Davison online

For spring break we tore into our house yet again, this time reversing a closet from my office to the family room and installing French doors in place of the heavy, fallen-off-the-frame, virtually unusable hospital door that took up space there previously. The results thus far are promising. The framing is in place on the closet reversal, and we've moved...

Our representative to the Oregon House of Representives is Kevin Cameron, a Republican originally appointed to replace a thoroughly disgraced and indicated GOP member whose name escapes me at the moment. I have little doubt that Cameron has done and will do better, since the bar is set so low that if it were any lower he'd trip on it. This is not to say...

I'm hardly the first to point out how great this is, but in case you've missed all the hubbub: A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids' Table.

While Jonah, Elisha and I were busy at the park playground, who should march up to us out of nowhere but Bret, Susan, Brama and Poppers? Turns out Bret—who's been borrowing our Honda Civic since his VW Golf died last week—had finally found the car he was looking for a in black 2000 Toyota 4Runner 4 Dr SR5 4WD. I gleefully turned the kids over to Brama,...

Baby #3 is kicking and squirming appropriately. We had our latest doctor visit on Tuesday, and it appears to be all systems go. Due date of June 17. We are all more or less recovered from that horrible cold in February/early March. My hearing is up to about 50 percent in my right ear and should be 100 percent in another month or two. Jonah's having...

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al-Qaida's number 3, confessed to all manner of heinous activities according to a transcript released by the US military on Wednesday. Is it a legitimate confession? No. Although most news media has left it out entirely, Mohammed also claimed to have been tortured at the hands of the CIA. The 26-page transcript itself came from...

Given that the "war on terror" has led us to a place where citizen and non-citizen alike and be arrest and held indefinitely without charges, it may be a futile exercise to review what rights you're supposed to have when confronted by a police officer. Still, I think it's useful information.

The great thing about being sick, perhaps the only good in it at all, is that the experience typically imbues me with a sense of gratitude. Undeniably, I should feel and express this sentiment more often, but illness throws what I have to be thankful for into stark relief. The kids are sick, Erin's sick, I'm sick—turns out I even popped an ear drum...

Darth Vader brings the funny.

"The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty." (See http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/05/dead.letters.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories)