Today was the River City Geocachers and Dining Society's picnic up at Coloma. Because we got 1000 caches, we volunteered to provide drinks. We thought 100+ was about the right amount, and we split it with diet Pepsi, Pepsi, various Shastas, Sprite, and Henrys, Miller Genuine Draft (mistake) and Coors Light. With the tub we bought to bathe Sailor in (though we haven't done that for a year or so), we didn't have room ourselves to take this up. Yesterday one of the other geocachers stopped by and picked up the drinks and the tub. They managed to get it all into their trunk!

We packed a cooler full of ice (which Rich has been making for a month) and took our steak and a bag of plums, and Sailor! Hey, we're Sailorscodgers, it's time we proved there really is a dog! He was thrilled, of course. Everyone liked him and came to pet him and meet him and admire the number of times he could mark the tree he was tied to (and some unsuspecting cacher's backpack!)

We saw a friend of Gharlane there and I had a P.S. to my letter to him... the kid is spending this week at a special violin camp in Sandy, Utah. I'm sure that's affordable because of the estate money and G. should be proud to have amassed enough for that, and I am glad all the hard work we put in on the estate was worth it.

Once the drinks and tub arrived, we set it up with a big sign, "Have a Drink on Sailorscodgers" and put up a recycling bag, and then just left it alone, took all the congratulations (nobody noticed when we went over 1200) and enjoyed. I called G&V steamrollers and said we just had to get out of the way (1700 late August), and they claim to be slowing down. Yeah, right. They got all the caches in the area while we just clocked the event cache and a temporary micro in the picnic grounds.

I said to one cacher "It's not a competition" and she riposted with a loud "B***S***!" and then covered her mouth with fake shock while I rolled around laughing. We talked about caches and about caching... there were games and lots and lots and lots of food. Who knew there were wasabi-flavored potato chips? Yum. I sat and gained weight, and had a lovely time.

We were there from about 10:30 to about 5:30, and packed up and left just in time to miss the water balloon fight. What a great day! Sailor slept most of the way home.

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Never again!

It's a war (Steven denBeste to Europe):

Step 3 is recognizing that you're going to need soldiers, and your soldiers are actually going to have to fight, and they'll have to do that fighting outside of Europe. Your soldiers will not win by engaging in peacekeeping. They can only win by engaging in warmaking.

You must send your soldiers to get them before they get you. Your soldiers must make war on your enemies, and must defeat those enemies, and must kill many of your enemies.

Once the them which are the real threat are all dead, then you won't have to worry about new terrorist cells popping up any longer.

The only other way to make your enemy stop trying to kill you is to surrender. So which will it be?

And keep this in mind: "Refusing to make a decision is a decision." Refusing to go to war is surrender.

It took Tony Blair about 10 seconds to recognize all this after he heard the first news reports on September 11, 2001. Why are the rest of you having so much trouble with these concepts?

Steyn on Reagan Tim Blair comments... "but I'm sure that they haven't learned the lesson well enough and will continue to trash Bush." And here, too:

The arrogance of every age is the assumption of permanence. It's unusual to find a leader who thinks beyond that: ''smart'' in media politics means someone who can recite by heart every sub-clause of his plan on prescription-drug re-importation from Canada, not someone who looks a decade or two down the road and figures out the lie of the land. I want a leader who's giving some thought to big questions like, say, the increasing Islamification of Europe, and I don't care if he's from Eureka College or dropped out of Dixon High.

Coin of the Realm (media distrust)