A Maryland jury convicts John Allen Muhammad of six more of the D.C.-area sniper killings, AP reports. Visit CNN for the latest.

Mount St. Helens, one of the most famous volcanos in the U.S. after its explosive erruption in May of 1980, is reminding us again today that she’s still alive and well. After a small quake (3.1 magnitude) yesterday morning, pilots in the area reported seeing a plume of steam and ash coming from the crater of the volcano. St. Helens has been active again since 2004; most recently, a large rock “fin” has developed in the volcano’s crater.

Hat tip: Brendan

Mark at Bfloblog reviews Game 5 of the Sabres-Hurricanes series, and looks ahead to tomorrow night’s must-win Game 6 in Buffalo: “I hope that my lasting impression of this year’s team won’t be that they went down without a fight on their home ice.”

Game time is 7:30 PM EDT (4:30 PM MST).

I hope y’all had a good holiday weekend. Mine was mostly uneventful, yet relaxing. Tomorrow it’s back to the daily grind… though I suppose I can’t complain too much, when I have a view like this from my office window:

That’s Arizona’s iconic Four Peaks off in the distance. Oddly, I didn’t notice until Friday that I have a view of Four Peaks from my office. Pretty cool!

On the flip side, one slightly disconcerting aspect of being on the 22nd floor of a downtown skyscraper is the fact that you’re almost directly in the flight path of planes taking off from Sky Harbor Airport:

But I suppose, post-9/11 jitters aside, that’s not entirely a bad thing. As Mike, Becky and others who met me all those years ago at USC’s east-coast orientation in Newark can attest, I do enjoy looking at planes taking off and landing. After all, they’re shiny. :)

Anyway, I should get to bed. G’nite all!

Republican lobbyist Ed Kutler, on House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi: “A lot of Republicans were saying, ‘We need her on TV more.’ Maybe we should buy ad time for her.” Heh.

We're back at Robbie's old stomping grounds, the Quail Run dog park in Mesa.

I’ve had to temporarily switch back to my old layout because, as discussed below, the new one is malfunctioning. Stay tuned…

Briandot takes a look at what our friends the Saudis are putting in their gradeschool textbooks. The best quote comes from the fourth-grade edition: “True belief means . . . that you hate the polytheists and infidels but do not treat them unjustly.” Well, hey, at least they preach justice along with hatred!

It’s almost as if the baseball gods don’t like Barry Bonds or something.

CBS News reports a cameraman and soundman for the network were killed today in Iraq; correspondent Kimberly Dozier critically injured. Visit CNN for the latest.

Please bear with me on the slightly funky layout and the grossly incomplete right sidebar. It’s a work-in-progress. But I decided to bite the bullet and start, because I gotta get this place all spruced up for hurricane season. :) Stay tuned…

P.S. Pop-up comments aren’t working for the moment. Sorry. If you click on the “comment” link, it will take you to the comment form on the permalink page. I’ll try to remedy that, and re-create the pop-up option, presently.

UPDATE: WTF? My blog has a mind of its own! It changed its own layout for no apparent reason!

UPDATE 2: Sometime this morning, while I was sleeping, the blog switched its layout from the newly installed “Journalized” theme (or rather, a modified version thereof) to the default WordPress “Kubrick” theme. I have no idea how or why this switch occurred. In an attempt to prevent it from happening again, I’ve deleted all themes except “Journalized,” so that should make it impossible for WP to switch to a different theme.

UPDATE 3: Well, that didn’t work! It just tried again to switch to the “default” theme, and since the default theme didn’t exist, my blog simply appeared blank for a few minutes. I have no idea what’s wrong with the “Journalized” theme that my WordPress is having an allergic reaction to it, but I’m very annoyed right now!! I will have to try again with this a bit later.

And God bless the brave men and women who defend it.

I was interrupted during the Sabres game Sunday evening by an automated phone call from Dr. Tony Phillips of SpaceWeather.com. The message told me I should look west after sunset to see a “razor-thin crescent [Moon]–nothing special, just really beautiful.” So a few hours later, when we took Robbie to the dog park, I took a gander at the western sky and, sure enough, Dr. Phillips was right:

As the second picture makes clear, the “Earthshine” — a.k.a. The Da Vinci Glow — was very bright. Springtime in the Northern hemisphere is actually the best time of year to spot Earthshine.

It’s a nail-biter in Raleigh, where it’s Sabres 3, Hurricanes 3 with 6:13 left in the third period of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals. (Previous post here.)

OLN has shown a couple of shots of Hurricanes fans wearing Whalers jerseys, which is awesome. But I’m solidly rooting against the “Whalers” in this case. LET’S GO, BUFF-A-LO!

UPDATE: Overtime!

DAMMIT! ‘Canes win, 4-3 in OT. :(

So now the Sabres need to win Game 6 at home on Tuesday, and then come back to Carolina and win Game 7 on Thursday.

P.S. Sunday was a night of unpleasant firsts for the Buffalo Sabres. They lost in overtime for the first time in this year’s playoffs (after going 4-0 in previous overtimes), and lost a Game 5 for the first time. For the first time, they failed to follow up a home loss with a road win. As a result, they have now fallen behind in a series for the first time, and on Tuesday they will face their first elimination game. It’s win or go golfing.

Mark at Bfloblog is angry.