Potomac Fever

Senior 1: "What are you going to do today?" Senior 2: "Nothing." S1: "But that's what you were going to do yesterday." S2: "Yeah, but it didn't get done." ~~~~ Did you ever stop to think, then forget to start again?

Accompanied by the sounds of tropical birds, I trekked from the crumbling outer gate through the jungle to the main gate of Ta Prohm temple, part of a cluster of temples, including Angkor Wat, near Siem Reap, Cambodia. Now famous thanks to the Laura Croft, Tomb Raider movies, Ta Phrom has a distinguishing feature, huge tree routs draped over the walls like serpentine aliens, and growing out of the stone roofs. Some of the trees are 500 years old. At the main gate, I had no idea how much more there was to see behind it. Halls, do ors, windows, all in big blocks of stone. More blocks piled randomly around the grounds. The cyprus-like trees everywhere. With all the roots and the big blocks of stone everywhere, easy to miss intereting details. For example, one tile on a wall clearly showed an engraving of a stegasaurus, the dinosaur with the big spinal plates along it's back. One can only wonder.

They say the rainy season has come early to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. A couple nights ago I experienced that first hand while catching a ride through town. At first we ran into a massive traffic jam and couldn't figure out why. Eventually we creeped along until we could see the problem... flooded streets in every direction. The depth looked like almost knee level in some places. I could feel and hear the water slapping against the car body directly under my seat in the back of the small, low-riding subcompact car. It sounded like water lapping at the hull of a boat. Phnom Penh's traffic is chock-a-block full of motorbikes that weave all over the lanes and swarm up and down the boulevards. In the evenings it looks more like people riding just to be riding around, not really going anywhere in particular. Its common to see three or four people on one bike, including children. Safety is not the utmost concern, so not many helmets are worn. But no one is really ...

Where are they now? What are they thinking about our government now? They came from everywhere in the country, just to stand out on the vast field that is the national Mall, in the cold, to see and hear this man become President of the United States of America. To see W leave. 1.8 million. I was among them. When the former vice president appeared they hummed Darth Vader's theme. When W appeared a group waved their shoes. When Obama appeared they chanted O-BA-MA over and over. When W flew off in the helicopter after it was over, they sang na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye. It was one month ago and much has happened. In spite of the economic crisis, and in spite of the protests of political dinosaurs, those visitors-for-a-day are probably confident that we have our government back again, and change can't happen overnight, but it's gonna happen. The political dinosaurs don't get it yet, and they probably won't until they suffer more electoral losses. They s...

"How is the jelly fish hazzard today?" "It's bad, we just had an emergency down the beach." With that warning from the life guard, I treaded carefully onto the beach. It didn't take long before I found the perpetrators. Their remains looked like beautiful translucent turqoise bubbles with blue strings trailing along the sand. After seeing several in just a few short steps, I decided to exit the beach for the day. Each City of Ft. Lauderdale ocean rescue station flies flags that tell the conditions for the day. On this day, they were red and purple, red for hazardous water conditions, and purple for hazardous marine life. The hazardous marine life today? Portugese Man of War jelly fish, seen in this YouTube video.