Thursday, October 28, 2004

Wonders Of Our World (or There's A Blood Moon In The Sky And Hobbits Are Real!)

Sharing the stage last night with (what would turn out to be) the final game of the World Series (congrats to the Red Sox) was a total eclipse of the moon that was magnificently visible from my home in Miami Beach. The night seemed tailor-made for the event; though there were some clouds, they did not spoil the spectacle, and the high pressure we have over Florida made the sky crisp and clear for stargazing.




I have seen a few lunar eclipses (partial and full) over the years, but they never stop amazing me; there is a sense of sheer wonder and mystery at seeing the moon slowly dissapear behind a curtain of blackness, only to reappear as a blood-colored orb hanging majestically and ominously in the firmament. Today we have scientists that can explain to us in painstaking detail how the process occurs, what causes the red coloration, when it will pass down to the minute, but my thoughts always go to the peoples of the past, wondering how they saw and understood this same celestial event, what did they associate with an eclipse, how did it affect their life. Sadly, in our day and age, a full lunar eclipse is something that passes as a footnote in the evening news, that gets a few cutaway shots during the baseball game and becomes forgotten in the midst of the electoral process. But there was a time when such an event would have changed destinies, carried meaning, be the talk of the town for months or years to come.

The moon still holds a very special place to Jews. We measure our calendar by the moon, not the sun, and every new month we recite a special blessing on the moon. Our sages say that the Jewish people are compared to the moon: our fortunes wax and wane, but they are constant, always in a state of renewal. A full lunar eclipse could be understood as a representation of the times when we have been almost obscured from the world (such as the Inquisition or Holocaust, though I think the current period of exile would be a more appropiate symbol); the blood-red of the moon would need no further explanation, I would think. But just as the moon eventually went through a period of darkness giving way to the brilliance of a full moon, so will our destiny follow, when the exile ends in the Messianic times.

And in other "Wonders of our World" news, today the New York Times ran a story on an apparently new species of human found in an island east of Bali, off the coast of Australia. It seems Tolkien was not that far off and that Hobbits were real! Check out the first two paragraphs from the article:


Once upon a time, but not so long ago, on a tropical island midway between Asia and Australia, there lived a race of little people, whose adults stood just three and a half feet high. Despite their stature, they were mighty hunters. They made stone tools with which they speared giant rats, clubbed sleeping dragons and hunted the packs of pygmy elephants that roamed their lost world.

Strangest of all, this is no fable. Skeletons of these miniature people have been excavated from a limestone cave on Flores, an island 370 miles east of Bali, by a team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists. Reporting their find in today's issue of Nature, they assign the people to a new human species, Homo floresiensis.


You can check out the full article at NYTimes.com (registration required and free) entitled "New Species Revealed: Tiny Cousins of Humans" and a related article on the same topic from Reuters.com entitled "Scientists Hope to Find More Tiny Indonesia Hominids."

For the respectable scientific source, you can check out the article ""Hobbit" Discovered: Tiny Human Ancestor Found in Asia" at NationalGeographic.com (this one's also sure to remain archived, unlike the other two, which could be removed after a while).

There is so much about our world we still do not know. Things like lunar eclipses and discoveries of hitherto unknown human variants happen and it's like God is playing with us saying, "Keep digging, there's a lot more for you to find out."

And some people still insist on denying the existence of God...

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Travel And Our Place In The World

I'll gladly take any excuse to talk about traveling; I love being on the road, seeing the world, expanding my horizons (not mention being out of Miami for a little while). Once a month I received Rick Steves' Travel News via email, in which Rick writes a little essay to introduce the month's news, normally a mix of updated entries from his travel guides, short articles on various aspects of travel in Europe, plus a photo essay on a different theme each month. (As a side note, anyone who loves travel and Europe should subscribe to the email newsletter and to the print newsletter, as it gives you a handy travel fix between trips.)

Today I got a special edition Elections 2004 Travel Newsletter email, with a mixture of new and old articles from the past year all focusing on how the U.S. and Americans are seen abroad (mainly in Europe) and what kind of thoughts that should elicit in us as we head to the polls next Tuesday. While I don't necessarily agree 100% with every single word Rick writes on his site, I do wholeheartedly agree with the overall message. To sum it up in a sentence from Rick's article on USAToday.com, "If more Americans traveled before they voted, they would elect a government with policies that didn't put it at odds with the rest of the world." Abso-freakin-lutely.

