This afternoon dad arrived, driving in from Chicago. He drove about 785 miles the first day and 285 miles the second. He'll stay for about a week and then drive with mom back to Chicago. He also brought three boxes of Maurice Lenell cookies since the batch given to us by the Tarpeys for Christmas was snarfed down within a week.
Dad brought with him the DVDs of Chris and Katie's wedding video. There are two versions, the three minute overview and the longer video showing the background, the wedding, the reception, etc. I've been lectoring since I was about 13 years old. This was the first time I got to see myself do it. It's about as awkward a feeling as when you hear yourself on tape, only worse because you see yourself as well.
I picked up Timothy's birth certificate from Nashua town hall. I thought it was nice how you can now order a miniature laminated version similar to a driver's license. We're going to go back and get these smaller versions for the other kids. It's much handier, especially for something like going through airport security.
We watched Rush Hour over the weekend. It was my first time seeing a Jackie Chan movie. I enjoyed it enough that I think I'll rent The Tuxedo when it comes out this week.
It's amazing how much the snow has melted since it came down a week ago. In the pictures from last week the snow was about as high as the kids. Now it's down to a reasonable height. Hopefully the kids will be able to use this break from school to get in some snow sledding in the back yard.
Following the news with our stance against Iraq, I think George Bush should not put much emphasis on how corrupt a dictator Saddam is. There are plenty of very corrupt leaders of nations to go around. If we're going to attack, I want it to be because he is a direct threat to us, not because he is a bad leader who oppresses his own people. Picture it from another perspective. Bush talks about how Saddam has gassed his own people. I could see Saddam tell his people about how the "ruthless" United States kills a million of its own babies every year in the name of "reproductive health". We say how their country is oppressive to women. Saddam could mention how many US women sell their bodies in the pornography industry. For goodness sake, this week we find out that skin is going to be used by ESPN to hype a fishing show. No, if George wants to attack him, I think he needs to focus on Saddam's threat to our security and not on how awful it is to live under Saddam. There are just too many countries that you could attack based on that rational.
This week PBS's American Experience is running an theme entitled "The Pill" covering the history of it's development and discussing the impact it has had on society. I have the TiVo recording it and plan on watching it later this week. I'm interested in how they will cover the development and impact. I suspect the emphasis will be on it's "liberating" effects with little discussion of how divorce and abortion skyrocketed coincident with it. As an engineer I don't believe that correlation means causality, but if the pill was supposed to stabilize marriages and reduce unplanned pregnancies, why hasn't it?