New Tampa blogger: my better half

There's
a new blogger in town! Last night we set up a site for my wife,
Shirley. At times during our 25+ years together, I've called her
"Squirrelly", and she is quite musical (plays classical piano, sings,
writes and arranges music), so I think she came up with the perfect
blog name and logo idea. Swing on by the new Squirrelly Notes site and drop her a line.

I think it's cool that Shirley's got her own site going now,
although I do feel a little trepidation at the thought of what she
might post - she makes Teresa Heinz-Kerry seem reserved :)

Doesn't feel like December!

This
just seems weird! I have to keep looking at the calendar to remember
what month it is. Yes, we have some Christmas lights up at the
apartment, and the decorations and lovely (?) music in stores
verifies that we are, in fact, in the middle of the winter holidays.
Hanukkah has begun, Christmas is in a couple of weeks, I'm wearing
shorts and a t-shirt with the windows wide open at 9pm ....yup,
everything seems normal...NOT! Our first "winter" in Florida is rather
surreal. It was over 80F today, we still run the air conditioning at
times, and it is hard to feel like the winter solstice is the week
after next.

This is very strange. Not that I'm complaining, mind you!

Progress on house construction

If
you click the thumbnail image to the left, you'll get an aerial view of
the development in which our home is being built. This image was pulled
using NASA's World Wind
tool. Our house is being built a little above where the "USGS" symbol
appears. The aerial shot is a couple of years old, and so does not show
all of the homes that are built and have been lived in for a year or
more. As for our house, we signed the papers back in February, and
things are finally moving along. This week should see work on drywall,
stucco, driveway, and other elements that will make it really look like
a house! So I'll post a pic of the house late in the week when it looks
a little more complete than pics I'd posted some time back. Cheers.

Lessons from Iran's recent history

Between
1982 and 1990 an unknown number of Iranian women political prisoners
were raped on the eve of their executions by guards who alleged that
killing a virgin was a sin in Islam. ...This book is dedicated to the
memory of those women.

That is the dedication from Journey from the Land of No by Roya Hanakian.
Ms Hanakian tells of her experiences growing up in Tehran, Iran. She
was 12 in 1979 when the revolution occurred. She describes growing up as
a Jew in Iran and how the hopes of the revolution morphed into a
horribly repressive regime of Islamic fundamentalists. She left Iran in
1984.

Some years ago I coached soccer with a gent from Iran. He is Baha'i and told me stories of the authorities coming into his family's home, gathering all the books, and burning them in the street.

The little bit I've read in the book so far, and the stories from my
friend, have me thinking about the lessons we need to realize
immediately, before the United States descends further down the path of
a religion-state. We cannot allow Karl Rove and the rest of the
neo-conservatives to legislate religion. Freedom is too precious and
has been defended too vigorously to allow these narrow-minded bigots to
decimate our Constitution.

Hurricane Toasting

Today is officially the last day of the hurricane season for 2004. So we're lifting our glasses (Hurricanes, of course) to Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne ...good riddance! Sheesh, our first year in Florida and it turns out to set records for the quantity and severity of hurricanes. Oh well, the weather is awesome now!