Talking Points

Soto

I'm happy to see (it's Monday) that Sonia Sotomayor's initiation (? secret handshake?) absorbed less than an entire 24-hour news cycle. Will she be great? Time will tell. I'm rooting for her. Is she tangible progress? Oh, yeah. The very best flesh-and-blood kind.

Oats, Feeling

Note to self: Divert the extra $1,000 paid each month against the mortgage principal toward the purchase of stocks instead, effective immediately. Metaphor #1: The market's doing toe-springs from a bottom. Metaphor #2: This puppy (i.e., market) is about to grow a fourth leg and run. My portfolio has been showing shamrock green for over a week, its value up 10% and more even on bad days.

Dressing Simone

We always consult on her work and travel wardrobe. Some jewelry choices for the St. Mary's University gig.

Crossed wires

Maybe she'll exercise 17 hours straight and become a pencil. Maybe I'll drink 17 bottles of discounted premium wine and become a pencil case.

Soviet air force

 

Refrigerator magnet Rorschach

  What does it all mean? These magnets, about us? Well, we're hard on Republicans. Truth out: the Republicans are the party that freed the slaves, not the Democrats. As I learned from reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Want to understand the Barack Obama campaign profoundly? Read this book. It weighs two bricks (no joke) but it reveals the Lincoln we all should know, for lessons learned.

Election Day in small town America

Nematodes! vs. Ants!

Today was the perfect day to attack. Thunderstorms and hail the size of M&Ms. The nematodes waited in our refrigerator, next to the lemonade. Waiting to be mixed with warm water and poured into action. These particular nematodes are reputedly ant assassins. Worms so tiny you can't see them, yet they'll suck an ant queen dry as empty pajamas.

Mix and pour the Steinernema capocapsae on the city hills. Mix and pour the Heterorhabditis bacterophora on the ants' many frontier towns. Keep damp for two weeks. Goodbye (fingers murderously crossed), our vast infestation of Allegheny Mound Ants. They swarm, they bite, they build solar-collecting hills as big as overturned wheelbarrows.

POSTSCRIPT: July Whosee. It's been three weeks. Ants prosper. Empire building, I think. Nematodes: zero. We're reluctantly returning to plan B (oh, we so want to be green in our depredations): chemicals so vile Home Depot only releases them under guard.

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