Americans in general are some of the most obtuse people I have ever met when it comes to having a world-picture: the U.S. sits at the center of the universe, and there is little reason to consider anything else. It's easy when you live in a country that spans a continent from coast to coast, but it shouldn't be the norm. I'm not saying we should not be proud of being American; quite the contrary, actually. We should be proud, and that pride should allow us to go into the rest of the world as citizen ambassadors, a veritable army of people putting a face on the U.S. that is not the president's (any of them), showing the rest of the world who we truly are: a people with a strong work ethic, no-holds-barred attitude and the ambition (and desire) to reach beyond the stars. Yeah, some people take those virtues and turn them into vices (workaholism is just as bad as alcoholism, and there is a fine-albeit-present line between pride and arrogance), but not all of us are like that. The government is not going to be the one to show this side of Americans to the world—it has way too many economic and political interests to be objective—so it is up to each and every one of us travelers to do so.

So please, when you travel abroad (and everyone should travel abroad, the world's too big to live your whole life in one place), remember you are an ambassador of the true United States, and that your actions speak for all of us. You don't have to learn a new language (though it wouldn't hurt you, you know! Europeans on average speak 2 languages, and many speak 3 and 4), just get a phrasebook and practice how to say "Hello," "Thank you," and "Do you speak English?" For all that's holy, please don't just assume and start speaking English; if a foreigner did that to you in the U.S. you'd flip out, so don't do it to them. Stop being a tourist and become a short-term resident; do the touristy stuff, but venture beyond the glitz to the backstreets and be rewarded with a whole new world, the day-to-day world. Remember that we are all, every single one of us in every single country in the world, residents of the same planet, so think of people in Russia, China, Japan, Australia, Ethiopia, Israel, Turkey, France, Germany, England, Finland, Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, or anywhere else in the world as your cousins a few degrees removed. And above all, keep the rest of the world in mind when you make your decision on Nov. 2; the elections decide the president on the U.S., but the U.S. has an incredible impact upon the rest of the world, and we should be responsible with that power.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Native to Where? Judaism, Politics And The Search For A Home

It is said that where you have two Jews, there are three opinions, and this is not an exaggeration. Even in the one thing we can (pretty much) all agree on, God, there are a gazillion opinions on the matter—put two Jews, even two of the same denomination (Orthodox, Conservative, etc.) to talk about the subject of God and Torah, and you'll be amazed at the amount of points in which they differ, even they agree on the underlying principle. There is one major exception: politics. Here, if you have two Jews, you're bound to have either two similar opinions, or two contradictory opinions; there's no middle ground on the matter. You are either for Bush or for Kerry, and all those on the other side are just WRONG!

At prayers this morning—much like it has happened every day in the last few weeks—the topic of politics came up, and as you can probably expect in an Orthodox synagogue, a lot of the people are voting for Bush, mainly because they somehow have gotten the idea that Bush is the best friend Israel has in this elections, which I think is total crap. (In my opinion, Bush has been a chickenshit idiot who has not dared to stand up to the international community to keep the fuck out of Israel's internal business, and has bent backwards for Arafat more times than I care to remember. How dare you condemn Israel for defending itself against terrorist acts, when you send a whole friggin nation to war halfway across the world on similar charges? If this is the best friend Israel has in these elections then we are truly screwed beyond belief. But I digress…)

This little tête-à-tête this morning, coupled with Rabbi Harlig's (of
Chabad of Kendall) speech this past Shabbat (Saturday) at the synagogue, and with a lecture I heard from Rabbi Shaul Maleh of Mexico City a couple of months back, has gotten me thinking about our position in the nation. Rabbi Maleh mentioned in his lecture (and I have heard this from other Orthodox rabbis) that optimally (and this is important) a Jew’s position should always be to simply be thankful to the government for allowing us to practice in peace, and to leave all issues of politics to the goyim, to the gentiles who are truly part of the nation. The principle is that, while we are residents in the nations of the world, we are citizens of Israel (not necessarily the political nation, but more the spiritual nation, though certainly the political nation does apply). Throughout history, it has been evident time and time again that, whenever the Jews started taking too much interest in the affairs of the nation, the goyim became angry and sought to put us back in our place, usually in a violent manner. If we are to learn anything from the past, it must be that the goyim take care of the affairs of the nation while we take care of the affairs of Israel while thanking our host nation for their hospitality. In fact, that's actually the best way to describe our situation: we are guests in our various hosts nations; just like you wouldn't want a houseguest to start meddling in family affairs, so should us Jews know what to mind and what to leave alone.

