life on the wand

McVicar by Himself.
Just finished reading this book today after confining most of my reading of it to airplanes. I bought it on my last trip to the US and read about half of it during that trip. I had a short trip to Munich Thursday through Saturday and only had a few pages left to finish the book by the time I got home, so I decided to do so today. Carrying it on a plane for 5 pages just isn't worth it. Interesting story that tries to get inside the mind of a criminal, and in many ways does quite a good job. I don't know how much deeper an understanding one could get without actually being part of the criminal/penal system. The thought processes and values are so foreign to me, and so blatantly wrong in my eyes, that I have a hard time imagining how people let their minds get so confused as to live this way.
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The address for the RatCam is http://ratcam.kramars.org (clicking the link should work as well). If you have most of the ports in your firewall shut down you may not be able to receive the feed (you will likely receive a timeout error). If the site isn't broadcasting it is because I am trying to get John to migrate the webcam server off of my small laptop and onto an old linux box.
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Yesterday we played soccer again. It was the best day for no injuries so far. This is a good thing. We also had a person come into the house yesterday to paint the ceiling in the bathroom and some of the doors. Just routine maintenance tasks. Today was Remembrance Sunday. There are special services and ceremonies to remember those who have died in various wars, though it started with Armistice Day at the end of World War I. The Catholic and Baptist churches join ours for a special service, and then we all go out and stand around the war memorial in the village green while various people and organizations place wreaths around the memorial. At 1100 they have a moment of silence, which even includes no flights leaving or landing at Heathrow. Too bad the cars don't stop, too. They used to on the military bases whenever colors was played.

Today, after church and lunch, we went to Pet World and bought a cage and two rats. Cara and Philip finally prevailed. John was not interested, though he is starting to set up a "ratcam" so the rest of the world can enjoy our rats. I thought that they should name the rats Bubonic and Plague, but the kids weren't as appreciative of the names as I was. I've got some really lousy pictures of the rats here, but we didn't want to startle them too much until they have had a chance to get used to the move from store, new surroundings, etc. How do I feel about having pets? I am not sure. Not very excited, as I expect we will have to figure out how to transport these critters back to the US.
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Today was another mandatory fun day. Last week when we went to play basketball it was already too late -- there were a bunch of young lads playing soccer on the court. So, we played ultimate instead. Today we went down to the park at 1000, and as expected, we were the only people there except for the all the dog walkers. Seeing all those people walking their dogs makes you scared to walk in the grass -- I sure hope the majority use pooper-scoopers. Today there were huge piles of horse dookey, too, since the local travellers have had their horses grazing in the field this week. Well, we were fortunate to be able to play basketball on the little asphalt court today (the same one you can see in this post), except that Cara tripped over John's feet early in the warm-up and pretty much that was the end of fun for her today.
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Time for monthly hair update. So, click on the image to see the project page. My mom says I am going to be very sad this summer in July with long hair. I have my doubts whether I will make it that long (length or time), but we will see.
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