War, Weather, and Writing: Everyone's talking about war. And because none of them are saying, "Sgt Brad Hazell is being shipped home today," I find it very annoying, trite, full of rhetoric, and just, in general, pointless. And a little surreal. I don't think the full realization has hit me yet. That the images I see on TV are what my brother experiences first hand. But at the same time, I did feel a little better after watching all the footage of troops in Kuwait and Iraq. They all looked like they were having as good a time as possible. I saw one soldier run up to an abandoned observation point and take the Iraqi flag that was hanging there. Of course, the newscaster went off on the symbolism of us returning the flag to the Iraqi people and blah, blah, blah. Nah. That kid is looking to get it signed by Saddam and framed over his bunk back home. And that normal behavior for troops just made me feel better. That my brother was likely doing the same kind of thing over there. I can't wait to hear some of the Saddam joks they've undoubtedly come up with. And this is how I'm going to deal with the war as long as we hear no news of resistance from Iraqi troops and friendly casualties on the battlefields. If that news does start coming back, I have no idea what I'm going to do.

The other topic that's all over the news (and seems to get equal airtime here) is the "Blizzard 2003." Denver has been very slow to recover. And that's hard for me to imagine because Boulder recovered very quickly. The roads were very passable during the worst of the storm, haven't really been icy, or anything. Another bit of surrealism. I'm actually getting rather sick of hearing about all the snow that everyone else got. Let's just move on, people. And make sure we're prepared for another storm that seems to be heading our way for next week.

As for writing, I did manage to finish Chapter 8 yesterday. And I think I've figured out a little of what I want to do to improve my good guy action. First off, I actually need to give them some action. And I've got a few ideas for that. It requires shipping them off to Bethesda ASAP, though. And just when I was really enjoying the cavern system. I've been doing some more wandering through Forward Motion, and stumbled on Sheila's "Writing in Multiple Genres" class. Complete with a sample weekly schedule. And it made me realize that I truly need to write down a schedule for myself if I hope to finish this book by summer. Be a little more structured with my time. That ought to help me out a lot. That's the hope, anyway.