Rabbi Harlig spoke this week about the fact that we should be natives to Judaism, that is, Judaism should be our homeland, not necessarily the country in which we live. While this may sound like a strong statement, it makes an incredible amount of sense. So many times, starting with the
Assyrian dispersion of the (now Lost) Ten Tribes in roughly 555 BCE, or perhaps even with the Exodus from Egypt, we have been forced to move from our homes, leaving all we have known behind with only God's mercy and promise to carry us forth, that you think by now we'd be used to the idea of being a nationless people. And perhaps for a while, for a couple of centuries, this was the case, but it is certainly not anymore. Between the relative peace we enjoy in the US, and the establishment of the state of Israel, more and more Jews see themselves as citizens of the nation first, Jews second, when in truth it should be the other way around.

Judaism has always been our home; in Egypt, in the desert, in Israel, in Babylon, in Spain, in Turkey, in Russia, in Germany, in the US and in modern Israel, the one thread that unites us all is that unbroken chain of tradition we call Judaism. It is Judaism that defines our times of joy and sadness, which defines our holidays and our traditions. Yeah, we spice it up with regional touches (kugel for the Ashkenazim, burekas for the Sephardim), but we all pray the same Shacharit (the morning prayer), we all rejoice on Purim, we all submit to All-mighty God on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and we all read, treasure and love the same Torah, the Torah that was given to Moses and has been handed down with
incredible accuracy for the last 3000+ years. Thank God, we in the US live in the most tolerant nation in the world, a nation where our right to practice Judaism is protected by the very document that defines the nation, something for which we must be thankful every day. But just keep this in mind: some 60-70 years ago, Germany had the same level of tolerance for Jews; some 200 years ago, France was the center of the Jewish diaspora, and some 500 years ago Spain was the worldwide center of Jewish thought, where we experienced a Golden Age of cooperation between us and our Muslim and Christian kin. All those eras ended in expulsion, in disaster, in genocide, and we are still feeling the aftereffects of these events (in the plight of the anusim, in the current atmosphere in France, in the intermarried grandchildren of Holocaust survivors). It is because history tends to repeat itself, and because those who do not learn from it are bound to repeat it, that we must always be vigilant, and like the generation of the Exodus, be ready to leave at the drop of a pin. This does not necessarily mean that we must always be paranoid, but it does mean that we must make Judaism our home, because it is the one thing we can always take with us, the one thing that, regardless where we set up a tent, will be constant.

So how does this all relate to the upcoming election? Well, are we American Jews duty-bound to participate in these elections, especially because they promise to be incredibly close? Are we duty-bound to mingle in the affairs of the nation to the point where we may be a deciding factor (especially here in Florida)? Are we overstepping the boundaries of a houseguest, though the host is asking us to cast our opinion? These are questions that every American Jew must answer for him/herself. As a convert I have my own particular can of worms I need to deal with: am I, immediately upon completing my conversion, no longer a native of my old country (in terms of what I discuss above)? Do I have a different status because I entered Judaism, and thus the nation of Israel, instead of having been born into it? Do I get dual citizenship?

I have grappled with these issues and reached a decision that is right for me. I WILL vote, because I accept that I am not at such a spiritual level where I can fully feel detached from the nation where I dwell and fully attached to the nation of my spirit. Life is a constant struggle to achieve a balance between the physical and spiritual, trying to infuse the material with a measure of spirituality, a measure of holiness. I don't know that my vote will be imbued with holiness, but the decision I am making when I cast my vote is one I have reached after filtering my thoughts through the lenses of all the lessons of Torah I have learned. Superficially, my vote and that of any other person is exactly the same, carrying the same weight, but internally, it makes a huge difference. I choose to involve myself in the affairs of my host nation because while my spirit strives to reside in Heaven, my body must live in the United State of America, and I cannot, in good conscience, allow my voice not to be heard. I fully respect those people who are spiritual enough to have shed their dual citizenship with the nations; I am not one of them (yet?), thus I must do my part.

I deeply and sincerely thank President Bush for having maintained this nation's commitment to freedom of religion, thus allowing me to, under his presidency, convert from the Catholicism in which I was raised in, to the Judaism in which my soul feels at home, and to practice it openly and proudly. Now I feel that it is his time to step down and to give way to someone who, I think, will do a better job of leading the nation.

