Guiliani's daughter is apparently an Obama supporter. I'm not certain why this is news. If anything, I think that if a candidate's children don't support them, that speaks more loudly to the candidate's parenting skill than the alternative. A child raised to feel free to disagree is a child well raised. But of course, it could mean other things as well. So I'm hesitant to even draw that much of a conclusion. IMO, except for when children of candidates engage in the campaign, they're out of bounds for reporting.

Western prosperity blamed on downward mobility. This is a an intriguing hypothesis, that the prosperity of western industrialized nations came about because of a reproductively successful upper class who became downwardly mobile.

A pundit admits he was wrong on Iraq. I also think he gets to the core of failure of the present administration, ``Good judgment in politics, it turns out, depends on being a critical judge of yourself. It was not merely that the president did not take the care to understand Iraq. He also did not take the care to understand himself.''

I stopped by the library briefly today. My car had expired some time ago and I wanted to renew it. I also had a large fine. I wanted to find out how much the fine was and to start paying it done. To my surprise, the fine was twenty dollars. Usually my fines are up somewhere in the three digits. I put down what pocket money I had against that.

As I only had six dollars in spending money, I still am unable to check out books. At the county library, check out privileges are revoked once fines accumulate over ten dollars. So I need four dollars and one cent ...

Sunday afternoon, I stopped by the library at my alma mater. I didn't realize that during the summer it was closed on Sundays. So I walked away frustrated. I'd wanted to drop by yesterday, but it I was too busy. So I was planning on getting out there today.

But my wife dumped child care duties on me. My youngest daughter had a friend spend the night. My wife decided to go out this afternoon with a friend of hers. Try as I might, I find myself unable to convince two ten year olds that visiting  a university library will be good fun.

Yesterday was the feast of the Metamorphosis. For the first time in my life I served as an altar boy, providing aid to our parish priest at both the Vespers service Sunday evening and at the Liturgy come Monday morning. It's hard for me to do this in more ways than one. Yet it helps bring peace to my troubled soul.

Were I only able to fully grasp the meaning of this feast. Of all things that could possibly give me succor, the fullness of the glory of the God-made-man can do so in a way unlike all other possibilities.

So long as I can stand.

The other day I was working on a rather long diary entry. Someone closed the browser window and all was lost. I  know better than to leave text hanging there halfway between permanence and ephemerality. Yet I continue to do it. If its not my daughter or a random guest that decided to check email, it can be own absent mindedness and a thousand or so words disappear forever into the æther.

Friday night, I drove up to Dayton to sign a lease for a new tenant in The Headache House. On the one hand, the cash flow will be something of a relief. On the other hand, I've been down this road so many times before and I fear the results. I can only hope that this time, the tenant doesn't do more in damage to the property than he pays in rent.

The good news is that now that the property is occupied, we can again get proper insurance. Decent insurance on vacant structures is hard to come by. Once the insurance gets straightened out, I can go back to hoping that it burns down.

On Thursday, our family and Miss E went out to see the Nancy Drew movie at the second run cinema. My verdict is that it was decent and worth watching on the big screen. Most of the movie takes place in a period mansion that is positively lush. The backdrop is a feast for the eyes and worth seeing on a big screen. On the other hand, I paid twelve dollars because I took the whole family. I'm not certain it was worth that much to see on the big screen. On the other hand, the fun value of taking the whole family out to a proper movie theatre was certainly worth the expense.

My largest complaint was that the movie didn't suck. I was expecting it to be exceedingly lame and, thus, provide me with an over-abundance of material with which I could mock my daugters. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a great movie by any means, but it was fun.

The characters did lack depth, but what else do you expect from a Nancy Drew tale? It's all about the mystery at hand rather than the characters through whom the narrative is portrayed. Nancy was even more super-human than in the books, yet there were several scenes where her humanity shone through.

There was quite a bit that was utterly unbelievable, but what else do you expect from a Nancy Drew tale? The elements that violated my willing suspension of disbelief were exactly those elements that kept the film in the spirit of the books.

The ending was predictable, but ...

Okay, I'll stop.