Yeah, it's a cheap shot. So sue me.

Like the first day of spring in Cleveland

Damn it feels good to feel good. Even my therapist looked at me on Wednesday and said, you just seem so calm today! And Thursday was a spectacular night - just a whole slew of us hanging out at a bar, drinking beer. It was like first year again. I think it had slipped past me that for nearly a year we have all been too busy for casual get togethers like that. Most often when we got the group together it was for a big, official party. Which, of course, is fun. But the random weeknight drinking is good too. We ended up a group of a dozen or more and bar hopped and put away pitcher after pitcher and walked back through Candler Park on the way home and drunkenly tossed ourselves around the playground. It's a miracle I didn't wake up even more sore than I did. Then last night Alex invited me over for dinner with some friends who were in town for the night and we ended up playing capture the flag around midnight in Inman Park. Again, running around barefoot in a public park, I'm incredibly lucky that the worst I did was superficially slice open my toe running over a rock. Between the running around like a twelve-year-old and biking to school (for the first time!) yesterday I'm a little slow climbing up and down the stairs in our new place today. Hopefully I can stretch and rest up a bit before the Out of the Darkness walk tomorrow.

I'm beginning to think it's my destiny to live in/move to states that do incredibly backwards, embarrassing things.

In 1966, the Supreme Court held that the poll tax was unconstitutional. Nearly 40 years later, Georgia is still charging people to vote, this time with a new voter ID law that requires many people without driver's licenses - a group that is disproportionately poor, black and elderly - to pay $20 or more for a state ID card. Georgia went ahead with this even though there is not a single place in the entire city of Atlanta where the cards are sold. The law is a national disgrace.

A few posts ago I was singing Anderson Cooper's praises, this week it's the NYTimes.

The 38-year-old anchor has dressed down officials in interviews with polite righteous indignation in behalf of hurricane victims. At least twice he choked up on air, once abruptly stopping his commentary about lost homes and waving away the camera as he looked about to burst into tears. CNN's camera occasionally has caught him playing with stray dogs. He says he has no intention of returning to his hip New York existence any time soon.

Books gained on trip home:

Mathematics for Everyone, Howard F. Fehr and Max A. Sobel - discovered when Grandma cleaned out her house and shipped back from TX for me

1984, George Orwell - been meaning to re-read this one, so picked up my old copy from high school while I was home

Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It, Peter G. Peterson - on loan from Dad; basically about how government funding is drying up and probably won't ever (or at least, in our lifetimes) return to levels we're used to

Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro, Michele Kort - on loan from Dad