soapbox

Israel has gone off its freakin’ nut again.

Scott and I were talking about some of this stuff with the Abbott and his dad at Murphy’s last night (over a post-moving-van-loading dinner), and there’s a lot to the situation, but come on, man, bombing the Beirut airport (not a dedicated military-only installation) and blockading Lebanese ports seems like a pretty drastic escalation of hostilities.

I really, really, really, really (times infinity) hope that our “dear leaders” (mindless puppet and evil cyborg from the future though they may be) don’t think it’s worthwhile to wade into whatever this new quagmire Israel has churned up for itself in order to rescue them so that they can piss where the eat all over again. We should have learned from the historical record by now: nothing good will come of this

Call me isolationist if you want to, but the economic and political costs of continuing to support Israel in all of its hell-bent-for-leather fight -picking ain’t worth the paltry returns.

…I blame this one on global warming and my own deficiencies in awareness.

See, here’s the situation: I was supposed to be on the 7:10 AM flight Manchester to Philly, then change planes and get to Houston around lunchtime today. Key word in that sentence: supposed to. I’m usually never later for much of anything, much less planes, but having to wake up at 4:30 AM in combination with the persistent rains this morning made the drive down here slower than usual. Futhermore, I had it in my head that the flight was scheduled for about 15 minutes later than it actually was, and what a crucial 15 minutes those turned out to be. Add that to the fact that, although I was less than five minutes late for first boarding call, they wouldn’t hold the flight, on account of the weather in Philly being even worse. (And yes, it’s still intermittently raining like hell here in Manchester, and I watched the Weather Channel last night, so I’m inclined to believe them.)

Of course, this late in the game, most of the other expedient and convenient US Air flights are booked up, and the weather adds to the problems until it clears out of the northeast region around midday. As a result, I’m now on the 12:40 flight to Charlotte and won’t arrive in Houston until 8 PM. I seriously doubt I’ll make the rehearsal activities for this weekend’s wedding, and I may well miss most or all of the subsequent dinner festivities as a result. My humblest apologies, Sara.

I will make it to Houston for the rest of the weekend, however. In the meantime, there is one infinitesimally small silver lining that will make my 5+ hour wait in Manchester this morning bearable: either the wireless Internet is now free here, or I still have time left from the previous time I purchased access; either way, I’m online…