I guess in the end I am still a native to the nation of the United States of America, though I also strive to become a native to Judaism (where perhaps I now have the status of recent immigrant). For now, that dual citizenship does the job.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Danny and D&D: 30 Years of Fun

No, today is not my birthday, it was October 12, and neither is it today D&D's birthday (not sure anyone remembers exactly what day it is), but it's close enough that both are in October. The fact does remain that this month both D&D and I turned 30 years old. I'm not sure what that says about me, when I love playing a game that is as old as I am, and which I've been playing constantly for more than half our lifetimes. That I'm a geek? Old news. Perhaps it really doesn't say anything at all (at least I'm not one of those who has been playing non-stop for the past 30 years; I know a lot of those and most make me shudder).

Anyhoo, I find it funny that all of a sudden D&D is all across the major news organizations. It truly is a Golden Age of Geekdom (especially if we can forget completely about that D&D Movie travesty) when you go to CNN.com to get the latest on the war in Iraq or the race for the White House, and right there you see a fellow geek rolling some dice, quite likely telling the DM, "I waste it with my crossbow!!!" Ahh, brings a smile to my face.

Take a look at the Associated Press article on CNN.com entitled "Gamers Mark 30 Years of Dungeons & Dragons" and another one from the National Review Online entitled "I Was A Teenage Half-Orc." And heck, click to see the
Google search on "Dungeons & Dragons 30 years" and be surprised (I know I was) by all the articles spreading geekdom across the US.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Stem-cell Research and Judaism

I read a wonderful article on the position of Jewish Law on the topic of stem-cell research. I'm thinking it would be great to send it to the Republican party, but I think the arguments would be just too much for their little brains to handle.

Anyway, read it, it's incredibly interesting how Judaism takes millenia-old principles and applies them to modern-day life without skipping a beat. Just click on the image.


This article is brought to you by www.Aish.com - Jewish wisdom for today's world.

Starting Anew

Every so often it's a good thing to start anew; it gives you a new perspective, a whole new fresh outlook on things, unweighted by all that has come before. And that's precisely what I am doing here.

From Feb. 2002 until now I have had a blog at www.Xanga.com/highmoon. Today I decided to switch over to Blogger.com. It's nothing personal against Xanga.com; I just like the look of Blogger.com better. That and, like I said above, there's that sense of starting fresh, unburdened by the two-and-a-half years of past entries.

So, here's to new beginnings and all that crap.

(Just so you know, everything before this entry has been moved from my old blog to this one, though the original dates have been kept for record-keeping purposes.)

Monday, October 11, 2004

[Press] ANNOUNCING HIGHMOON MEDIA PRODUCTIONS


ANNOUNCING HIGHMOON MEDIA PRODUCTIONS

October 11, 2004 - Miami Beach, FL: We are pleased to announce the arrival of Highmoon Media Productions to the game publishing world.

Highmoon Media Productions is a small studio dedicated to producing quality and innovative roleplaying accessories, adventures, and sourcebooks using the d20 System under the Open Game License. Our products are designed to be used with any d20 compatible products, both in the fantasy, modern and future genres.

Highmoon Media Productions will offer small and affordable electronic, printer-ready products in the PDF format through
http://www.rpgnow.com/, with plans to eventually offer our products in printed format using Print-On-Demand technology.

Visit us online at
http://www.highmoonmedia.com/ to learn more about the company and about our current and upcoming products. You can also visit the Highmoon Media Productions' RPGNow.com Vendor Page to purchase our products.

And check out our first release,
Liber Sodalitas: The Blind Path, by Daniel M. Perez. The Blind Path is a 6-page PDF detailing a drop-in organization for any d20 Fantasy game, complete with history, tenets, ways of joining, iconic and generic NPCs, a new prestige class, and a new feat. Available now for sale at www.RPGNow.com.

For more information please contact Daniel M. Perez at
daniel@highmoonmedia.com.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Closing The High Holy Days

Hag Sameach! (Joyous Festival).
Sukkot is now over, and tomorrow we start both Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, bringing to a close all the High Holy Days (and you thought it was only Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur!).
Highmoon Media Productions is going well. God willing, I should have our first release ready for next week! I'll post a link.

