Dad’s in the hospital and has been since a week ago today (give or take some hours) when he experienced a bunch of symptoms, not the least of which being dizziness which caused a nasty, eye-injuring fall. ER ambulance trip and here we are a week later. Way too much to blog about, and no real inspiration to take stock until we have Dad back home in his own bed able to move about on his own and such.
This is by no means a perfect expression of my feelings or views on the topic. It is a stream of consciousness response to a hate-filled thread of 120+ comments (view here) regarding the Texas Governor’s recent veto of Senate Bill 488, otherwise known as the “Safe Passing Bill.” Without even diverging into whether or not that was the “right” decision, the level of vitriol and misinformation evident in the responses set me off. HOW can people be SO hateful and vengeful to utter strangers? I celebrate much of what the Internet and other online communication channels have brought us, but I will forever cringe at some of the horrific worldviews and mindsets I’ve been exposed to online. I truly hope they represent nothing more than a very vocal, if not always coherent, minority. Why, all these years later, do I still feel the need to step into the fray when I know those to whom my comments are directed will simply ignore them, or worse, twist them into an unrecognizable shape…?
I’ll have to add more to this post when my head’s not throbbing and threatening to explode (somehow it’s easier to tweet than blog… 140 characters is liberating, I guess… moreso than a blank text box in WordPress.) In the meantime, I’ve harvested from my Twitter stream the relevant links I wanted to share.
Anyhow, if you missed this afternoon’s launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis for its 11 day mission to significantly upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, check out NASA’s HD replay of the launch on YouTube.
To learn more about the mission, here are a few good articles to read:
Happy Mother’s Day to my awesome Mom, terrific mother-in-law and sisters-in-law and all the other moms out there.
Psssst… Google has flowers for all the Moms out there. And they’ll never wilt or dry up!
Google's Mother's Day '09 logo
Here’s something fun — Why, Justin, you shouldn’t have!
(You can send your own customized video here.)
Check out the firey slideshow of what happened within a half mile of our house — construction crews on a road widening project cut through a 24″ or 30″ natural gas line which then promptly caught fire. Our first sign of something amiss was our power going out around 11:15 AM.
Justin, Sara (AKA Kidlet) and I camped overnight at Guadalupe River State Park on Wednesday. Had an awesome time and hope to have an opportunity to post a new trip report on WildTexas.com, but wanted to share some of the pics in the meantime. We’d reserved a site for two nights but Sara developed a bit of a fever and was getting eaten alive by bugs (despite citronella, etc.) so we decided to end on a positive note and break camp a day early.
Here are some of the pics from our camping trip -> Tent Camping Trip #2 - a set on Flickr
