Three years into the War on Terror, Osama is back on network television and the French are trying to keep serial mass murderer Yasser alive. C’mon Mr. President – heads on spikes! Consider it a special treat for the trick-or-treaters and mount the unshaven one’s head out front of Pennsylvania Avenue. It’ll almost make up for all those trials and tribunals (not to mention justice) we were promised when you started your crusade in 2001.

Spent some time this afternoon thinking about where I am and where I’m going. I guess it kinda goes hand and glove with updating the resume. I’ve got the stable income I drooled over when I was in solo practice, and paid for it by spending Sunday morning in the cube complying with other people’s deadlines. At least when I work on the weekend the iPod keeps me mellow. For some reason the phone in the cube doesn’t have a shut-up button. You know the button: the one that dumps the calls into voicemail so you can write reports or try to learn the software forced upon you. I don’t have that button. Best I can do is turn the volume down and ignore the damn thing. But today, with a some tunes and no phone, lots of work got done, even if it cost me a Sunday to get it off my desk.

Most blogs seem to be counting the nine more days until the voting, but here the focus is on the twelve until I’m on vacation. Pongo and Chuck flying the Nissantruck at warp speed away from the sprawl with no agenda, no deadlines and no moral compass. Just a search for empty beaches, greasy spoons and someone’s leg to hump. Our nine-day mission: to forget why we needed a nine-day mission. First star to the right and straight on ’til morning. Where’s Tink to keep us from growing up? How can we get through this without a little fairy? Lost boys are coming to mind, not because of the references to Pan, but because one of the probable ports-of-call is Santa Cruz, where the 1987 vampire pic was filmed.

Maybe I’ll just never be satisfied with where I’m at. Maybe Pongo has it right: enjoy the moment and sniff every bush as though it was the first time you’ve ever seen it. Feel free to growl as needed, because when you have big, brown, eyes those silly humans have short memories. Then again, he didn’t have to pay $2.69 a gallon for gasoline this morning.

Wishing a big happy 6000th birthday to everyone and everything. [via Naladahc]

Spent a lot of time listening to NPR in the workmobile today. While I’d planned to use the day to catch up on some reports, the failure of the power at 11:00 a.m. killed off that motivation quickly. No phones, no switchboard, no server, no printer, and with only the light from the laptop screen to read by (not to mention navigating the bathroom by the light of my Palm), I loaded up the car and did some field work. But that’s enough about work. The point here, if there is one, was to comment on the nice feature done on the Libertarian candidate for President, Michael Badnarik. While I was leaning toward voting for Badnarik before this, I finalized that decision today. John McCain will have to do without my write-in vote this time. There are a lot of reasons. I’ll try and explain them more between now and the election, but the words just aren’t flowing tonight and for now I’ll just leave it at a simple statement that I can not and will not vote for either Bush or Kerry, and Badnarik is the candidate on the ballot who most closely represents my views.

There hasn’t been much interesting going on here lately. Somedays I really don’t understand why people keep coming back here. It must be for the puppy licks.

Cube life has got me down. I’ve had to admit to myself that I’m there for the presently stable paycheck, and not because I really like the job or see a long-term career potential. A couple of weeks ago I started cross-training for a second line of work within the cubes. It brought a bit of fresh air back into the work, but probably not enough to breath life back into it. Administrative frustration, like computer and payroll problems, quickly sucked that fresh air back out.

I need to find something I can care about that actually supports my lifestyle (or at least a lifestyle). I was getting burned out as a solo practitioner even before the radiation killed my practice. n my current position I see a lot of practicing attorneys out there who are just as burned out as I was. I’m not sure returning to practice would be a good move either.

Then again, this whole mood swing might just be something brought on by the lack of chlorine in my life. I pulled or tore or somethinged my shoulder a few weeks ago and haven’t been doing my laps. I tried again Sunday and now my shoulder hurts again. I figure I’m out of the pool at least until next weekend. It’s not just the lack of exercise, but the pool was always a good way to clear my head and unwind, and I haven’t found a land-based equivalent.

In the absence of chlorine though, I did go with a friend Saturday and caught an exhibition water polo game down at UCSD. It was a game for their homecoming between the current team and their alums, and was much more a fun game than the normal ferocious match. So after meandering all over the place with this silly post, I’ll leave you with some sunny reasons why despite everything else I’m glad I’m in San Diego in autumn.

Caught Team America: World Police at a matinee yesterday. Great movie. I wasn’t there to have my political karma improved or become a more enlightened voter. I was there to be entertained, and since I haven’t laughed that hard at a movie in a long time, I have to say Parker and Stone succeeded.

There I was, reading along on the information super highway. It was a nice little article [via the NPCC's email newsletter] about a new study on different treatment plans for prostate cancer. The study said good things about my choice of treatment plans and talked about how nice it is to have a non-invasive option that allows quick return to a normal life with odds equal to surgery. Then you click the little link to page two, and splat comes the reminder: “Overall, just 7% of the men died due to prostate cancer.” All this crap and still a seven percent chance of death (and a twenty percent chance of reoccurrence) over the twelve years in their study period? F that!

My biggest complaint when I was looking at my own options was the lack of long-term information. Most of the studies talk about five years, which can be OK when most diagnosed men over sixty years old, but doesn’t work for me. I’m forty now and the plan is for at least forty more years.

I’m going to go sulk now. Maybe I’ll post about my swim tomorrow.

…San Diego is again number one, although I don’t think highest gas prices is a mark for which other cities will be battling to pass us.

…Congressman flips and flops, growing from college streaker to author of a column condemning Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction.

Yes, I’m in the process of changing the templates. No, I’m not finished yet, but I’m taking a break now.

[Added Sunday 10/10] One of the changes was to switch the archive pages from .htm to .php to match the majority of my sites and other projects. I prefer to have the options php gives me as I make long-term plans for the site (ya know, like totally beyond next weekend).

Still no comments back in the individual posts. See kiddies, spam kills, if not from buying bootleg meds over the internet then by killing ideas and communication. Return the favor and kill a spammer today.

[Added later Sunday 10/10] Pretty much done with the major stuff, but expect some patches as things come up.

I was strapped to a table in stirrups, sedated, probed, implanted with radiactive seeds, cathertized and sent home with almost enough medications to make me think it was a good party. All that was missing was the flying saucer.

Now, the evil mutant cells appear to be dead, the seeds are pretty much decayed (the roughly sixty-day half life leaves them at about 1.56% their original potency), and I’m kinda missing the probing in my life. The meds are mostly gone and I still can’t find the flying saucer.

Thank you all for being both here and there. Those of you who arrived to the party a bit late should feel free to peruse the roadmap, starting with the original probing and the diagnosis.