DAILY CHECK-IN . . .

No interesting ruminations today. It's Federal Friday -- my brain is shutting down for the weekend. Some random points to string you along . . .

It's been 30 years since Birmingham. Yes, Birmingham, as in police dogs, fire hoses, children being carted off to jail, civil rights -- remember? Have we progressed as a society in the past 30 years? Are people politically, socially, economically equal? Do we all have the same opportunities, really? Do we all have a voice? If we are African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, Caucasian-American. Native American, male, female, child, adult, Christian, Jewish, atheist, gay, straight, a mix of everything and anything out there, and we can't answer a resounding "yes" to all of these questions, then Birmingham is ever-meaningful and serves as a reminder to KEEP TRYING.

According to today's NY Times (by E. Lichtblau & J. Risen), Shrub wants to give the CIA and the Pentagon "far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the U.S. as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations." His proposal would require "Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs." Sorry to keep not writing in my own words, but Lichtblau & Risen are far more capable of conveying the scariest point: "[W]hile the FBI was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the CIA and the military appeared to have much freer reign.... [O]fficials said the proposal could give the CIA and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight." Hmmm and yikes. When is the next presidential election again?

Things I love: driving through my neighborhood, seeing an unknown couple pushing their baby in a stroller and walking their golden retriever, waving to them and having them wave back . . . the weather being warm enough to shower with the bathroom window wide open and having clean grassy air swirl through the mist . . . going barefoot . . . Dannon's Light n' Fit Blackberry yogurt . . . drafting a decision single-spaced, then double-spacing it for the final printout and seeing the resulting crispy clean 26 pages of text (I'm a nerd) . . . particularly well-written, witty, sarcastic, quick-paced conversation-filled episodes of Buffy, The West Wing and CSI . . . watching Yankee baseball with my dad and hearing him call every opposing team "our arch-enemies" . . . being exhausted in the morning because I started a really good 400-page book at 11:15pm the night before and just had to finish it . . .

I'm going to the midnight showing of "X-Men 2" tonight. I love midnight movies -- even as an adult, there's something so surreptitious and bad about being out that late, doing nothing of significance. Downside: it's weird coming out of a movie and having it be 2am. I can't really go eat or drink anything at that hour, and I'm just tired enough to be unable to truly hang out with my friends for much longer. But I'm usually also jacked up from whatever excitement, drama, tragedy, or laughter I've just sat through. Sigh. I'll just have to read another book tonight.

Reading:
Daughters of Britannia: The Lives and Times of Diplomatic Wives by Katie Hickman
Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis

Listening to:
BOCA: Best of Collegiate A Cappella 2000
Under Construction, Missy Elliott