Saturday at the park, we saw a couple with two older Golden Retrievers sitting in the shade. We waved and walked on a way so we didn't bother them, sat down and threw the frisbee for Laswell while picnicking on bagel dogs.

After a while they started packing up and I noticed they had a harness around one dog's hindquarters to help him stand up and walk over to the car. The simple, matter-of-fact way the lady helped him walk on his dysplasic haunches pierced me straight through and I started crying, about two seconds before Jen saw the same thing and said "Don't start crying, Eric."

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Amazon doesn't let you add things to your wish list that you can't actually buy on amazon. Which things, suprising though it may seem, there are quite a lot of. So here's my actual wishlist, from wherever the items may originate.

• Arkel Bug Pannier -- Very sweet convertible pannier / backpack. Update: Still want this !!
• Antec Sonata 2 -- The charms of my Shuttle XPC are wearing thin. For the next iteration of my home workstation, I want to go s i l e n t, and the Sonata is about as quiet a starting point as they come. Update: Probably not going to happen, even if there were games I want to play, I don't have time to play them. So why bother spending money on a computer?
• Children's Discovery Museum Family Membership -- This very neat museum is just up the train tracks from us. The $85 Family membership will get the three of us in for a year! -- Thanks Grandparents Sorenson!
• Burley Rain Gear -- With a pair of Ultimate Commuter pants and a Rock Point jacket, and a heavy downpour will simply make me laugh! Apparently it decided not to rain this year. Waste of money.
• Meat Thermometer -- Face it, you gotta find out how hot your meat is somehow. We've seen this particular thermometer in action, at Karen and Chris's place, and it kicks butt.
• Daytona Skull Cap With Visor -- Now this one's for Jen. There's no way to link directly to it, but she's ALL ABOUT the Skull Cap, Large size, in Pearl White to match her cruiser. I bought this for her for Valentine's day. Awwwww.

A bikeforums post pointed me at this Prayer for the Bike Commuter "retablo" but the whole series is brilliant and worth perusing: David Nakabayashi's Modern Retablo series.

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(In response to this thread at bikeforums)

I love biking along the expressway during rush hour and keeping pace with the same car (usually I pick a Hummer or Imperial Star Cruiser---err, Ford F250 xtended cab) for a mile or two.

I love coming home in the afternoons now that it stays light out. If I can duck out fifteen minutes early or so, I'll take the long way home and feel like I'm getting away with something.

I love meeting other commuters on the road, drop or be dropped matters not. I like the cameraderie conveyed in head-nods and two-finger salutes off the bars.

I love the tired feeling in my legs by Wednesday night and the gradual-but-noticable improvements in muscle tone, in my door-to-door times, and in my technique handling tricky traffic merges.

I love most of all though the fact that I found a way to get the exercise my body and brain need without resorting to a contrivance like driving to the gym; a way that integrates into my daily routine so it doesn't take time away from my family; and that incidentally allows me to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Tonight I had to set Gunnar down and walk away, for both of our sakes. I don't know whether it is his new teeth that are hurting him, extreme tiredness that's flipped over into hysteria, or something else entirely. But he's been wailing nonstop for over an hour and Jen's out on her weekly karaoke/bar night* so it's just me and the dog and the little bundle of pain.

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The always-thoughtful BAGnewsNotes put up this oddly disturbing image today (click it for a permalink to his story). My take:

This is as managed a picture as the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED flightsuit, and it makes me cringe on several levels:

• that the Presidency is so overtaken by theatre and spectacle that the seat of power, the finger-on-the-button guy, has his playlist on iTunes next to Puff Daddy's
• that the media is so pliant, so pleased to promote the spectacle, that they report it as straight news, without a touch of (overt) irony or discomfort at the way in which they're being used to disseminate the Message of the Day
• that the handlers and spin-men feel this sort of hokey horseshit is necessary to pump up the fading Q and approve/disapprove numbers
• and, finally, that the object of all of this focus, Dubya himself, ultimately is as utterly unconvincing in this ur-Yuppie role as he was playing Commander Codpiece on the flight deck. The only time I've ever seen the guy looking vaguely comfortable is on those video outtakes pre-speech where he's spitting mean-spirited jokes at the "help".

Thanks BNN. This photo-op has been bugging me since I read about it but I hadn't taken the time to sort through it. Now that I have, I feel.. not "better" really, but at least "less bad".

Of all the ways Hunter Thompson could have died, I really didn't expect suicide to be the one to actually happen.

An update from Gunnar H that suggests perhaps it wasn't a suicide. I don't normally read, let alone link to, Rupert Murdoch's rags but there was a "page six" gossip column post suggesting that HST's son Juan might have pulled the trigger. Here's a repost outside the Post's pay-wall.

My first reaction is that they blew any credibility this report may have had with the last graf. It is probably nothing, just ravens looking to pluck a dead man's eyeballs, but (as paranoia inevitably does) the idea latches itself to any shred of doubt and festers and grows. And, really, what the hell is this?

Moved this to its own post.

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