Well, that's a relief...

Salam Pax is alive and well and blogging. Seems his internet connexion went out for a few days, which makes a lot of sense all things considered. If you haven't checked out his blog yet you should (and apparently Blogger and the other sites associated with his blog have been very helpful in all the increased bandwidth. It's also nice to see he's a blog of note.)

It was from his site that I first got word that Blogger had been bought by Google. Hope that works out okay. I'll reserve judgement, although I wasn't impressed with my main foray into Googledom, namely an attempt to sign on as an information professional for GoogleAnswers. I'm still not sure what ever happened to that. At least the guys at Blogger seem geared up for it. And what's this about audio blogging? Hmmm....

Yesterday I was back in action and able to go "try to save the world" in the fictional sense, anyway, during our Cthulhu game. The good news is our band triumphed. We kept a pseudopod-gooey bit of highly concentrated thoughtwaves from hatching from the moon and enveloping the earth, which would have caused massive lunacy (pun intended). The bad news is two non-player characters were killed. When you play a game and take on the role of various characters every week for several years, you tend to bond a bit. One in particular was about as close as I've had to a boyfriend in a long time. God, that sounds kind of sick, I know. Trust me, I'm not one of those gamers that can't distinguish reality from phantasy. Still...the game's going to be very different without them.

On a busride yesterday I found myself thinking how the people of Lexington would react if they suddenly had bombs falling on their neighbourhood. We still have a lot of damage left from the ice storm last month, but it is nothing compared to what's going on in Iraq. And I remembered the Friday Five question about where else you might want to live. (I had thought about that afterwords, about how Britain was really my main alternative because at least I have ancestors in Britain and America and I really don't want to trespass on land that is rightfully another people's, really. And I was sort of surprised I didn't say Ireland. Ireland would be nice, but there's some censorship issues I have problems with.)

But when all is said and done, I guess where I live right now is fine, because even though I don't agree with my government leaders at the moment, I have a right to dissent, and even though I think the US is often arrogant as hell simply because it is so isolated from the rest of the world, I have to admit I'd rather raise children in isolated middle America than in a war zone. War, violence, terrorism, anarchy--they can happen anywhere. That's always been a factor even when people tried to ignore it. September 11th didn't change our world--it simply changed our perception of it. As much as I'd love to travel and experience different cultures and even live in other countries, though, I'll always be an American in my outlook--someone who believes in the inherent worth of all human beings, the right of everyone to pursue what's often called the "American dream", that who you are is more important than what you are.

The thing is, even when I don't like things done in the name of America, I know that I can help change what is done. I do have a voice--so do thousands of others who I quite frankly think are morons, but regardless of whether we are liberal or conservative, logical, irrational, regardless of our colour, religions, whatever--together we make up a whole. Our system may be flawed, but at least it seems to be one worth fighting for. So I'd rather vote my conscience and convince others to do the same and maybe we'll get leaders we can say truly represent us.

Peacemongering and patriotism are not exclusive things. I had members of my family fight in Vietnam, WWII, World War I, the Spanish-American War, the Civil War (or War Between the States, depending on which family member you mean), and the American Revolution (I'm not sure how we missed Korea). I have a picture of me at age 2 with my finger pointing to my father's induction photo as if asking "is my daddy coming home?" I know that war is sometimes necessary and always devastating. I do not believe that this war was necessary. While I believe it may very well accomplish many things, I do not think it is the only way things could have played out. That said, I have to admit I'm impressed with how the coalition forces have been operating so far. I'm not sure war is a good thing ever. But it is certainly a crucible that brings out the best and worst in humanity. I hope this one brings out only the best.

Okay, enough of war and politics. You don't really want to hear me rant, do you?

As it turns out, I was coming down with something Saturday. I promptly threw up an hour later and then rushed home (as much as you can rush anywhere on public transportation) to do it some more. I went on to bed and my fever broke about sunset. I finally started feeling myself again about 2 am. I've taken it easy in terms of eating since then. I've heard of 12-hour bugs but I think that's the first time I've had one. I lost 5 lbs, though I'm sure that's mostly water, although for once I managed to drink every couple of hours while sick.

I'm not going to write much else, since I'm at work and it's almost time to go home. Oh, happy spring/fall out there--I forgot to mention it last week. Until next time...