Discount fares to Seattle

This just in from smofbabe:

Greetings! Thought you might want to publicize to
potential Corflu attendees that Southwest Airlines
has just announced a 3-day sale for 50% off fares
to Seattle.

http://www.southwest.com/landing/seattle50off.html

Cheers,
Smofbabe

There's something going on

I guess I don't have anything analytical to say about the transition from Bush to Obama that occurred yesterday. I didn't watch the inauguration, but I read the text of the speech as soon as it was available. Later, I saw most of it on TV, but mostly in snippets here and there, out of order. Whenever I listened to live coverage of the event, on the radio before I left for work, on TV after I got home, I was nearly overpowered by emotion. It was particularly hard to listen to the interviews with people who had come to the mall to be part of history. This morning on NPR there was an interview with a woman who drove from southern Georgia via Tennessee, where she picked up her nephew. Her joy, her awe, made me burst into tears again, just as I had when I listened to Obama address the Youth Inaugural Ball the night before, listening to those young voices screaming with excitement and passion and intensity. Like a Beatles concert, I suppose, except he was asking them to serve their country.

When I was twelve or thirteen, I was body-surfing in Hawai'i when a big wave picked me up, spun me head over heels, and slammed me into the ground, knocking the breath out of me. I thought I was going to drown. I will always remember the feeling of the power of that wave over me. That's what yesterday felt like. Thus it's probably wise to remember that the wave also tore away my inflatable body-board and carried it out to sea, where an islander retrieved it and kept it for himself. Those Hawai'ian kids didn't think much of haole tourists, man.