Been spending most of today trying to catch up on e-mail. After a couple of hours, I've caught up with most of my e-mail from this week.

I still have yet to reply to e-mail from folks who have been waiting for months to hear back.

Before Alexander was born (he's currently lying on a play mat in my office, playing quietly as he discovers that his hands can grab things around him), I had no excuse for being such a bad correspondent. Now, I can say, "Well, the kid has been taking a lot of energy, time, and effort out of my day."

He's a regular excusinator!

And, yes, there will be more pictures posted soon. So there.

I'm pleased to report, however, that I've finally resumed real writing this week. I polished up and sent out a story on Monday that has not been in circulation before, and I hope to get another one into circulation by the end of the week.

Still no takers on my novel, but I'm still sending it out.

I have set a personal goal of at least one professional sale by Labor Day of next year (2003). Not much of a goal, but one needs to start somewhere. I'm confident that one of my short stories currently in the works will snag a slot in a professional publication.

The weather is here. Wish you were beautiful.

Let's see, what else is there to report...

Oh, yeah, I have to make a political observation. Now, I don't have a live television feed (no cable, no satellite, and the rabbit ears hardly work out here in mountain country), so I've missed any television coverage, but I've been reading from time to time about the recent arrests in Washington DC of protesters. These are the folks protesting the IMF and the World Bank and all that.

The protesters were complaining that they are being arrested in violation of their constitutional rights. And yet, as I look at my copy of the constitution, the bill of rights provides that Congress shall make no law abridging "... the right of the people to peaceably assemble...." Where is there a problem here? The protesters were not peaceably assembling. Assembling with the purpose of disruption is not peaceable. It is disruptive.

And yet, there are even legal provisions for the kind of disruptive behavior the protestors were engaged in, in the form of permits for that kind of massive assembly. By filing such a permit, you enable the authorities to better accommodate and mitigate the disruptiveness of your assembly. The protesters were not interested in being accommodated. They wanted disruption, not peaceable assembly. Their Constitution rights were not violated. QED.

Just some food for thought.