they’re not likely to put in a new tree to take its place, just in case in another fifteen years they have to go through this whole thing again. Good news for them, I suppose, since he told me he’d never much liked that tree anyway, but bad news for us in the short term because it turns out that it was this tree that shielded our bedroom window from the glare of the street lamp that’s right outside our house, and now there is nothing in the way at all except our curtains, which are simply not sufficient to hide it completely from view. Ah well � a small price to pay for our neighbors getting running water back in their house again. Besides, this whole experience gave us a chance to really chat with them � something we�ve never had much opportunity to do because we usually just wave to each other in our cars as either they or we head off somewhere else.

Several weeks ago I got it into my head that it would be really neat to be able to dry our own fruit. I’m not entirely sure why I suddenly decided this would be a cool idea, beyond the fact that at the rate our trees are going, eventually we are going to have fruit coming out our ears and finding a way to preserve it (short of canning it, which I also intend to do, but I also recognize that canning is an extremely time and labor intensive process) would probably be a good thing. Or rather, assuming that the apple tree actually does more than put out a few piddly white flowers, and the peach tree can churn out enough peaches that even the birds can not eat them all before I can get to them, we will have fruit coming out our ears.

I started poking around online looking at prices and comparing the different features available on Amazon.com, but I wasn’t entirely ready to commit to that kind of financial investment without getting some actual word-of-mouth input from someone who has actually *used* one. But then the church had its annual barbeque and silent auction, and lo and behold someone donated a food dehydrator to the cause. We didn’t actually attend the auction, but they set it all up beforehand (for precisely this reason) and I scribbled in a $10 bid, figuring maybe I might get lucky. And what do you know, I did.

So far I think it is one of the best $10 we have ever spent. It’s a larger, slower model, since it only has a heating unit and no fan to speed the drying process along. And it does have the annoying quality of being too large (the trays, at least) to fit into either the dishwasher or the sink, so cleaning the trays is a major hassle. But it also has five trays, which hold a phenomenal amount of sliced bananas, or six apples, cored and sliced thin, and more importantly, I have finally found a source of dried fruit that I actually *like*.

We picked it up before we left for DragonCon and after we tried it out on a few different types of fruits (dried pears, by the way, are *nasty*), we decided to start a round-the-clock drying effort, and managed to produce a large pile of dried apples and bananas, which I then divided into single serving Ziploc bags for us to take on our trip. This turned out to be a better idea than I’d imagined � not only because United no longer provides free meals on their longer trips, but also because a little bag of dried fruit makes a far healthier snack, and an easier one to procure when you only have a short period of time between session and there are several thousand nerds in various forms of costuming between you and the nearest source of food. Plus, apples I’ve dried myself are really quite good. I’ve never been a big fan of the dried fruit you can buy in stores because it tends to have this squishy, rubbery texture that I find really quite revolting. But these I can dry until they almost snap, and until they have a very satisfying chewy quality. I think the dried bananas are foul and disgusting, but Richard really likes them, so we each had our own stash and it worked out really well.

Since we’ve returned from DragonCon I’ve been intent on developing a decent stockpile of dried fruit for snacking purposes, as well as to take on trips. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the last time we were at Costco they had huge bags of bananas and apples for really cheap. It does take a little bit of time and effort to get the fruit prepared � the bananas don’t need any pretreatment, but they do have an annoying tendency to adhere to the trays, which means once they’re done someone has to then pry every single chip by hand from the plastic mesh, and the apples have to be dipped in a preservative (ascorbic acid or lemon juice) to prevent that icky taste that can develop when they start to turn brown from exposure to air. However, I’ve been doing a little experimenting in the last few days, to test a few theories. I’ve discovered that leaving the peel on the apples doesn’t change the taste or texture, so that’s at least one less step in the process. I’ve also been dabbling with flavoring. I did one tray of apples sprinkled liberally with cinnamon and once they’d dried and set a few days, those turned out marvelously, and I am pondering trying a few with a mixture of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and allspice (and a little sugar for sweetness) to try to duplicate an apple pie sort of flavor. We’re also realizing that eventually we’re going to have a lot of citrus fruit from the tangelo and grapefruit trees, so at some point in the near future I’m going to try candying a few test batches, to see how those turn out.

