Thursday I took Casey to the library and playground. We talked about the trip, about the Grand Canyon and about cacti and about cliff dwellings. I brought the kid a book of Navajo tales about Coyote, but first Casey must read them to me. There were complaints, but the kid did fine with the first story.

They are moving, all of them, to a house. I suppose it's non-PC to say it's in "darkest Oak Park." I've gotta start writing the court report.

I told Casey we'd be going to Walk on the Wildside today. Now, after last year, the kid was telling everyone about the "wild walk" and about all the things given out. So, I was a little surprised to hear "it's boring." OK, I said, I don't have to take you on Saturday, I'll just stay home, but I thought you'd liked it. *beat* *beat* "OK, I'll go." Heh.

Yesterday we went caching with Pagan. There was the puzzle cache which we tried to find the other day, and a multi in the same area. We found the first stage of the multi, then went back to the park and walked toward the mystery lovers cache we'd found Wednesday. There is, indeed, a much easier way than the bull-in-the-china-shop approach we'd used before. We found a little mustard jar with a "snake" that jumped out, about 50 feet away from the cache we found Wednesday. Pagan went to locate that cache. Then we started looking for stage 3. Well. It's across the River, so we went on to find the Puzzle lovers cache. It's a lot LOT easier if you stay with trails instead of bushwhacking.

Then we went back to the car and drove across the bridge. That's when the trouble started. We couldn't find River access. Apparently we were supposed to go to the left and under the bridge. After we'd looked for awhile, Rich lost his temper and threw the GPSr down. It would have been simpler to walk over, which was my original plan. We finally went to a park and went into the parkway from there. Rich found the actual cache, under a piece of wood in the ground.

Vince had called. It was a late Mother's day call. Since he was always first (especially at Gonzaga) he's allowed to be late.

We went over to Davis last night. We picked up one cache on a student's porch first, then went to see "Gypsy" which was, uh, SLOW. I really liked the gal who played Mama Rose, but she can't sing that well, and the pacing dragged. Rich took his radio in and at intermission found out for sure that the Kings had lost. At least I won the raffle got season tickets for the kids' plays next year. I hope I will have a different child from Casey, but we'll see. (I like Casey, love the child in fact, but there needs to be an adoption!)

Today I went to Grandma's house to pick Casey up. They weren't ready so I waited around with a cuppa tea till the kid had breakfast. Then we went off to Walk on the Wildside. We were there a little over 3 hours, went to all the booths, got all the goodies, saw the wild things (over the "I'm BORED!" objections of the kid... who did like the animals but didn't want to listen to the short talks about them), saw the puppet show, ate, and I bought some California poppies since I've never had any luck growing them from seeds.

I saw the people from the Folsom Zoo with their coolers that bears had taken apart. It turns out that the bears at that zoo are employed by the feds and the camping equipment people as testers for bear-proof containers. What fun for the bears! "Well," said the lady, "you can't test them with wild bears." "Well, you COULD," I said, "but it's kinda hard on the campers!"

I took Casey home and drove home via the new house. I also checked on an old lady friend from years gone, and their house seems to be empty. I guess either someone died or they've moved to a smaller place. I had called her at Christmas and she and her husband were both quite ill, and she'd gotten rid of her mouse collection. Sad.

At home, our older son called. I hadn't wished him a happy birthday yesterday. He was calling to thank Rich for being a good dad (in particular, helping with Scouts. Now he knows what that's like.)

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Krauthammer on the real goals.

More Pictures from Iraq/ (and he asks if these were the people in Abu Ghraib?) What would Kennedy say to this?

Ku Klux Kaeda.

A call for Carl Levin to resign. Also, this:

The announcements today by Bremmer and Powell that we would leave Iraq if asked to do so by a non-democratically-elected cabal of UN-iks chosen by a doctrinaire anti-Semite are among the most profoundly stupid statements of government policy I can remember in my lifetime. If the criminal law applied here, as Claudia Rosett's vital reporting demonstrates, the UN would be indictable as a racketeering enterprise. That we would turn over to it an enterprise for which over 750 American servicemen have given their lives is shocking enough; that we are now saying we would leave at their request before the job is done is a betrayal I cannot even wrap my brain around.

Andrew Stuttaford:

The recent violence among Thailand�s Muslims was, given the traditionally tolerant nature of South-east Asian Islam, something of a surprise. Now the Thais are pointing fingers, and, yes, it turns out that the Saudis have been vomiting their bile across yet another previously pleasant part of the planet.