Another busy weekend. Saturday, I had to be up early so I could hit the electrical place for some power shed parts, plus practice with the trio I'm in for a couple Sunday's out, and practice with the praise team for Sunday. I spent the rest of the day removing the millions of ladybugs infesting our house, cleaning up some rooms, and making messes in other rooms unpacking boxes. We continue to find things we didn't know we even owned. It's like the biggest Christmas ever as we paw through boxes. Because the house is only about one third built, we are re-packing a lot of things, but it's a lot less compared to what we are getting out to use, and what we are simply throwing away. A lot of the things we kept in the past don't make a lot of sense at this point, so if it's something someone may use, it goes into a garage sale pile, the rest goes in trash bags. I get all warm and tingly when I get to throw out a lot of old stuff. It's a guy thing.

Sunday was full with teaching, Sunday morning, birthday party for my niece (Sweet 16, Courtney!!!), the kick-off for the Financial Peace University, choir practice, evening service, then Dairy Queen and a movie (Jonah) with my parents. We fell into bed around midnight.

The weather has been unreal. Saturday was near 70 degrees F all day. Sunday started out in the 60's, then got up to 78 degrees F by evening with lots of wind. I've heard rumors of gusts hitting 90 mph. It was gusting hard enough to rattle doors and windows most of the night. In typical Michigan fashion, it is supposed to get down to the low 30's tonight. If it does, that will be a 45-degree swing in 36 hours. Unfortunately, that isn't all that unusual for Michigan in April.

On tap for today: after work, I'll be stopping by the dry cleaners to pick up a load of clothes there, then home to gas up the generator, get it running, get the furnace on before it gets too cold, change into work clothes, and head over to my parents house to pick up a truck load of stones. They have the foundation of the original house and barn in the front of their place and they want to clean things up. In addition to the foundations and loose stones everywhere, there is a lot of barb wire and other bits of rusted iron hiding in the grass that tends to trip up people. We need to work fast because it all disappears under chest-high grass in a month or so. We will use the stone to do landscaping around our place. I also have a lot of reading to get done for class on Thursday, just in case I have any extra time tonight.

Politics:

Vox Day had a good column about what men really want. Any women really interested in understanding the men in their lives (as opposed into turning them into an ornamental flowering fruit basket) could do worse than reading this.

Iraq: The Bushies keep telling us how great everything is, the anti-Bushies keep telling us the place is going to hell in a handbasket. The reports from the ground are all over the map. I'm assuming that, like any war, there are places of calm, places of chaos, places of rebellion, places of cooperation. What I don't see is any coherent plan to turn Iraq into a peace-loving democracy by June. The Russians have been working at it for over a decade and it still doesn't look very democratic from here. Few former Soviet republics are doing any better and many far worse. And none of those were the result of foreign conquest. If we intend to see this through, it will take much longer than 60 days and much more than the 100's of billions of dollars we have already burned in the Iraqi desert. In any case, for better or worse, I see the November elections as shaping up as a referendum on the Iraq war. That is assuming Kerry has an IQ over 60, which isn't a certain thing. He is, after all, a politician. The last time the presidential race turned into a referendum on an ongoing war, we ended up with Tricky Dick as president. Maybe I'm pessimistic, but I don't think the outcome of this election will turn out any better.

Back to work.