We've got pet insurance for Shadow, to cover his shots and future tooth issues and the side effects of his quest to prove he's still the roughest, toughest kitty in these here parts. It's something like $20 a month, and it covers his shots completely. If he's going to keep hanging out with the neighborhood skunks every summer, rather important.

ION, Hubby has saved an Iraqi's life.

When he was manager of Dragon's Keep, he advised a young man without a plan for his life that perhaps the military would be a good fit for him. He ran into that young man today at the mall. Said young man is now a First Sergeant and is recently back from Baghdad. He mentioned a piece of advice Hubby had given him, that just because someone's holding a gun doesn't mean that someone is being threatening with a gun.

He and his squad were on guard at a post in Baghdad, when a local and his car were stopped and searched at a checkpoint. The First Sergeant looked away for a moment, and when he looked back the local had a pistol out and aimed in the general direction of the FS's head and the squad had brought up their weapons. The FS then realized that the pistol wasn't pointed at him but to the side, away from everyone. So instead of ordering anyone to shoot, he yelled for the interpreter.

Turns out the local was showing off a fancy presentation pistol from Saddam Hussein to someone and he wanted to sell it for the princely price of $15. Once that transaction was done, the local was asked what else he had, and he cheerfully went to his already-searched car, opened the trunk, lifted the spare tire and the rack of tools, and showed off a selection of weapons.

After all the trading was done, the First Sergeant told the interpreter to tell the local that waving pistols at the American troops was not a good marketing strategy and he should mention he had stuff for sale first.

Hubby doesn't remember telling this guy anything about which direction weapons are pointing, but he'll accept the attribution.

That's pretty cool, Connie.

I wish I'd gotten pet insurance for my cats. Probably could still get it for Frankie. Have never put in the time to figure out if it was worth it.

How many Threadless Muppet t-shirts can I crave before it gets ridic? I'm at four. Ish. [link]

I received an envelope today with the postmark of Eugene, Oregon. There is no return address. Inside that envelope is an unlabelled clipping from a newspaper bearing information from my home county in Pennsylvania. And on that clipping is a picture from the Spraggs School in 1930, with my father and my aunt in a group of kids. I have no idea who sent this to me, but thank you very much.

News from press conference: Paterno is no longer head coach of the football team, and Spanier is no longer president of the university. I don't know yet exactly what that means.

Oh, wow. I wonder if that means fired, or something else.

Sounds like it means fired.

From what I've seen of both of them, I think that Paterno will walk away quietly, but Spanier will make things ugly.

Someone in my tweeters said fired, but it's a responsible journalist someone and not a random someone, if that helps.

I'm watching the press conference on local TV now.

Iiinteresting.

I'm amused that my sorta-hippy-conservationist-organic/peace-corp-naturalist neighbors' wedding celebrations out in the midwest was SO midwestern, as evidenced by their pictures. Silly stupid wedding games, casseroles, etc. It's funny, cause I can't see either of them doing that here AT ALL, but both of them are from ND with family now relocated to MN, so they had the wedding out there. And apparently embraced their roots.

News from press conference: Paterno is no longer head coach of the football team, and Spanier is no longer president of the university.

This morning I wrote, scanned, and sent a letter to your Board of Trustees, reminding them of their responsibilities. I had a faculty meeting at lunch and discovered five other people who had done the same.

When I got back to my office I got an email from the Trustee's listserve noting that they could only process 900 emails an hour, and mine had not been delivered yet. It was delivered four hours later. So we know that they have been getting plenty of advice.