On an unraletd note, I saw the movie Kissing Jessica Stein the other night and I liked it a lot. It was cute and funny and not what I was expecting. It was sold as a gay romantic comedy, when it fact it isn't. This may very well be the first Bi-curious romantic comedy ever. The girl who plays Jessica Stein reminded me physically of someone I once knew. Like I said, cute, check it out.

Signing off for another 3-day holiday hiatus. Man, being an orthodox Jew is hard; all we do is pray and eat in our holidays.

-- Highmoon
Sitting in the
sukkah
PS. All links point to Judaism 101-
http://www.jewfaq.org/

Thursday, September 09, 2004

Of Hurricanes And New Business Ventures

Well, that's Charley and Frances down, now it's Ivan left to go. What, does Florida have a big ol' metereological bullseye painted on it?

Anyway, on to other and better news:After threatening with doing this for months, if not for a whole year (I'd have to check my journal), I finally did it. Yesterday I filed all legal papers to begin doing business as Highmoon Media Productions. Yep, I am starting my own business, a publishing company. I will be starting with gaming material for D&D/d20 system, allowing me to market my own projects without being at the mercy of other companies' editors and/or budgets. I don't know that this will be hugely succesful, but it has got to be better than the big NOTHING I am making right now.

I chose the name Highmoon Media Productions (HMP) for two reasons: (1) Highmoon is a name that I have been using since 1996 when I first went online, and I've actually used HMP for other endeavors in the past, like when I did web design; (2) HMP allows me the flexibility of releasing other things than gaming through it, as long as it is media (and what isn't). So for example (and this is something I will do) I can use HMP to publish fiction, mine or my wife's (or solicited), or an e-zine, or do more web design, etc. Flexibility is good, and with HMP I have all I need.
I am quite excited about this new project, and am currently hard at work finishing the initial HMP gaming releases, and contracting artwork. Couple this with getting ready for the High Holy Days, and starting Grad School, plus regular work, and of course all these wonderful hurricanes that keep wanting to plow through Florida (do they hate Disney or something?) and you can understand how busy, stressed and tired I am. But it is great!
I'll keep you updated.


-- Highmoon
Fervently hoping that Ivan decides to go somewhere else. "Shoo, Ivan, don't bother us!"

Monday, May 10, 2004

Thoughts On The Da Vinci Code

I'm reading now The Da Vinci Code (and strangely enough, so is my mother-in-law) and liking it a lot. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's 100%, but as fluff goes, it's not that horrible.

I find incredibly funny that so many Christians have had their feathers ruffled by this work of fiction. Of course, as much a work of fiction as it may be, there are some truths in there, and that's what has people scrambling.

I'm not naive enough to take everything presented in the book as fact: I can do my own research, thank you very much. However, I am not naive enough to think that for the last 2000 years everyone in the church has been 100% honest and telling the whole truth. Ridiculous! If you truly believe that you are either possessed of an unearthly faith (and thus should be removed from this plane of reality) or incredibly stupid.

Thing is, none of the so-called great secrets revealed in the book are new to me. I have either read them before in a variety of sources, or have come up with similar ones myself. And for the record, yes, I do believe (and have believed for more than 2 years now, before the novel was published) that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. In fact, I go so far as to say that the "Beloved Disciple" of the gospel of John is indeed Mary Magdalene. You figure it out.

Is the book biased? Of course, it is a work of fiction by a man who holds a particular set of beliefs. Is everything in the book accurate? Nope, you go look it up and find out for yourself; don't get your history from a novel (or a movie, for that matter, even if it claims to be the authoritative vision of the passion of Jesus). Are some of these theories real? Absolutely, many are documented going back centuries. Do they tell the truth? Who the hell knows. Only God knows the truth of the matter--the Truth, if you will; we humans must make due with history, what we know, and what we unearth in our constant search for an understanding of our world. But do me a favor, don't let anyone tell you what is true or not, in this book or anywhere else. Go find out for yourself.

And remember, that just as the author had a bias, so does every single book being published right now claiming to crack, explain or debunk the Da Vinci Code: notice the majority are being published by Christian writers who cannot stand even the suggestion of such an idea as Jesus' humanity and all that entails.

For now I'll keep reading. I look forward to seeing how much of it is old news to me, and feel really good about it.

-- Highmoon
Clamouring for people to think for themselves!

