Its Too Quiet
Now that Small and Feisty is out of the house, it’s too quiet. Normally, even when she it at her aunt’s, we can call and talk to her. She now has to write letters to us, and us to her, for the next 8 days. I’m looking forward to her first letter. Ah, old-fashioned communications.
On the upside, we were able to clean the house, and for a change, it will actually stay clean. Those of you with small children will understand :-). We plan to do more cleaning and decluttering as the week goes on. Bulky Item Pickup comes tomorrow to get rid of our old sofa, our old patio table, and misc. junk. Next will come the National Council of Jewish Women to pick-up and inventory our next donate load. Then we can start loading the garage with more junk.
We’re also working on eliminating another distraction in our life. The July Newsletter for our current congregation should be going in the mail tomorrow, and in it I publically indicate that I’ll stop doing the newsletter at the end of September. I’m done with my Religious Practices responsibilities; I’ve got a candidate for Newsletter Production and Website. We’ve picked up the paperwork for our new congregation, which is so much more warm and friendly than our old one. Although we’ll eventually volunteer there, we are making it clear we’re taking a year sabbatical from Temple volunteering. We like their two rabbis, and it looks like they will be doing the school right.
I’m at work today, actually getting some useful stuff done, with no headache. Woo Hoo. [Interesting note: Today for the FAQ, I got the question of the origin of the phrase “Hip, Hip, Hurray”. It was quite interesting.]
Observations on the News 2004-06-23
Authorization of Torture. Dubya’s administration released a legal brief that said “The federal torture statute will not be violated as long as any of the proposed strategies are not specifically intended to cause severe physical pain or suffering or prolonged mental harm”. There was a wide variety of techniques that were considered permissible and were designed to both create fear as well as skirt the legal letter of the law. These were later rescinded. Yet Bush said he has never ordered the torture of Iraqi or al Qaeda prisoners. This seem hypocritical to me. The original memos clearly created an environment that permitted such abuses, even if they were strictly ordered.
This is the same word-picking that everyone got upset about Clinton doing during his investigation (remember “it”). Yet we don’t investigate these abuses to the same level of scrutiny, even though these abuses have drastically reduced our authority on the international arena.
Dubya is not doing the job. Let’s send him a negative performance review in November!
Black Tea May Help Get Blood Circulating. Who needed a study to tell them this. I learn it every morning when I have my gigantic mug o’tea.
