I got a group email from my friend Rondel, asking for opinions on an article she'd written. I didn't realize how much I miss her and Ken. If they still lived in Portland, I'd get Phillip and the sugar gliders packed up and be on southbound I-5 right away. It seems like I'd just gotten to know them when they were forced out of this country. Australia is a long way away. The world feels too big.

It's a wonderful piece that Rondel wrote. My writers' group is just a couple of weeks away, and I can't shake my writing slump.

The P key is sticking badly on our keyboard.

In addition to ruining the Winnie-The-Pooh stories by stripping away the cleverness and leaving only the cuteness behind, Disney also made Tigger too old. In Shepard's original illustrations, Tigger looks like a young cub. He also acts like a naive young child in the books. I wonder why Disney Studios turned him into a smart-alleck adult.

We witnessed an enjoyable bit of lunacy this morning. A(n) (apparent) street person was walking down the sidewalk toward us as the 7 pulled up. Mr. Street Guy casually cut in front of the line and boarded the bus through the front doors. Without hesistation, and with no hurry, he walked down the aisle and out the center doors, and continued his stroll down the sidewalk. Maybe he did it just because he could. Maybe he wanted to take the world's shortest bus ride. Maybe he doesn't know why he did it. But it didn't hurt anyone, so why not? It made my morning.

I'm not laughing at that guy. Just the opposite. I wish I had thought of it. I wish I had the guts to pull off something harmlessly crazy like that.

Half a block from home, two neighborhood squirrels were engaged in a mad spiral chase up a tree. Phillip spotted them first. He tapped me on the arm and pointed. He didn't have to say anything. We stopped, and I dropped my backpack to the ground. I retrieved my bag of peanuts and tossed 5 or 6 treats to one of the squirrels. (The other one was out of sight.) This delayed us, and we missed our usual 7 bus. But a 9 arrived at the bus stop at the same time that we did. At Boston Street, an impatient single-passenger commuter passed our bus on the right and swerved through parked cars to get around us. Phillip and I both got to our jobs on time. I even had time to flip though a Harper's magazine I found in the Health Science lobby.

That's my philosophy in a peanut shell.

One matter of annoyance today: Hospital maintenance people frequently stop in to ask me where room bb-278 (or nw-205f or ce-223 or whatever) is. When I tell them I don't know, they ask again, often showing me the room number written on their work order - as if that will jog my memory, or something.

This is a huge hospital. I spend my days in the confines of one small clinic. Now, why on earth would someone think I would have room numbers memorized? Even when I take walks during breaks, I don't spend my time noticing room numbers. The only reason I know my own room number is that I have deliveries sent here.

Why don't maintenance people carry building maps?

Yep, I am grumpy.

If I believed in biorhythms (which I don't), I'd say my emotional cycle in pretty low today. I haven't been in the mood to be here, and I've felt grumpy all day. (Connie says she hasn't noticed.) The usual parade of stupidity has seemed especially irritating.

Headline in The King County Journal: MAN IN MALL MURDERED. I thought it was oddly worded. Why not MAN MURDERED IN MALL? Then I started reading the story. It turned out that what the headline meant was: police have determined that the MAN who was found dead IN the MALL yesterday had been MURDERED.

I forgot my point.

Followup: I found 2 songs when I did a Google search. One was called "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by The Proclaimers. That's not the song that's been running through my mind all morning. The "500 Miles" I'm thinking of was written by Hedy West, and was recorded by several artists, including Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Sugar gliders fighting each other woke me from a dream this morning. I had been dreaming poetry - not dreaming about poetry, the dream was the poem itself. Then I went back to sleep. The alarm clock woke me up, and I had forgotten the poem.

I woke up this morning with the song "500 Miles" stuck in my head. Now I have to find out who wrote the song, and who performed it.

I feel very guilty about skipping church this morning. The Bishop needs our support, just as we need his. Skipping church was a selfish thing to do. It's weighing heavy on my mind tonight.

No offence to our Bishop (I helped elect him, after all), but I just wasn't in the mood for a "guest speaker." So, these are the things I looked up on the internet while we were skipping church this morning:

red dragon on the Internet Movie Database - to see if Roger Ebert's review agreed with mine. It did. I enjoy Roger Ebert's literate movie reviews. Most of the time, his opinions agree with mine. Sometimes they don't. I like to watch a movie first, make up my own mind about it, and then read Ebert to see what I may have missed. I thought Red Dragon was a well-made, well-acted, nicely paced, movie. I haven't read the book, yet.

difference between islam christianity on Google. I've been reading an English translation of the Koran, and discovering the many similarities between these two religions, and getting a hint about what separates them. According to what I read this morning, Islam and Judaism both think of God as a shapeless, abstract force that cannot have had a "son." Christianity thinks of God in more human terms. That's about the only difference I've been able to find.

rankin eisler on Google. I'm still thinking about "Eisler On The Go." It's occurred to me lately that I didn't know who Rankin (who shakes his head and cries) is. It's funny how I never wondered about that before. John E. Rankin was a member of Congress, from Mississippi, who served on The House Un-American Committee. (By the way, I earlier misspelled Hanns Eisler's first name.)