I gotta start with Monday this week. Work went well and whizzed by quickly. I planned to go to Town Hall in Seattle to try and grab a last minute ticket to Garrison Keillor, who was in town to speak and promote his new book (Liberty), which came out today. I got on the I-520 freeway, which normally is crowded beyond belief and I no possibility of getting into Seattle not only in time for the show but that the show was more than likely sold out.
Shazam! I-520 was clear as a bell and I sailed into the city in record time, got to Town Hall and there were plenty of tickets left. Who knew it would happen like that? I slapped down my $5 and walked across the street to pick out a nice Panini for dinner.
Garrison Keillor talked for 2 hours once he made it on to the stage. It was hot in the hall but I sat at the back near an open window that had a cool breeze coming in from 7th street. Here's the link to Garrison at the local NPR station:
http://www.kuow.org/program.php?current=WK1
I took off Tuesday from work to get some things accomplished. Dentist appointment at 8am. They couldn't get my lower right jaw numbed enough, so they had to give me extra shots. Then, with numbed out lower jaw and tongue, I washed my car, had some light, soft lunch and went out for a haircut.
Once back from that, I threw my kayak in the back of my car and drove down the hill to Lake Washington and slide my kayak into the lake for a paddle. The lake was choppy and I only stayed out there for an hour.
I came back and called my cell phone company to tell them my battery wasn't holding a charge and they told me they were going to send me a new phone. Hurray!
I felt bold after that and called earthlink because I had not been able to connect to the internet and had been having that problem for the last month, off and on.
Feeling even bolder, I called my dentist's office and asked the receptionist out on a date! She agreed and gave me her cell phone number.
In a few hours I'm going to head into Seattle for a group of people who read their old storied from the teen years. It's call the Shame read off, or something like that. It sounded funny.
What a day so far!!!
More days off that this one!!
Hope you are enjoying the little bit of extra summer we are having.
The image is from a game I worked on two years ago and the colors always reminded me of summer.
Here's a good Garrison Keillor column:
'Throw the bums out!' — say the bums
By Garrison Keillor
September 11, 2008
So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They've been running Washington like a well-oiled machine, to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.
They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 or (pick a number) billion go floating out the Treasury door.
It is a bold move on the Republicans' part - forget about the past, it's only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be - and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to. Paste a new face on my Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louie the 32nd, the rightful heir to the Throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the royal fleur-de-lis.
John McCain has decided to run as a former POW and a maverick, a maverick's maverick, rather than Mr. Bush's best friend, and that's understandable - but how can he not address the $3 trillion that got burned up in Iraq so far? It's real money; it could've paid for a lot of windmills, a high-speed rail line in Ohio, some serious research and development. The Chinese, who have avoided foreign wars for 50 years, are taking enormous leaps forward, investing in their economy, and we are falling behind. We're wasting our chances.
And a former mayor of a town of 7,000 who hired a lobbyist to get $26 million in federal earmarks is now running against the old-boy network in Washington who gave her that money to build the teen rec center and other good things so she could keep taxes low in Wasilla. Stunning. And if you question her qualifications to be the leader of the free world, you are an elitist. This is a beautiful maneuver. I wish I had thought of it back in school when I was forced to subject myself to a final exam in higher algebra. I could have told Miss Mortenson, "I am a Christian, and when you gave me a D you only showed your contempt for the Lord and for the godly, hard-working people from whom I have sprung, you elitist battleax, you."
In school, you couldn't get away with that garbage because the taxpayers know that if we don't uphold scholastic standards, we will wind up driving on badly designed bridges and go in for a tonsillectomy and come out missing our left lung, so we flunk the losers, lest they gain power and hurt us. But in politics, we bring forth phonies and love them to death.
When you check the actuarial tables on a 72-year-old guy who's had three bouts with cancer, you guess you may be looking at the first female president, a hustling evangelical with a chip on her shoulder who, not counting Canada, has set foot outside the country once - a trip to Germany, Iraq and Kuwait in 2007 to visit Alaskans in the armed service. And who listed a refueling stop in Ireland as a fourth country visited. She's like the Current Occupant but with big hair. If you want inexperience, there were better choices.
Garrison Keillor's column appears regularly in The Sun. His e-mail isoldscout@prairiehome.us.