I feel, now that she is gone, as if everything around me is rushing back into focus. It�s not relief, but more of finality in knowing that, as much as I was dreading it, it is finally over. Since we returned from DragonCon I barely touched my knitting because one of her favorite spots to sit was on my chest when I was at the computer (requiring me to lean back pretty far � not the most comfortable position for me, but one does a lot to keep a sick little kitty happy), so I spent a lot of time upstairs, poking at my computer and mostly just holding her as much as she would let me. I am starting to realize that waiting for Allegra to die has been, mentally, a much longer process than I was aware. You tell yourself that somehow, knowing it is coming makes it easier, but really, I�m not so sure that it does. I�m not sure there is anything that can make it easier.

She was always a bit of a wonky kind of cat, due likely to extremely poor health during the first 8 months of her life (she had a sibling with failure to thrive, so I assume some of her odd quirks, and her occasional lack of balance, were due to something not quite right in her development), and one of her main things was that she had this habit of going into little periods of being annoyed and snippy � we referred to them as her snits, and it was not uncommon, back when she was healthy, for her to have one at least once a day. Most of the time these would be marked by her racing around the house, half-yelling, half-growling under her breath, tearing up and down the stairs and various cat trees, and generally letting the world know she was in a mood. Most of the other cats knew enough to stay out of her way, although occasionally we�d see Rosie following her with a look of fascination on her face (much like the look she gets when she follows the Roomba around, come to think of it). We humans also learned to stay out of her way when she was in one of her moods, although sometimes it was kind of fun to waggle a finger or a hand around her head when she was in full snit mode, just to watch her roll around and yell at it. I also knew to warn people who tried to pet her and didn�t know all her rules for where she could and could not be touched � she was wonderfully soft and pretty and prone to exposing her tummy to tempt the unwary to touch her there, mere seconds before she would then expose all five pointy ends to let you know that her tummy was most definitely off limits.

So bearing all of that in mind, one of my favorite memories of her – and one of the best stories I can tell about what kind of funny little cat she was – happened a few years ago. There are two doors to our computer room � both on the same wall (one leads to the hall and the other to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom), with just enough space in between for a cat tree. Basically you cannot get out of the computer room without passing by the cat tree, and the way it�s set up, there�s no way to avoid exiting either door without coming into cat paw-grabbing range at some point in the process. A few years back Richard�s family had come up to visit, and at one point his mom and his little sister were upstairs by themselves in the computer room, checking something online. The rest of us were sitting downstairs, chatting, when we heard a loud and laughing �Help!�, so went up to investigate. Turns out Allegra had decided it was time for a full-fledged snit, and every time one of them approached either door she start doing her funny little yell-growl, and swinging her paws. Richard and I knew her well enough to know it was all just a big act, but his mom and sister didn�t, and were basically trapped there by this tiny, floppy cat.

Once we stopped laughing and could move again, I �rescued� them by distracting Allegra with head scritches so they could slip past her unnoticed. She would come out of her snits as easily as she slipped into them, and it’s this sort of thing which was the reason why she was one of my favorites.

If there is a place where we all go when we die, I would like to think that she is there, lying in wait for any unwary newcomers, rolling around on strategically placed cat trees, offering a running, trilled commentary on everything she is doing, daring people to pet her tummy, and maybe sometimes, curling up on someone�s chest � someone who understands just how she likes to sit and who doesn�t mind having to type with only one hand; someone who maybe had to leave their own wonky little cat behind them and so is willing to let her settle in, and just be.

Yesterday I took her in for final blood tests. Last night the vet called to confirm what we both already knew. She was in complete kidney failure. Oh, there were a few options, but even as he offered them his voice indicated what we both knew was true.

Richard called to make the appointment because I did not think I would be able to say the words without bursting into tears. All morning we have been eying the clock, and every time she would let me I held her close, told her I loved her, and told her goodbye.

The vet came this morning and I held her in my arms as she slipped away. We put her in her favorite box – the one that’s sat on my desk to hold bill paperwork. We’ll bury her in the flowerbed, next to Rebecca.

Goodbye Allegra, my musical little cat.

How do I even begin to describe how very much I will miss you?

