The last several days have been (uncharacteristically) sunny in Northeastern Ohio.  During these days, I've gotten a tremendous amount of work done on various writings.  Today, it is cloudy and gross, and my mind is now derailed.  It's just not fair.

I do have some good news: Amy got a job at the Akron Zoo.  It's a temp job in the gift shop, but that's the stepping stone job to other, more glamourous and more interesting positions.  Rumor has it, if she works really hard and impresses the piss out of these people, she could get continued employment and work through the ranks.  Anything is better than that soon-to-be-bankrupt motel she'd been working at.

And, Amy also managed to get straight As.  As such, I am very proud of her because she did far far better than I did (I ended up with a one-hour A, a B+ and a B, which put my GPA at 3.267 for the semester, or the lowest since... 2002?  Ouch.  Not that it matters since my accum is still around a 3.8).  I think I should treat her to something nice tonight, if I can round up some cash.  She definitely deserves it, being as how she's my little Dean's Listing Zoo Employee.

In research news, I'm working on a couple of odd little papers with Jim.  The first, which I've begun to expand today, discusses the troop surge in Iraq as a mobilization of the geographic concept of density.  See, Iraq is, to most people, an ambiguous container without any internal differences.  This surge adds density of troops, and of course in theory adds ability to counteract various problems there.  Of course, while this logic sells it more easily than other possible solutions, it also limits the conversation to "troop surge or not," and avoids questions of the mission or how it is otherwise conducted.

I'm also working on something comparing a post-disaster landscape to a colonial occupation.  That's coming a little slower, perhaps because it is outlandish.  Outlandish papers make names, as long as they're well argued.  And I'm being more selfish now, remember?

That's all for now, I think.