I've been trading a few emails with Luke over the past day or two. He's on Spring Break now, and doing some fine extracurricular sociological studies on the war polls. We've been discussing protest tactics and the utility of Civilization II as a tool for educating world leaders. I pointed out that it teaches some important lessons about power and the peskyness of partisan and fanatic millitary units. Luke responds that going to war as a democracy without the UN wonder of the world is usually political suicide, and perhaps the game needs re-designing given recent events. I say wait and see.

I'm also making plans to sublet the spare room in his apartment for much of the summer. Hopefully Peter and I will be landing a fairly hectic bit of consulting work, which would keep me busy and give me the necessary bank to make that a reality. Not counting any chickens yet, though.

I've also been doing some phone-tag with "The Girth". He's in touch with our USAF-enlisted man JD, who's alive and well in some undisclosed middle-eastern location. Thinking about him, I'm glad he ran up all that credit card debt. See, when JD enlisted a couple years ago, it looked like he was going to be on the forward intelligence/special forces kind of track. But it turns out he has bad credit, which apparently makes you a security liability, which means he's flying in cargo aircraft, which means he's a lot less likely to end up full of holes, which is good news from where I'm standing.

Spent last night in stitches with Sasha. That woman cracks me up something fierce.

Finally, Mark made noises which would suggest he'd be returning from Equador in the next month as well. Perhaps a grand reunion at Ren Fayre is in the cards? I can only hope so.