Go Zags! (#2 seed in midwest bracket)

Yesterday we went for our first Solemates walk in a long time. They went to the Bobelaine Audubon Sanctuary about 30 miles away from here. We saw some birds and some turtles and it was nice to see some of our friends again. We met them there at 10 and sauntered around the sanctuary for a couple of hours. Rich and I are thinking of leaving a cache there. We could leave a micro at the gathering area and it wouldn't upset the ecology at all.

Everyone else then went back to Nicolas for coffee, and we went on in to Yuba City to cache(!) The first one was a virtual at YC High School. I remember coming here a few years ago for a Jesuit game. I'd thought the tragedy they were memorializing was the shooting at Olivehurst in '93 or so. Instead it's a bus accident in 1976. I remember this... the bus fell off an overpass onto its roof and 28 choir members and their teacher were killed. Yuba City isn't so big it could absorb that kind of loss easily. However, the memorial doesn't say anything about why these kids died, leaving it all to the imagination if you don't remember and haven't recently talked to the cache hider.

Next was a little cache in a park, then lunch, then one in a Sam's Club lot. From there we started back, on streets that began to look really familiar, till I realized Rich had put a goto back on the high school instead of the next cache. This one was in Marysville, on the island in the lake. A couple of weeks ago, we'd been left a message in this log book. We found the tree where the cache probably was, but there were two folks fishing right there. The woman noticed Rich had the GPS and asked about it, and while he was conversing with her, I grabbed the box. The logbook had been changed. I took a picture of Rich conversing with muggles. Then he completely blocked her view while I snuck the cache back! We chatted with them a little longer, then went home.

Vince had called. Bandit had given them a scare with an intestinal blockage. It turned out not to be a blockage, but a knot in his intestines. Vince is borrowing trouble, suppose this is a chronic condition (they've had this dog over a year, this is the first) and they can't afford this too often, he might have to give the dogs away, etc. I don't think he needs to panic just yet, with any luck this was a one-time deal. Kerfuffle missed his brother while he was gone.

Oh, and Niki won $30 at a casino... not exactly enough to pay for the dog. But better than a poke in the eye, too.

We went to the geocaching party last night. They had a raffle of all sorts of things (I took a food-and-wine pack we haven't used for a couple of years) and we won nothing. A lot of people like Rich's BIT (because it's there) series, it's a quick way to add numbers and the writeups are good. BIT X was approved just as we left this morning and has been found a couple of times. Mesozoic Park, that I re-placed Thursday, has also been found recently. This was a fun party. #898!

Our priest (the micromanager who wants to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral) will be leaving in May. He's retiring... I thought perhaps he'd asked to be moved, I know he's threatened the Bishop with that. It's probably health-related. I told him I'd miss him, which is true, and he said I won't have anyone to pick on any more. I think he was being funny, since I haven't picked on him at all. He's alienated a lot of people, though. On the other hand, who knows what we'll get next. Oh, well.

We found an ideal place for the Skiffy cache, at the very spacy-looking Orbit station near here. All I need now is some camo duct tape to wrap around it.

I note one Masonic secret is not so secret any more! The press is full of the accident where the guy didn't use the pistol with the blanks during the initiation.

Rich has his blood donor lunch in a couple of weeks so we took our Davis Musical Theater Company tickets over to see if we could go today. After a couple of shuffles, we had nice seats in the middle of the theater for "Guys and Dolls." This is not one of my favorites, and in some respects I think Bernadette's friends may have done a better job, but there were some good performances. I dozed off now and again in the first act.

We stopped to look at the field, with the three Big Yellow Things in it, where ground-breaking takes place tomorrow for the new theater.

DenBeste on the Iraqi constitution, also here: "It contrasts rather sharply with the proposed constitution of the EU, which is phone-book length and is unlikely to be ratified. Perhaps the Europeans should travel to Iraq to learn how it's done."

Flipper John. More nuances.

Economic News.

Bad news from Spain. The terrorists have won this one.

And Eric Kolchinsky emails: "Al Queda (or any other terror organization) will rightly perceive that they can influence elections through violence. This vote has greatly increased the probability of a pre-election attack -- here and in Europe." Yes. And it's reduced the likelihood of addressing this problem without major bloodshed. The Spanish electorate has made what seems to me to be a very shortsighted and cowardly decision, and the world may suffer as a result.

Yeah, but does AQ know that?

Mark Steyn, These guys want to kill us anyway:

In his penultimate public appearance, the late Osama bin Laden, broadcasting from his cave in the early hours of the Afghan campaign, listed among his principal grievances "the tragedy of Andalusia" � that is, the end of Muslim rule in Spain in 1492. That's 512 years ago, but the al-Qa'ida guys are in no mood to (as the Democrats used to urge Republicans in the Clinton impeachment era) "move on". After half a millennium, even Paula Jones would have thrown in the towel. But not these fellows. They're still settling scores from the 15th century. They might not get around to Johnny-come-lately grievances such as Iraq until the early 2600s.
...
So the choice for pluralist democracies is simple: You can join Bush in taking the war to the terrorists, to their redoubts and sponsoring regimes. Despite the sneers that terrorism is a phenomenon and you can't wage war against a phenomenon, in fact you can � as the Royal Navy did very successfully against the malign phenomena of an earlier age, piracy and slavery.

Or you can stick your head in the sand and paint a burqa on your butt. But they'll blow it up anyway.

However, at least The Middle East is looking up.