A good 2nd Amendment story via CG: Guns in the hands of good people:

I believe that those of us who grew up in the'60s and'70s have been lax in protecting each other and have passed this attitude on to our children. Some of us developed this complacent attitude that someone else, especially the government, is responsible for supporting us or solving our problems. But they are not.

Read the whole article about how the author had to take a life and the responses he's received after his story came out.

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We were teasing my mother the other day that her eulogy is going to be a laugh riot. We have so much hilarious material on her, including the fact that this week I threw out some canned goods in her pantry that expired in 2001. And how she argues with her GPS: "No I should NOT turn left here!" And how she whistles under her breath all the time. Oh, the whistling, it drives me nuts.

She pouted and said that we can't wait for her to die so we can make fun of her.

But yesterday, I saw a side of my mother that I love. Through her work, she's befriended a family from Tanzania. We stopped by their house because my mother had done some school clothes shopping for their daughters. My mother is so entirely generous that way: she invites this family to Thanksgiving, she bought them a Christmas tree, and she's always popping in on them with new clothes and toys for their kids.

And I just love how these two little African girls climb all over my mother and call her Grandma. And my mom kisses them and reads books to them and loves on them to death. It is such a beautiful sight to see this little black girl throw her arms around my mother and shout, "Grandma!"

Don't worry, Mama. We'll include good stuff like that in your eulogy too.
Just please stop with the whistling.

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Yeah.
Absolutely what she said.

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On Sunday, the final wedding event was the Walima, a sort of brunch reception that takes place after the consummation of the marriage. No, seriously, thatÂ’s what the speaker said at the thing. This event seems to be the groomÂ’s familyÂ’s doing, and it ended up being fairly military. My friend just got out of the Army after being Special Forces, so his Army buddies were in their dress blues, and they performed the saber arch as my friend and his new wife arrived. My friend also wore his blues, and his wife again looked stunning in a bejewelled robin-egg blue dress.

Some of my friendÂ’s cousins and friends got up and spoke a few words, like you would do at a toast during a Western wedding. I made some jokes about high school and what a good friend heÂ’s been over the past 16 years. And then there was Pakistani food and merriment again.

After my little toast, several people came up to me to thank me for my husbandÂ’s service, which is always nice but especially nice to hear from the Muslim community. In fact, during the wedding ceremony on Saturday, when the officiant mentioned that my friend had served his country, it got a round of applause during the sermon. Those things just affirmed my good feelings for everyone I met this weekend.

And my friend asked the wedding photographer to take a photo of two of the guests: his cousin, who wears a traditional turban, dishdasha, and long beard, and his SF buddy in his dress blues. Everyone laughed as the two men symbolically shook hands and then threw their arms around each other for a photo.

So that was the wedding. As I bid my friend and his wife goodbye, I got tears in my eyes. I was overwhelmed by the emotions of the weekend, and I sadly donÂ’t know when IÂ’ll get to see them again. His entire family made me feel so welcome this week, and I hate to say goodbye to them.

But heÂ’s kept in touch over the past 12 years, so IÂ’m sure we can manage in the future.

What an awesome experience this whole event was. I am so glad that I came home for it and that I got an inside glimpse at the local Muslim community and their customs. It really gave me a perspective on some things IÂ’ve only considered in the theoretical before.

(See also the Mehndi and the wedding posts.)

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Instapundit: Those Sadly Ill-Informed Foreigners

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Oh how I wish this were made up. I really do.

I don't know that I can come up with one that's that bad. I once met a Canadian my age who'd never heard of the Berlin Wall. I said, "Did you not watch any TV in 1989?"

Shoot, I was embarrassed during the Olympics opening ceremony when I didn't know where to find countries like Benin or Comoros. I felt like a dunce.

Every time I feel like I'm on the lower half of the intelligence bell curve, something reminds me that maybe I'm a little too hard on myself.

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AirForceWife and I have the same camera, and last time we were together we were lamenting how it sucks batteries. I came into town with a set of batteries in the camera and an extra pair. I cycled through all of those during the Mehndi alone.

So on my way out of town on Friday, I stopped at the Walmart to buy batteries. My husband called while I was in the self-checkout, and I stupidly walked out of the store without my bag of purchases. It didn't even sink in until I got to Chicago that the batteries were nowhere to be found.

Next stop was a corner store near my friend's house the day of the wedding. I bought a four-pack and we headed to the ceremony. I had enough battery power left on the ones from the Mehndi to take one photo of the venue.

Right before the ceremony started, I put the new batteries in the camera: nothing. Not even enough juice to turn the camera on. I bet they'd been sitting in that corner store for years.

So here I am at the most beautiful and colorful and camera-worthy wedding I'll ever attend...with no batteries.

Luckily, Muslim weddings have a break in the middle for evening prayer. During this break, I went to the hotel front desk, asking if they have a gift shop. They do, but it was out of batteries. However, the nice manager went off in search of a pair of batteries owned by the hotel. He brought me two AAs and I handed him some dollar bills and raced back to the wedding.

