It is said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Analogously, I just got a shredder.

It's a lot of fun feeding stuff in and watching it come out in long streamers on the other side! There is an actual use for it, as after the Kits have their operations, shredded newspaper is the litter of choice till Fitch's stitches come out. But I've wanted a shredder for a long time, every time I tear up a credit card receipt. Till then, of course, it's fun feeding in this and that, envelopes, junk mail, and probably term papers and Important Things. Good thing I sent Bernadette's diploma to her, that's all I have to say!

Vince has made it to mid-Heartland. Yesterday he got to Wall Drug. He didn't see the dinosaur, so perhaps it's gone. He also didn't know if they still sell burros, as they did 40 years ago! To get there he had to drive through Sturgis, and this was Harley weekend. He said he was in the definite minority at Wall Drug, one of the few people not dressed in black, heavily tattooed, and with a biker blonde on his arm. Yesterday was his longest day, 12 hours, and today 9, and I'm told the hardest part of the day awaits. One of the relatives insists that he shall watch 9 VeggieTales episodes. Somehow, Vince doubts he'll make it all the way through.

I have not been able to find the Dex scans I did in their original, huge, state. I had mailed them to Bernadette and crashed her mailbox, so I planned to give her the scans here. I suspect, however, that I may have shrunk them for myself after I mailed them. (Also, I cleaned them out of my "sent" folder. Grumble.) Anyway, she can use what I have to update her Dex page while she is here, or we can scan the things again. I, meanwhile, did my own Dex update.

Other errands today included mailing off a letter to Sam (I've GOT to get this kid wanting to read!) and a silly card to my stepfather, who has just gone into a nursing home. I bought my Sunday New York Times, I sent flowers to the people who put Vince up last week, and I took another roll of film in to develop.

I got to talk to Sam's social worker and she has set up a case conference with the counsellor and wanted me to go (thus finally meeting these people and getting access to the counsellor's files.) It's Friday, and at first I thought I'd be out of town, but we can leave an hour later so I can do this. It seems to be important: there's the social work expert, the counselling expert, and me, the Sam expert. I'm also getting Sam's Health and Education passport then. It's good to feel needed.

Twenty-five years since Nixon resigned. Let's see: misused the FBI, check. Misused the IRS, check. He didn't sell our nuclear secrets to get re-elected, but apparently if the economy is good, a war with China in the future doesn't matter. The biggest difference I can see is that, while I thought Nixon was ready to start a war to get out of his personal difficulties, he didn't, unlike King William. (And if he had, his war would have been harder to prove was a "Wag the Dog". The aspirin factory was so easily discredited, not that the press really cared.) And he had the grace to resign, definitely unlike Der Slickster.

But I forget, Billy Jeff suffered great child abuse. John Brummett, in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, had a great editorial about that Saturday:

Let's all gather around and play the Clinton Blame Game. The point is to excuse or mitigate adult failings--and we all have them, some more than others--by assigning them to such preschool abuses as having a mommy and a grandmommy who didn't get along and maybe loved you too much.
The only rule is that if you blame someone who is still alive and therefore able to defend himself, you're disqualified.
....
The intent, if I may speak plainly, is to make light of the Clintons. More specifically, it is to ridicule the Clintons' incessant gobbledygook designed to deflect personal adult responsibility and play the voters for chumps.
Having thought up the game, I'll go first and show you how it's done.
My failings are well known. I'm overweight. I'm liberal. I don't show proper respect for my leaders, calling them President Buttafuoco, Gov. Mike "The Wide Body" Huckabee and Mayor Milquetoast. My language is not the best. I'm a sore loser. Perhaps you know some others. Most certainly you do.
I blame it all on that thing I've been told about. It's the time I threw the food. I do not remember it except in the deep recesses of my deeply wounded subconscious.
[He threw food at his sister and he was punished by his father while his grandmother implored the father to stop.]
Imagine the lingering damage to the boy of such of an experience. It hurts now to relate it, even if I don't exactly remember it.
....
Torn between a spanking dad and a grandmother pleading for a cessation to the spanking . . . well, I've had psychologists tell me there's nothing worse for a boy--except maybe for what happened to Bill Clinton--than being torn between a wiry ex-Marine of a father and the wiry ex-Marine's mother.
Think about this horror some 41 years ago the next time you want to write a hateful letter to the editor about that poor boy.
It's a wonder he's turned out no worse than this. It's a wonder he hasn't cut a tomcatting swath from one coast to the other, or tried.
By the way: Grandma is long dead. Dad died in 1990. They are unavailable for comment. So I'm still in the game.

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No pounds either way. I seem to have hit another plateau. 9 pounds, one week. Think I'll do it? I don't even think I'll hit the second-best 4 pounds off. Oh, well. At least I'm 15 pounds down from the highs of January. Four miles. Blech. I did go through seven magazines, and kept up with what mail I had, including mailing a whole bunch off to Bernadette.