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Pele McFuFu (1999-2004)

It's a sad day. Our rabbit, Pele McFufu, passed away yesterday April 21st. Pele was the first of all our rabbits, the fluffiest, the craziest and much loved by all. Though he never weighed more than 3 pounds (and that's when he was fat!), the empty space he leaves is large indeed. One never knows how much one loves these little balls of fur until they are gone.May he go and meet up with Duncan (see Dec 02, 03: Back From NYC And Sad News) and may they wreck havoc in the great burren in the sky.



Pele McFufu


-- Highmoon
Quite bummed...

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

M.A. News

Just dropping by to say hi.

Not much to tell lately except that I'VE BEEN ACCEPTED TO THE GRADUATE STUDIES IN LITERATURE PROGRAM AT FIU!!!!!!!!

Kickass.
Not just that, I was also accepted into the Teacher Assistantship Program, which means I get to help out some professor or other, I eventually get my own class to teach, and (the best part) I have my tuiton covered plus a monthly stipend. Now this is the way to go to University!

-- Highmoon
Who wants eventually to have that "Dr." in front of his name.

Monday, March 29, 2004

Sophie B. Hawkins In Concert

Went to see Sophie B. Hawkins in concert last night at Calliopefest. I had missed seeing her in concert twice in the last eight years, but last night I finally made it. It was an awesome concert. There were just a couple hundred people (of which I, a straight, married guy, was the incredible minority) which made the show intimate and allowed everyone to have a great view. Sophie is on crack onstage; she just has this incredible energy, and she sends it through the microphone to all around. By the end of the concert, with the ubiqutuous "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover", almost everyone was up on their feet and dancing. Even cooler, when she did the encore, we moved up right up to the stage, just about 5 feet from her; no pushing, no shoving, no problems. It definitely was a concert to remember. She had a signing session afterwards, but we were tired, and besides, I already have three autographed pictures.

In other news, my application to Grad School went through ok. The English Dept. has recommended me for the Masters Program in English, and all that is missing is the approval of the University itself in the next few weeks. Can't wait!


Back to work.

--Highmoon
Who did not realize "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover" was about a girl singing to another girl for about 4 years. Not sure what that says about me...

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Of Reading, University & Europe

This is what I have read so far this year (follow the link to my little review):

  1. Gehenna: The Final Night - Ari Marmell
  2. Girl With a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier
  3. Tipping The Velvet - Sarah Waters
  4. Maimonides' Principles - Aryeh Kaplan
  5. The Passion - Jeanette Winterson
  6. Mysterious Creatures - Nosson Slifkin
I've been reading a lot lately, and I intend to keep it up. If I can stay at the rate of 3 books per month, that'll be awesome. I may be able to do more, who knows, but at the very least I am officially shooting for 30 books this year.

Oh, and wish me good luck. I already put in my application for grad school. Hoping to get into the Masters of Literature program at
FIU. I'm shooting for that PhD, though; I wanna have Dr. in front of my name and annoy everyone who ever doubted I'd amount to little more than a pimply-faced, comic-book-reading, D&D-playing nerdoid. Granted, there aren't many of those (I do have an amiable personality), but still. Bah, who cares about those people. We all know I wanna have a PhD cause I want that cool octagonal velvet cap and velvet gown you only get as a PhD graduate. Fashion, that's why I want my degree.

And about the book I am currently reading, Neither Here Nor There: Travels In Europe by Bill Bryson, I am liking it a lot. I like travel memoirs. I like making my own better (something I intend to start working on soon), but it is a good second option, and beats whatever it is I am doing here at work.

-- Highmoon
Wishing I was in Dublin, or Venice, or London, or Paris... heck, even Rome will do (though not Naples... icky Naples)

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Back From NYC And Sad News

Back from New York. It was a cool trip, wish I could've stayed there and not come back to Miami.

We had some really sad news while on our trip. One of our rabbits, Duncan, passed away while we were away. I took him to the vet last Wednesday, before we left, cause he wasn't eating and the doctor decided to hospitilize him for observation. He died Thursday, Thanksgiving night.
Duncan was probably the favorite of our rabbits. He was a rescue, and he always was very thankful of the life we gave him. He was sweet, curious and sometimes too smart for his own good. He had a temper, but rarely used it (only with Nuala, another of our rabbits). He always loved us, and allowed us the honor of petting him until our hands fell off.
He will be missed. May he be happy in the great rabbit burren in the sky.



Duncan McFufu, The Mighty


-- Highmoon
Sad.