(In case y’all hadn’t noticed that on the countdown thingy at left.)

If Harriet Miers is appointed to the Supreme Court, does that mean Professor Kelley will get promoted to White House Counsel?

This has got to be a relief for the National Hurricane Center forecasters:

But it may not last:

A VIGOROUS TROPICAL WAVE OVER THE CENTRAL CARIBBEAN SEA IS PRODUCING CLOUDINESS AND THUNDERSTORMS OVER JAMAICA… PORTIONS OF HISPANIOLA… AND ADJACENT CARIBBEAN WATERS. THIS SYSTEM CONTINUES TO SHOW SIGNS OF ORGANIZATION… AND UPPER-LEVEL WINDS APPEAR CONDUCIVE FOR A TROPICAL DEPRESSION TO DEVELOP DURING THE NEXT DAY OR SO. AN AIR FORCE RESERVE UNIT RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT IS SCHEDULED TO INVESTIGATE THIS SYSTEM TOMORROW… IF NECESSARY. INTERESTS IN JAMAICA… THE CAYMAN ISLANDS… AND ELSEWHERE IN THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA AND ADJACENT LAND AREAS… SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF THIS SYSTEM DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS AS IT MOVES WEST-NORTHWESTWARD AT 10 TO 15 MPH.

Dr. Jeff Masters and Steve Gregory have more.

The next name on the list is Stan. After that comes Tammy, Vince, Wilma… and then, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc.

Hurricane season continues until Nov. 30.

Is the Supreme Court on the verge of recognizing that McCain-Feingold violates the First Amendment? Could be.

The Red Sox won the first game of their doubleheader with the Blue Jays, so they’re once again tied with the Yankees for the AL East lead. Now both teams are in action, with New York trailing Baltimore and Boston leading Toronto early. After tonight, each team has five games left — the last three of which are against each other at Fenway Park from Friday through Sunday. GO SAWX!!!

P.S. Other important games in progress right now involve the White Sox and the Indians, both losing at the moment. Hurrah!

UPDATE: Boston trails 6-5 in the ninth. Noooo…

The New Orleans police chief has resigned.

Mmm, Starbucks. :) In other news, I swear I saw Dick Enberg in the hotel lobby this morning. P.S. Are Washington lobbyists who work for hotel corporations called the “hotel lobby”? And if so, do people snicker after they say this? :)

Sarah’s mom sent along some more pictures, which I’ve added to the Other people’s pics of Sarah gallery. I particularly like this one, taken in September of last year, which coincidentally was the last time I communicated (via e-mail) with Sarah:

And this one is fun. More here.

Also, if you missed my previous post about it, here is Sarah’s brother’s touching tribute to his beloved sister. And there’s much more, of course, at the memorial page.

At the risk of overly baring my soul… it surprises me, I guess, how much I’m still hurting over this. I keep emphasizing how my grief is nothing compared to Sarah’s family and the friends she was still in close touch with, and that’s true. But at the same time, getting over the totally unexpected and tragic death of someone with whom you were once as close as I was to Sarah is definitely not easy. In some ways, having fallen out of touch makes it worse, because you’ve got regret compounding the grief. Not a fun combination.

Sometimes I close my eyes and I see her, smiling at me. This happened a lot on the plane ride to Phoenix — every time I’d close my eyes to try and sleep, Sarah was there. Other times, I still find myself having these momentary half-conscious thoughts about how somehow, someday, Sarah and I will share a good laugh over all the fuss everyone is making over her, when this whole thing blows over. When this whole thing blows over. Right. Every one of those thoughts leads to an immediate and painful snap back to reality, of course.

I’m not very “good at grieving,” if you will — this is a longstanding fact of my life — so the “grieving process” for me is really an endless back-and-forth between shock/denial and acceptance; I don’t really do any of those pesky intervening steps. Instead, I basically toggle between the two states. When the toggling gets less frequent, I’m doing “better,” and when the toggling stops, I’m okay again. So I guess that’s what happening with those half-conscious thoughts… toggling.

I also find that I can’t listen to happy or upbeat music — my heart isn’t ready for it. When I open my iTunes, I inevitably gravitate to Ars Musica recordings featuring Sarah, or to sad songs like James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” and slow, mournful ballads like Sugarland’s “Stand Back Up.” Someday I’ll be able to listen to “Mississippi Girl” or “4th of July” or “Alcohol” (”…helpin’ white people dance”) again… someday soon, probably… but not yet, and that surprises me. I didn’t realize I’d be quite this heartbroken over this.

