Yay Patriotism! I get to sleep late on a Thursday, eat barbeque and most likely homemade ice-cream (If I know Jan, and I do), and spend time with my family - I love America. However, there's enough of that crap on the web already so here is my list of what what I do not love about America: our current president, Sept. 11th patriotism freaks, The Dept. of Homeland Security (doesn't that sound big-brotheresque), and other assorted goodies brought to you by America - including the Atomic bomb (oh yeah remember that?). Whew!

Ok enough of that. Work was surprisingly low-key yesterday, after I got over the weather thing (arg, see below) we had a group therapy session as an editorial department on how we are dealing with the intifada in Israel. There was some discussion by the therapist over vicarious traumatisation which is basically when you are repeatedly subjected to the trauma of others and because as a compassionate human you empathise. This does not happen over a short time, seeing a picture of torture won't send you into shock, seeing pictures of suicide bombers everyday (as our photos dept. does) will traumatise you. At first I was skeptical, but I realized that I was thinking the same things that people who had been on the paper for years were saying, and I've only been there two weeks. It was definetly helpful.

God damn the weather! Here's the problem with living in the San Francisco Bay Area: it has somewhere around twenty diffrent climates in one regional metropolitan area. Case in point is my experience today. I wake up to a lovely sunny morning in Walnut Creek (about 20 mins East of Berkeley) the weather is fair and somewhere around 60 degrees already. Expecting it to be warm but still cooler in the city I don a long-sleeved shirt, khakis, and sandals. I board my BART train only to emerge from the Montgomery St. station to a over-cast cloud-ridden sky which drizzles precariously on my head. In the end I suppose it's fine because I was going to buy some sort of light canvas jacket today, but that's not the point.

Also - what happened to my Netherlandians? Why haven't they signed the guestbook? These questions haunt my mind.