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off to Africa
Monday, March 24 2003
setting: Hurley, New York
My cold seemed to abate somewhat last night, and I was able to stay up very late working on my taxes. I used a version of TurboTax online, which was a rather unresponsive tool over a dialup connection. It also had a few bugs; I got all the way to the end and then it refused to allow me to edit something it had flagged as an error, but it also refused to proceed into an e-filing. I was forced to print it all out and send it by mail.
It looks like Saddam Hussein is banking on American squeamishness about filling the dungeons of dictators with our boys (and girls). You won't find pictures of the POWs on American media of course, since the only propaganda they aim to further is that of Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks. If you want to see what it looks like when American wars start going badly, go here. It sucks to be a pawn (or, for that matter, a rook) in somebody's geopolitical chessgame, but folks need to put down their Freedom Fries and remember that this war is not being produced in a Hollywood studio. Also, isn't it interesting that suddenly we have an interest in the Geneva Conventions?
Assuming I'm not on a secret no-fly list, today Gretchen and I leave for South Africa. See you in two weeks.
Leaving the house in the care of Katie's sister Becka, we drove down to New York City and left our car in the care of Sarah the Korean, who lives in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. From there we caught a car service to JFK. Because of my continuing battle with a head cold, I was feeling congested and was given to fits of coughing. Gretchen managed to use the state of my health and the fact that it was our honeymoon to get seats in a cabin whose accommodations (particularly in terms of leg room) were a grade better than the usual steerage. Due to complications from the ongoing war on Iraq, one of the London flights had been canceled and two flights had been consolidated into this one. But with our better seating we didn't suffer much from the overcrowded conditions.
Our main complaint was with the food we were served. We'd ordered special vegetarian meals, but what they gave us was a pile of overcooked unflavored vegetables and a mound of undercooked (that is, crunchy) rice. I poured some of my salad dressing on the vegetables in an effort to liven them up, but the cause was already lost.
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