And thank heavens those batteries lasted through the wedding and the Walima.

More on that later. I'm on my way to Walmart. I called them from Chicago to see if they'd found my forgotten bag, and they said that if I bring my receipt, they will give me another pack of batteries. Three cheers for awesome customer service.

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Seems to me out here,
it's all about the sky.
Clouds are pure art,
migrant birds flying by.
   --Allette Brooks

Apparently I'm supposed to be able to dodge flying rocks while driving. What? Phone or no phone, how in the heck was I supposed to do that?

And I was on a bluetooth, people.

But I threw caution to the wind when I noticed what a beautiful day it was. I love the Midwest so much that my heart grows two sizes when I drive here. You can take your mountains and oceans; I'll take my corn and clouds.

So I pulled out my camera and started indiscriminately snapping pictures of the road without looking through the viewfinder or bothering to focus. I took a ton, and a few actually came out great.

I called AWTM and told her I was thinking of her. Apparently she also drives through the Midwest with a camera in hand.

She challenged me to a Plains-Off.

Nebraska...

Illinois...

AWTM, I'll see you your barn pic and raise you a farm plus a big honkin' American flag.

Also, you mentioned cows. I managed to snap some.

Man, I love driving in this state. What a view. Horizon as far as the eye can see.

It's home.

Oh, and a photo of the new crack in my windshield, for good measure.

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1 Yep, that second one is definitely Illinois!

Posted by: Nicole at August 17, 2008 07:11 PM (sBJ2p)

2 Heh, which Interstate were ya on? Also, you've been galavanting across the country the past few years, but did you notice that it is now August and everything is still a deep green? This is the 2nd year in a row that it has been that way. Prior, Aug would normally bring in the sun blasted brown look to all the vegetation that wasn't a crop. Enjoy your time in the homeland.

Posted by: blueshift at August 17, 2008 07:13 PM (crTpS)

3 No, the rock had nothing to do with the phone, or vice versa. It's still not safe to talk on the phone and drive. Blue tooth or no blue tooth. This is a touchy subject with me, we almost got run off the road AGAIN this weekend, someone on the phone, not paying attention, one lane road to RELee's birthplace (hwy 3, if anyone's looking) He was nattering away - drifted... drifted.. managed to NOT hit us, but I think the phone went thataway. LAW

Posted by: liberal army wife at August 18, 2008 12:44 AM (rcqzY)

4 Oh the shame of it!!! Some of us, and I do mean us, need an intervention for talking while driving. I live in a very small town, in the country so I often talk while on the 12 mile drive into town. My BAD!! Great pictures.

Posted by: Ruth H at August 18, 2008 04:31 AM (4u82p)

5 The Midwest also has a special place in my heart.

Posted by: Kasey at August 18, 2008 08:06 AM (cACJz)

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About ten minutes into my trip towards Chicago yesterday, I was on the phone with CaliValleyGirl and winced as a rock hit my windshield. Thirty seconds later, a 10-inch crack made its way across the glass. Son of a. The last time we drove home, we hit a crow. This time I will need a new windshield when I get back. It's too expensive to travel.

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SpouseBUZZ post: The Guilt

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A throwaway line from a good article about the bombing of Hiroshima:

Truman, president for less than 3 months and in the dark about the Manhattan Project during his entire vice presidency, was being given advice from every corner on how to end the war.

Wow. The compartmentalization these men must maintain.
I could never be president.

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An observation from my trip: Maybe little girls aren't so bad.

I realized that Guard Wife lives on my route home, so ol' Charlie and I stayed the night with her on the road trip. Our arrival coincided with her daughter's 5th birthday party. I was mentally thinking, "What did I agree to do?", but the party was charming and funny.

And Guard Wife's two daughters never made a bicker or a peep the whole time I was there. No fussing, no whining, no "she's hitting me!" They really upped the bar for me on child behavior. Maybe little girls might be up my alley.

Ha, now I just know Guard Wife will mess up her dynamic by adding a boy to the mix!

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1 I think little boys and little girls are both fine, right up until junior high gets hold of them. There is something EVIL lurking in the walls of every junior high school I've ever encountered, I swear!

Posted by: Lissa at August 13, 2008 06:08 AM (fHdl7)

2 We enjoyed having you both very much! The girls were 'encouraged' before you arrived to behave themselves so that you wouldn't think they were being raised by wolves or something worse. I appreciate your help at the party a lot. Those kind of 'events' make me nervous, big time, and it was nice to have you in my corner! As far as adding a boy to the mix...yeah, it sounds like something I'd go and do.

Posted by: Guard Wife at August 13, 2008 03:42 PM (F5iCn)

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I came across an oldy but a goody, an ollld blog post Varifrank wrote during the last election cycle. Still relevant.

This next election is not the last election, just the next one in the line. There will be another in 2 years, and another 2 years after than and so on and so forth. Let's knock this crap off that "this is the most important election in our lifetimes"; they are all important. Just vote. Do a reasonably good job of knowing the issues, accept people who take a different view than you and then go take up rock polishing or go knit sweaters for the other 23 months in between the election season. Let's all go find a hobbies to keep us busy for Gods' sake.

