This last weekend I had complete freedom to do whatever I wanted. Well, sort of. Heather wasn’t around to help me remember to do anything specific, being on a road-trip north with the boys, so I was left floating in the cool bathwater of my own inertia. My car broke down a couple of hours before Heather left, so whatever industry I was going to embark on was necessarily local.

Things started well. Carpooled to work on Friday, got taken out to dinner by some friends that evening in consolation for not getting into that grad program. Ate ice cream and watched Samurai Jack with same company, turned in.

Saturday morning got my car towed to a garage, and walked home from there, stopping to read the newspaper on the front porch of a friend who was either still asleep at 9:30am, or was away. Got a shower curtain for our new renter…blah, blah. Took a nap, played computer games, read some poetry, watched more Samurai Jack with a friend, ate more ice cream. Then I went to a show uptown to see a couple bands that I know people in. I think I decided that I’m not really that into live music unless it’s really clean-sounding and quirky. The whole wall-of-sound loud angsty singing thing just isn’t my scene. I’m more folk-oriented now. So after the first of the two bands I went to hear finished, I went to a nearby pub with a friend I saw at the show that I hadn’t talked to much in a year or so (or really much ever, for that matter). Stayed up late, went home and played computer games some more.

Sunday I forgot I didn’t have a car and arrived at church late, after walking. Great sermon on Acts 5:1-7, the changes that shifting demographics force, and the spiritual benefits of accepting those changes. I got a ride home. A chicken sandwich and a nap. I usually only get a nap at home every other month. Read some more poetry. Then I worked on some of my brewing stuff, got something prepped to bottle for today or tomorrow. Computer games, then I read Jayber Crow for a few hours till I fell asleep. Such a great, thoughtful book, and the writing is so beautiful that I decide, for a few hours anyway, that it’s a waste of my time to try and write poetry if someone can fill 400 pages with better language than I can muster in one, and with ideas that really matter. Only 40 pages left.

Oh yes, and I also spent some time reading a debate on Kuro5hin about whether or not the newest Iraqi tactics (surrender ruses, ambushes by “civilians”) are appropriate for war. My feeling is that they are, given the Baathist goals and the general “hold power at any cost” mentality of its leaders. If Coalition troops can be goaded into shooting suspicious civilians or killing surrendering troops, then we have become an arm of Saddam’s own terror, and the civilians won’t be assisting Coalition forces and Iraqi units won’t be surrendering. Because Saddam’s forces are not claiming protection under the Geneva Convention (even though we continue to extend it to them) they feel justified in violating it, since they have little to lose in doing so. It’s horrible, but logical. Something like the tactics that the colonists used in the Revolutionary War.

One chilling thing I found on Kuro5hin was a link to a web log supposedly written by a mercenary soldier (American? South African?) fighting for the Iraqi’s. He describes how he infiltrated Coalition lines and carried out assassinations and intelligence gathering. He and the men he’s working with have some very high-tech equipment. There’s a chance that it’s an exercise in fiction, but it’s hard to tell. I hope it is.