Yeah, and I'll bet they're all sitting around Dean and Joyce's smoking.
11:00 PM


Well, now she's mad.
10:27 PM


What's happening in Moscow is, of course, awful. But what the hell did Russia expect? You can't keep abusing a people and not expect them to react. Russia has totally fucked with the Chechens for over a decade now, and quite frankly, I'm surprised the Chechens haven't done more damage than they've already done. Quite honestly, the Russian gov't deserves everything the Chechen' "rebels" throw at them.
What I can't figure out: why isn't anyone (the U.N., for instance) stepping up and pounding on Russia's head? Why isn't anyone paying attention? Why have none of my friends ever asked me, "Say, Susanna, why is that in the early 1990s, Russia granted autonomy to pretty much any nation that asked for it--Ukraine, Georgia, the pre-Baltic states, all the various -stan states--but not to Chechnya? What do you know about this, oh knower-of-all-Russian-things?"

Well, I'll tell you what I know about it. The Russians have been vilifying the Chechens for centuries. Pushkin didn't pull that "zloj Chechen'" phrase out of a vacuum. But more than that, it's about the same thing it's always about: it's about oil. *Of course* Russia can't let go of Chechnya. And the U.S. can't let them let go of Chechnya. Heaven forbid the pipeline routes to the oilfields of the Caucuses and Central Asia should be jeopardized by not being under Russian control. There is a major pipeline route from Baku through Grozny (the capital of the Chechen' Republic), and it culminates in a Russian city (Tikhoretsk, I think that's how you spell it in English). And the Russians want desperately to preserve that pipeline, as well as access to the Baku/Chechen' oilfields. Russia is doing what it always does: fucking with ethnic hatred to mask its real desire to gain full control of the Chechen/Central Asian oil fields. It did the same thing w/the Georgians, it did the same thing w/the Azerbaijani and Armenians. And the rest of the world sits there and watches it all, hoping for an outcome that is financially beneficial to all the members of the U.N.'s Security Council. Well, fuck that.

The thing is, this is old news. So old, I've forgotten and re-remembered it a dozen times. It's been more than ten years, and still the war goes on in Chechnya.
10:20 PM


Interesting things from my e-mail. My friend, Susana, seems to determined to create webpages that are actually useful. Her newest contribution to the web: http://bayareawomensbasketball.com.

I, on the other hand, haven't updated my main webpage in months. I haven't even updated my architectural consulting webpage recently, and that's bad, because my fee structure has changed and I should really let people know that. I'm so damn web lazy that I'm actually considering *buying* a new template for this journal so I don't have to go through the effort of fixing the lingering errors on this one. Blah. Well, in my own defense, I should note that my hand freaking hurts, but I notice it hasn't prevented me from playing either Free Cell or hockey, so that's a pretty lame excuse.
10:30 AM


"It tastes like childhood!"

Should Flinstones ever decide to market its chewable vitamins to adults, there's their best shot at a tagline.

When we were kids, my siblings and I would drop our Flinstones vitamins in our chocolate milk and stir it as quickly as we could so we could watch Fred and Barney drown in a swirling, lactose-laced whirlpool. Probably they were already in a coma before they drowned from bouncing their foreheads off the glass repeatedly. If we didn't stir our milk, the corpses would settle to the bottom of the glass and dissolve into a solid splash of color. Then we could watch it get picked up with the currents when we played with our milk instead of drinking it.

And speaking of childhood, I just got back from a run in the (pouring down) rain. Catherine completely doesn't understand why I would do such a thing, but it reminds me of being a kid and all those years spent watching/playing soccer in inclement weather. Hell, getting all wet and muddy was half the fun, and why should it stop now just because I'm old? This is the first time--at least since college--that I've gone running "just because." I didn't need the workout since I have practice tonight, and I didn't even take a watch.

Things to do today, probably in the order of appearance:

Go out to Lowe's and pay for our kitchen cabinets--ouch.
Return all those overdue library books.
Find some lunch.
Feed the birds.
Clean the office.
Go to practice.