The founding fathers really meant for us to do other things besides talk about tax rates every damn day of the year. You want to change the employment situation, then get a job, if you've got one help someone else. Start with your family and work your way out to friends, and on to acquiantances and then on to strangers. Got too much and feel guilty about it? then give somebody something you dont need. You want to do something about education? then go volunteer for lunchroom duty at the local elementary school.

Stop expecting these half-wit lawyers in Washington to improve your lives. You can improve your life all by yourself, you don't need John Edwards to sue someone for you to get a better life.

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I just realized that my husband and I have to do this funny thing when we write emails and letters while he's deployed. We have so many inside jokes and quotes from animated shows, so we have to write in the parenthetical voice clues. Like I have to write: Weak, lame (Cartman voice). Or, as I just wrote in a letter an hour ago: I got this in Parade Magazine (Stewie voice). And my husband just sent me this: I'm from the future! (Reno 911 voice)

I find it hilarious that we both do this so often. It also reminds me of something my French "cousin" said when he lived in the US. My brother asked him what the hardest part about making friends is, and he replied that Americans are constantly quoting things. We drop quotes from songs and movies and The Simpsons into everything. He often had a hard time following conversations because it would take him a while to realize a quote was being made. So my brothers and I tried to take him on a crash course of quotable stuff, which at the time included Friday and Swingers. It was hilarious.

My cousin would have serious trouble hanging out with my husband and me. Our relationship is one big string of quotes.

I'm super serial (Al Gore voice).

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Hilarity, via Chuck.

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The dog and I spent 15 hours in the car over the weekend, so we settled in with a book on tape. Michael Crichton's Next didn't get spectacular reviews, but I found it unabridged at the library and thought that it would be good for the car.

After about eight hours of listening, I was starting to get really uneasy.

What I love about Crichton is that he always takes something we can do scientifically and then extrapolates it into the future to the ethical concerns. And yes, I am seriously nervewracked by some of the issues he raised. How about a woman who tracks down her biological father, a man who donated sperm 30 years prior, and says she's suing him because he knew at the time he donated sperm that he was addicted to cocaine, so he passed on his genes for addiction to her? Or what about a scientist getting sued because the meds he gave a woman didn't work, because he couldn't provide documentation that he gave her a placebo?

I have no problem with the technology. I have no problem with people profiting from creating the technology. I do have a serious problem with out litigious society and the ethics dilemmas this stuff will create. We're already sue-happy; just wait until you can sue your parents for procreating and passing along "faulty" genes.

I still have a couple more hours of listening to do, but as usual, Crichton is making me queasy. He's good at that.

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Quote of the day.

There had been reports that Iran would compete against Israel at these Olympic Games for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The Iranian National Olympic Committee (INOC) had said that as there was "no face-to-face situation" in swimming there would be no problem in attending the competition.

"Alirezaei swims in lane one and the representative of the Zionist regime (Israel) in lane seven, so they will not face each other," INOC secretary Ali Kafashian told ISNA news agency prior to the race.

Racists crack me up.

Also, something that would've been so skeezy if the last president had done it is so cute when this one does.

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I'm headed out this morning for a trip home. As my dad always says before a road trip, "It's 902 miles to Illinois; we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." (Hey, that's one of our Dadisms, like we talked about last night with Sherman Baldwin.)

More when I get there. Midwestside til I die, baby!

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I finally got around to watching this week's Army Wives. There's the obligatory TV scene where the daughter wants to date a boy, so she has to bring him home to get the third degree from her parents. My parents never behaved this way. Maybe it was because they already knew all my friends from sports and stuff at school, but we never had to have one of those TV dinners that sounds like an interview: "So, what are your plans after high school?" Did you? Is this really what normal families do, or just families on TV?

Oh, and the boyfriend starts talking about Jack Kerouac. Can I just tell you how overrated I think On the Road is? Gag me. Thus I loved the scene in Freaks and Geeks when Kim Kelly said, "I hated the book, alright? I have no idea what it's about, and the writer was clearly on drugs when he wrote it. I mean, it just went on and on and on like it was written in a total hurry. If I handed in something like this, there's no way I'd get a good grade on it, I mean, it's boring and it's unorganized, and I only read 30 pages of it anyway." (Found at 5:47 in this youtube.) Perfect summary of that crappy book.

I don't know how parents keep from rolling their eyes when high schoolers try to act mature. I don't think I'll be very good at it. I have told my mother recently that she was a good mom for not belittling me when I thought something was The Biggest Drama Ever. I'm afraid I'm gonna laugh at my kid someday.

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I am having such a hard time getting off the computer. I mean, I just categorically deny that it is already 10:30. It can't be. Where did today go? Oh, right, the car dealership. Where I stood and drank mediocre coffee and then gave them six hundred bucks. Ugh. And the three hours I spent on that long post. I didn't knit a single stitch today. I refuse to go to bed yet, even though I'm exhausted.

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