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I was driving with the Norwegian down Veterans, a fairly busy street, when we pulled up at a stop light. It's a beautiful day today; of course the windows were rolled down, and kitty corner from us a female jogger was waiting for the light to change. She was wearing a blue and black jogging bra and spandex jogging pants, bare-midriffed, and I have to admit that I actively admired her form. (After all, I was lesbian for a whole 24 hours. A bit of that lingers.)

I distinctly heard a man's voice say, "...And they wonder why they get raped."

A big, open-door white truck was parked next to us at the light, with the words "Redwood City School District" emblazoned on the side panel. There was a greying, paunchy man driving, and obviously another man hidden inside the truck itself. The two of them were also actively admiring the woman who was waiting, oblivious, on the street corner.

Except it wasn't exactly admiration she would have appreciated. It wasn't the kind of admiration any woman would have appreciated.

I rolled up the window on their conversation (how they would rape her, I believe it was; how she would turn the corner and bang, they'd nail her on the head with a bottle) and rediscovered a deep, dark disgust for the entire male race.

Well, and then I remembered Jim Henson. Did you know Jim Henson's speaking voice was Kermit the Frog's voice? I hadn't realized that until I watched an interview with him. There was a very officious Serious Newsjournal Interviewer in stilted accents painstakingly asking profound and carefully articulated questions of an awkward-looking man in plaid that could very well have played Tim Allen's sidekick in Home Improvement. Out of the blue, Kermit the Frog warbles something back, equally solemn. How can you not love that?

I laughed and loved men again.

Well, until someone told me that Jar Jar Binks is in the next Star Wars movie. Then I just ended up hating men more all over again.

It's been almost two weeks since I last wrote, and this is due to the fact that I spent part of the week in Seattle visiting my mother. I'll put up pictures -- I swear, this time I really will -- after I finish watching a week's worth of television.

Part of the purpose in my visit to Seattle was to teach my mother how to use the computer. She'd received some sort of laptop from a colleague. "It used to belong to Barbara," she told me over the telephone. 'It used to belong to Barbara' translates to 'It's a Macintosh laptop from 1982.' My ability on the Macintosh extends to turning it on; it turned out, after studying the sitation, that it definitely didn't extend to plugging it in.

Ah well. Live and learn.

As it was, we moved to a Microsoft platform and I spent two days teaching her how to turn the computer on. We'll be working on the use of the mouse during the next visit. She was baffled by the shut down process.

"To shut down I do 'Start'?" she said, puzzled.

"No, see, it's a menu item that you get when you click start."

"Why is it 'start'? What does it start?"

Good question. Any answers, Bill?

Anyway, I'm back. Miss me?