Memorial Day

This year Memorial Day seems a bit more poignant for me than usual. I think it's due to a combination of the touching stories I'd been reading, hearing, or seeing about the bravery and sacrifices our soldiers have been making the past couple of days with as I become gradually more convinced that the rational for the war was exaggerated and our prospects for clear positive results become more tenuous.

It wasn't long ago that I thought there was a good chance we could build a free and peaceful Iraq. While I still think that's an attainable goal it's becoming clear it will take much longer and cost much more than many could have imagined at the outset.

Shortly after the end of the war a friend of mine voiced his opinion that the insurgents could only hang on so long. There were only so many explosives they could get a hold of and only a limited number of people inclined towards violence. I said I hoped he was right, but somehow the Palestinians seemed to be able to find plenty of both after years and years in a much smaller geographic area under much tighter military security, there was no guarantee it would end soon.

Unfortunately I was right.

Let's all take time today to honor the memory of our troops today. I hope we can get a handle on this thing and bring them home soon.

Quick update

It's been about a month since the last post, where does the time go?

We had a quiet family Birthday party for Joshua the 30th of April with Heather's mom and my parents. He's gotten very efficient at opening presents. It used to be he'd spent a lot of time looking at what he got and playing with the box, but no more. After about five seconds he was on to tearing the wrapping off the next present. The weather was nice and we had a great visit with my folks.

For mother's day my brother sent Heather a beautiful bouquet of flowers, which Heather really enjoyed.

Two weekends ago I went to Clyde, NC to help with hurricane disaster relief. Although it seemed to rain on us at least three to four times each day we were able to help out a family strip the old siding and trim and put up new throughout the inside of their house.


The end of school is quickly approaching which also means our sort of semi-annual trek to Orlando approaches as well. We're really excited that Pam is going to be able to join us down there for a few days! Unfortunately our trip coincides with both my brother's and mother's birthdays. :( I'm not sure yet how we'll handle that, but I'm sure we'll come up with something fun to do with them.

And of course, lest I forget, I was able to catch the final Star Wars movie this weekend! I went in with pretty high hopes due to all the glowing reviews I'd heard so unfortunately it wasn't as good as I was hoping. At the same time, given how the series had been going the movie did pull the franchise out of it's recent nose dive. Thoroughly enjoyable, but certainly not grand cinematic achievement either.