Very Local News

• All Before Five is a local radio station news run through in New York. I live it. I normally hate anything from New York and California. This local radio cast is helping me figure out that not every person in the state is a crushing liberal. The presenter is professional, but just wished his brother happy birthday. They have a story on about a bunch of Trekies making new episodes of the old Star Trek by hand.
  
• It is official, Christians are being murdered and in many ways persecuted in Iraq. It is all the fault of the American administration for invading of course, but at least it is happening. It is official because the stories are appearing on 60 minutes. It is about time.
• Elle got a new Barbi Dall recently. A friend' of Nat's gave it to Elle. She came over to me last night and explained that she was using her normal brush like a Barbi brush to get the knots out of Barbi's hair. Apparently sitting in a box for a long time puts knots in your hair.
• Phase 4 of Major Combat Operations (Post invasion and dealing with locals) sucked.
• Phase 3 was so easy, people wanted to declare victory and go home.
  
• We didn't ask enough questions.
• We made mistakes.
  
• Them not surrendering and continuing to fighting us was not in our contingencies.
• Both civil and military leaders failed.
• Hard to convince people in leadership the war was still going on.
• There is nothing a Christin based army can do to be accepted in the Muslim world. Period.
  
• Movies I need to watch
  
• Hell Boy II
• Pan's Labyrinth
• Children of Men
• Wale (just because I wanna)
• The BBC has this podcast called Daily Mayo. Some bloke named Simon Mayo interviews folks. I like how he works. This week they are at Wimbledon and interview people between matches or during rain delays. It is quite interesting. Sometimes they have cometary about the match that kicks off in the middle of the interview. Sometimes they talk about people in the crowd or any royals who turn up.
• Starbuck's is closing over six hundred stores. They said they are going to concentrate on Starbuck's that compete directly with other Starbuck's.
• Chicago has the highest sails tax in the nation of 10.25%. It is 11.x% at restaurants. I say Houston should have like a 20% sales tax at restaurants. It might curve our distinction as the most dining out city in the world.
  
• Got some new boots. Two pare. They are nearly identically to the boots I ware every day except one of the pare is pull up instead of lace up. I haven't used these before. They felt good in the store. They looked like they were worth a try. If I turn up weeping tomorrow, you will know how things went. The best report would be to completely forget there are new boots at all.
  
• Ell came over and asked me to read some of her story to her. I read a couple of words, but I insisted on reading them out phonetically and making her identify the letters and mimic the sounds. She gets board pretty quickly, but she really does seem to be picking up at least the connection between letters and sounds. It is a long road to go.