When the planes crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York City and I watched as the towers came crumbling to the ground, there was a curious detachment underneath the shock and horror I felt, sitting there, huddled into a ball on the sofa in front of the TV. There were a lot of people dead and a lot of people scarred physically and emotionally from what happened, but through it all it never once touched me directly. No one I knew was there; no one I knew had any friends or family members who were there; no one I knew saw it through any other means than the Internet or the TV. The only time I was ever in New York was quite possibly over twenty years ago and we were only there a short time. My impressions were that it was large and gray and dingy and I was glad to not have to stay very long. So I can easily go back to that city and never know that anything had changed. A few buildings turned to dust, a few thousand people killed, but in another few years there will be new buildings there and new people working in them and as time goes forward it will be easier and easier for all of us to relegate the whole thing to a rather unexpected and unsettling memory.

I write that, not to belittle the tragedy of 9/11 because it was a tragedy, a horrible, awful tragedy, even as it opened our eyes as Americans to the simple truth that we are not immune; even as the rest of the world offered their condolences while whispering behind their hands ‘it’s about damn time you had to live like the rest of us live, never knowing the next time the terrorists will strike. I write this because this is how this particular tragedy impacted me; or perhaps more because this is how it did not. I have no more qualms about getting into a plane than before. I have no more fears about being on the top floor of a skyscraper than I normally had (being someone who is a wee bit afraid of heights, I doubt I’d have ever been willing to go to the top of those towers anyway, planes or no planes).

And so here we are, dealing with another national tragedy, except that this one is, on the scale of tragedies when measured in sheer dollars of devastation and numbers of people who will be impacted, and again, no one I know has died or been lost or impacted. But this time it is different. This time I *feel*. It’s not just the vague pity and sorrow for a group of strangers who died far out of my reach. It is the sheer horror and shock at what is going on in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. The tragedy, in this case, is not the hurricane; no, Katrina was only the catalyst. The tragedy is how this dismal excuse for an administration has reacted to the aftermath; how this administration blithely cut funds and ignored the desperate pleas for money to fix the problem before it happened; how the administration pretends it was never warned it could ever have been this bad, and how the administration seems callously oblivious to the fact that a national disaster is growing with virulent strength near the mouth of the Mississippi River, and all they can do is suggest that perhaps it is the fault of all those people who stayed that they are now in danger of being drowned, starved, dehydrated, infected with cholera or other water borne illnesses. Why should they, the administration, be required to care about tens of thousands of people who were so poor that they had no way to leave the city, who still have no way to leave the city, and who are facing devastation and horrors we smug Americans think only happens to people in third world countries, but never our own? The head of FEMA thinks we should just blame the victims. After all, they were ‘stupid’ enough to stay behind. And underneath it all is the underlying message. Why should they give a damn about the ones still left behind? Or perhaps, more appropriately, why should they give a damn about the poor?

Richard and I talked about what we would do if we were in this situation, on the flight out to Atlanta. We have two cars at home, and a nice house, and if there was a hurricane warning in our area we, at least, have the means to pack up the cats and some essentials, and go somewhere higher, drier, safer, to wait it out until the worst had passed. Even if our home was destroyed and our town with it, we have insurance, and the means to rebuild. We are educated and possess a wealth of skills that look nice on a resume. My company has offices in various parts of the country; if we, for some reason, had to relocate because California fell into the sea, we would still be okay. It would be hard and frustrating and stressful, but the important thing is that we would be okay.

There are thousands of people in New Orleans that do not have that comfort; that did not have it before the hurricane and the horror and the flood, and most certainly do not have it now. And I wonder – what will happen to them? Even if they somehow rebuild the city, sinking levees and casino barges and all, will those people ever be okay again? And my heart aches for them; for all of them. I will have no more fear of water and of floods and of high winds and hurricanes than I ever did before any of this happened. But unlike September 11, I do not think I can so easily put this behind. The current administration is quite possibly one of the worst things that has ever happened to this country. They proved it with the way they have ‘handled’ this recession by tossing money in the form of tax cuts to their rich cronies while cutting services to those who needed them most; they proved it with the way they threw us into a war based on nothing more than big fat lies; they have proved it yet again by the way they have so callously mishandled, so far, the situation in New Orleans. Every time I think they cannot sicken me any more, they prove me wrong.