A sharp tongue does not always mean a keen mind.

This is the tattoo of a British weight lifter who won a bronze medal at the Olympics. It says, "What I Deserve I Earn."

Tomorrow morning at 6:30 I'll board a flight for Seattle. This is a second try at my trip that got scuttled last December when I was carted off the plane after an emergency stop in Vegas, and taken to the hospital. In Seattle I'll pick up a rental car and drive for about an hour out onto the Olympic Peninsula.
I'll join my brothers, I think their wives, and my parents at my younger brother's cabin on Puget Sound, just west of Shelton, WA. The high tide mark is about 30 yards from the front door and the view is amazing. I'm taking my digital camera along and hope to post pics. No internet at the cabin - also no cell phone coverage out there - but there's a bakery a couple of miles away with wi-fi that I plan to hit pretty much every day.
Which is to say my posts might be irregular next week, depending on my schedule and ability to get to that bakery. So if you don't see a fresh post on one day, check the next. And look for pics.

Pam can't go because she is going back to MI to visit her mom the end of Sept., and that uses up her accrued vacation time. Originally this trip was just going to be me and my bro. at his cabin so I could do some work and we could play some golf. It grew into a bit of a reunion, and Pam is pretty bummed that she might be the only one not there. Me too.
I'll get home Saturday morning so I can be at Pathway next Sunday.

Every Friday NPR has a 2-hour program titled "Science Friday." I don't usually listen because more often than not it's a) over my head or b) pretty geeky or c) both. But I was in the van and got caught up in this week's program. One of the stories was about some extremely high speed video of a fly taking flight.
How the Fly Evades the Swatter
You'll see some other interesting videos on the page.

And in the "Doesn't He Have Something Better to Do?" category, here's a guy who has put together a complete history of football helmets for every NFL team and virtually every college team in the country. We're talking pictures that show every version of that team's history going back to the Civil War.
The Helmet Project
I don't know. It just seemed like something that belonged in a blog.

I won't be able to ride or swim while I'm at the cabin so I'll concentrate on the running. That means no risk of drowning. My kids think I should swim in the Sound. They've obviously never set foot in that water or they'd know it's WAY too cold for that!

I read today that people with serious mental illnesses - schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression - make up 10% of America's prison population. They constitute 1/3 of the homeless. There are 4 million of these seriously mentally ill in America. Roughly 1/2 of them don't think they are mentally ill and so refuse to take their meds. The only way to see that they get them is by forcing them to, which typically involves institutionalization. But the civil libertarians oppose that because of coercion and many conservatives oppose it because of the money it requires.
Something is broken here.

I just realized that Pam will have the remote all to herself for the entire week. Can you spell "Lifetime?"

In the weight room at the rec center there are three TV's hanging from the walls with serious signs telling us NOT to adjust them. Only the monitors are allowed to touch the TV's! I'm not sure what would happen if I reached up and changed the channel, but I'm not about to put myself at risk of the monitor's wrath!
In this time zone this time of year all the networks are done with sports by late afternoon on a Sunday, so I worked out to infomercials. Two of the three TV's had the same channel, an infomercial for a dietary supplement.
I would never have imagined that anyone could do 30 minutes of shtick on your colon.
The sound is always muted, which means I got the text across the bottom.
Did you know that you can have up to....
Never mind. You don't want to know anymore than I did. The whole thing was actually pretty gross.
Doesn't the FCC have some rules about this kind of stuff?

OK, I gotta be up about 4:00 a.m., so I need to get to bed. Don't know when I'll be back.