Events

The whole family went to Meramec State Park, near Sullivan, Mo., over the weekend. It was Parker's first long car trip with us. Never before in my life have I cared as much about what goes into and out of another living creature; the car trip only intensified this feeling. Observe Parker as he was for perhaps 98% of the trip: Now observe him as he appeared twice on the way up and twice on the way down: That's not guilt, believe it or not. That's a seriously unhappy puppy preparing to demonstrate the...

Here is the artist and his work, in which he shows he's moved on from textiles to sculpture: That's a $600 armoire. He is so crated from now on. No TDP tomorrow, but I'm sure I'll make up for it on Monday.

Ah, Parker, having fun at the dog park, yelling at the camera. I'm posting this photo so you can imagine the toothy grin, energetic bouncing, and ecstatic barking, but in the dark at 5:45 am. At least he's now slept through the night twice in a row.

So it looks like North Korea's nuclear test failed as badly as the President's (833 days, 3 hours) foreign policy. Either or both might contribute to his 34% approval rating. Polls open in 27 days, 15 hours, 57 minutes.

We are ecstatic: our ball of fur and teeth finally, after seven weeks, slept through the night. He woke up only when he heard Abby Ryan's traffic report on NPR. Then he danced on our heads until we took him outside. I hope this is the first of many nights we can finally sleep seven straight hours.

Though not rising to the destructive level of a nuclear-armed rogue state, Parker has nonetheless embarked on a radical remodeling of our house: And yet, he's just so adorable. It almost makes up for it:

...when North Korea gets the bomb. Wow. Try as I might, I can't think of any worse result of the President's (834 days, 4 hours) foreign policies than North Korea exploding a nuclear bomb this morning. (The USGS felt it; did you?) Josh Marshall has a fair summary of how this happened, but I think we all know already: The origins of the failure are ones anyone familiar with the last six years in this country will readily recognize: chest-thumping followed by failure followed by cover-up and denial. The...

Indian summer is here. It got up into the mid-20s (mid-70s F), so I toodled down to Millenium Park. I don't expect weather like this again until March at the earliest. At least I got to enjoy it.

Earlier today I got all excited seeing the Census Bureau's population clock at just below 300 million. In a move that will surprise no one, I got the math wrong, so my guess about when this would happen was off by an order of magnitude. This morning it was at 299,923,329; right now, it's 299,926,233. At this rate it will be about nine days before the thing ticks over 300 million. So check the population clock on the 15th. It's likely it will take about that long to add another 74,000 people to the U.S.

It looks like the Census Bureau's Population Clock will roll over 300,000,000 this evening. We'll check back throughout the day.