And we're back

So after some computer issues have kept me away from blogging, I am now back. It was really very weird to be without my computer, for much of the time since I got the virus infection, it was either sitting in my car or was at the computer repair shop next door to the Granite. I guess I hadn't realized how much the droning of the machine had become a part of the white noise of my daily life, so it was very weird to be without it. I have also come to use IM as my main form of communication with friends, so it was odd to be slightly out of the loop again. Now everything is back to normal, which is quite nice.

I've noticed, the last few weeks, that I've been undergoing a kind of mid-year crisis. This coming week will the 26th issue of the Baysider, meaning that I will have been up here just shy of 6 months (I believe it'll be the first week of October). Things are less busy around town, now that the summer people are mostly gone, and I think I've been so looking forward to going back to Albion, to see the play and the London ladies (Ms. Green and Ms. Coleman)that part of me checked out. I think this will come back when winter comes, as things are starting to get interesting around the towns again. But I may also start to at least look at what other places are hiring, more to get an idea of what kinds of areas are looking or might be good fits than actually looking for a new job. But after all that, I still enjoy it up here, and I'm looking forward to the challenges of the next few months.

I think there are a lot of Republicans now who have to be questioning exactly what their party stands for. No Democratic president probably could ever have spent more money than this President has, and any semblance of fiscal conservatism has gone the way of Nelson Rockefeller. The Republican Party now seems to be the party of William Jennings Bryan - free-spending and personally intrusive in all forms in terms of individual rights. You saw the other day where Bush said the cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast would be "whatever it costs" and then said he wouldn't raise txes. With the additional damage Rita will bring, and the toll it will likely take on gas prices, its going to bring more damage to the economy. Its as if the very loose connection to reality has now been fully severed. We are now paying for a war in Iraq, a Marshall program for the Gulf Coast, and literally hundreds of pork barrell programs across the country, like $200 million bridges in Alaska to uninhabited islands. It will be interesting to see, as we move closer to 2008, and especially if the President's political fortunes continue to fall, whether we see candidates running away from him, or whether we see George Allen, Bill Frist or Sam Brownback try to go after the Bush mantle, whatever that will come to mean