Events

These things are cool. For about $1,000 each, the Shelter Box Trust (Shelter Box USA here) provides shelter to people in disaster areas. They've distributed over 32,000 boxes to half a million people since 2001, including to Indonesia in December 2004 and New Orleans in August 2005. Each is a 49-gallon box containing a tent, ten sleeping bags, cookware, water jugs (sans water) and other neccesities that people need immediately following a disaster.

Neither rain, nor snow, nor dead of night, can keep Parker from playing with a tennis ball: He even brought me the ball, but, you know? Standing out in a raging thunderstorm throwing a soggy ball to a soggy dog just doesn't have a huge appeal to me:

..."none of the above." So says the latest AP/Ipsos poll (PDF; via Talking Points Memo): In a new AP/Ipsos Poll, 25% of Republican respondents say they are either undecided or would prefer someone other than the current field — more than the vote share of any actual candidates listed in the poll. Compare this to the Democratic side, where only 13% of respondents are undecided or prefer none of the above. In the horse-race numbers, Rudy Giuliani leads the GOP side with 21%, followed by Fred Thompson at...

Via security guru Bruce Schneier, an actual, real-world Trojan Horse that gets in...well, almost everywhere.

I'll be participating once more in the Les Turner ALS Foundation's annual Walk4Life, this year on September 8th. You can make donations to my mom's team through CharityWeb. Here's the text of my mom's letter: As you all know, on March 17, 2004, I was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a fatal neuromuscular disease that attacks motor neurons. It makes even the simplest movements of walking, speaking, and gesturing nearly impossible. No one knows its cause; there is no cure. Today, I...

Phooey. My ride Saturday seems to have caused some irritation in either the ligaments or cartilege of my left knee. Not crippling, but kind of painful. So no biking this weekend, and I'll have to postpone my planned 80 km ride to the following weekend. Last year, I couldn't ride the two centuries I'd trained for because of my gallbladder. If I'm out because of my knee this year, I'll be really, really disappointed. And I can't even blame Tonya Harding.

The stuffed vet that Danielle gave Parker a couple weeks ago still lives on—though empty of stuffing and looking a bit haggard: And Parker is live today. Astute viewers will notice a patch of something on his right hip. That's mud from this morning in the park. So tonight, he gets his quarterly bath.

Playing ball at sunset:

The current occupant and his Vice really are the worst pair ever, but achieving such lofty depths took some cunning, perserverence and a shooting incident. I mention this because on this day in 1804, the second-worst VPOTUS ever shot Alexander Hamilton to death—and the latter manifestly did not apologize to the former. (Had Hamilton done so, Cheney would have had another obstacle to slither under in his quest for the "worst ever" title.)

It's hot. Damn hot. Real hot. So yesterday afternoon I only spent about an hour at Tommy's, and made sure Parker had water: Why did I schlepp a bowl from home? Because while Nevin's staff very happily provide him with an aluminum take-out container full of water, Parker tends to dump the water out and then shred the container. Using the Fiesta bowl he's used to prevents the shredding part.