Honestly, what I wouldn’t give for a good cry. Alas, I haven’t cried once over this. I shook when I was paying my respects to Sarah’s body at the wake… I shook when I was singing “A Welsh Lullaby” to her at the funeral… I felt the beginnings of a tear in my eye a few times during her brother’s eulogy… but a good cry? Nowhere to be found. I never cry over anything. Becky has seen me cry exactly once in the entire time we’ve been together, and that was over a breakup, not a death. Aside from that, I can only recall crying one other time in the last six years (I was with my parents on that occasion), and that was over something really stupid. When it comes to the really big stuff, like death and grieving, I unintentionally bottle up my emotions, intellectualize them, and express them in forums like this… which does help, but not as much, I think, as it would help to just sit down and cry. But for some reason, that just doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Argh.

I’m not sure how to conclude this post, except to repeat what I said a few days ago in a post that got unexpectedly Instalanched: I miss you, Sarah.

Jeff Goldstein has some unflattering thoughts on the media coverage of Katrina’s aftermath. I’m not endorsing his argument, I just thought it was interesting enough to be worth reading.

For those who might be wondering, my interviews are going well so far — or at least, it seems that way to me! :) I’m not posting details because of my typical policy of not blogging about work-related matters, but rest assured that my silence does not mean things are going badly. Here are some pictures from my visit to Arizona.

Once upon a time, I complained vociferously about how a group of USC anti-war activists (I’m talkin’ anti-Afghanistan war) billed one of their protests as a “rally against war and racism” — which, I felt, implied that those who supported the war were racists. I was pissed because the two issues should be separate. I could not in good conscience attend a rally against the war, but I sure as hell could attend a rally against racism, and I didn’t appreciate their deliberate choice to conflate the two issues in order to legitimize their anti-war stance (and deligitimize my pro-war stance).

In the interest of fairness, I must object on similar grounds to the pro-Iraq-war counterprotests being characterized as “pro-troops protests.” That phraseology implies, it seems to me, that the anti-war protesters are anti-troops, and while that is surely true in some cases — just as some pro-war folks are in fact racist — it is not remotely fair or accurate to implicitly tar the entire anti-war movement, however vehemently we might disagree with them, as anti-troops. The vast majority of them, it seems to me, misguidedly but genuinely believe in the line, “support our troops, bring them home now.” Those of us who support the war need to explain why that’s wrong, not imply that they don’t mean it.

So what should we call the protests? “Pro-war” isn’t really very good, as it implies we blanketly support all war, which certainly isn’t true. How about “pro-liberation”?

P.S. Is “blanketly” a legitimate adverb? If not, can we pretend it is?

Tennessee rallied from a 21-0 halftime deficit to defeat LSU in overtime at Tiger Stadium tonight. D’oh! Sorry, Josh.

In other news, I’ve been seriously neglecting baseball amid all this football and tragedy, but the Red Sox and Yankees are engaged in a thrilling pennant race — and the loser is not guaranteed a wild-card spot. Coming into tonight, the Sox and Yanks were tied with 7 games left (the last three of which are against each other at Fenway Park), and also tied in the loss column with the Indians for the wild card.

Boston’s game against Toronto tonight was rained out. There will be a doubleheader tomorrow. That doubleheader is now absolutely crucial for Boston, as New York beat Baltimore tonight, so the Yankees now have a half-game lead on the Sox.

GO SAWX!!!

From the CBS Hurricane Rita Blog:

6:44 p.m.
(CBS) - CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate its response following Hurricane Katrina.

[…]

I totally don’t understand what the f**k someone was thinking when this happened. Shouldn’t he be the subject of such an evaluation?

Brian (Briandot)

This is a funny post.

Not “Cows in Crisis” funny, but still, funny. :)

Follow-up to Brian’s post… according to General Honore (speaking with Anderson Cooper on CNN), the cows in coastal Louisiana who survived Rita are “scared and confused,” and they’re drinking the brackish water, which changes their temperament — making them agitated — and causes them to “excrete more of their bodily fluids,” thus losing weight. The cows are in danger, people!!! SAVE THE COWS!!!

I know this is a serious business — people’s livelihoods and all — but damn, it’s also funny. Mooooooo. :)

P.S. I apologize for the awful pun in the title of this post. May the Gods of humor have mercy on my soul. :)

UPDATE: A suggested graphic for CNN, to be aired with the requisite melodramatic music (and perhaps some background mooing):