Work has been pretty boring. Picking up a bit. This will be my first decent paycheck in a very, very long time. Plus a few private repair jobs kicking around. I plan on getting some winter clothes, squaring away my Christmas gifts (yes, I'm getting gifts for a very small number of people) and I even suspect I'll have some left over to pay bills.

If only it were like this all the time.

Ella got a new job. She didn't just get a new job, she got a good job. Which has me feeling like a bit of an asshat. Her job is better than mine. And she's a girl.

*dives for cover.

Tank is making a serious bid for the House Mouser belt. Two this week.

Most of my spare time has been spent working on my radio/podcast show. Twenty hours or so invested just in collating data for the latest one; Extraordinary Rendition. McCain introduced an amendment to the defense spending bill which would require -- get this -- that we make it illegal to outsource torture to other countries. Ninety senators voted for it. Nine did not.

I'm not sure which is more amazing; that ninety senators agreed on something or that nine senators think it's a bad idea. Bush says he'll veto it.

But we don't do torture.

So yeah. Spending three days reading up on the finer points on how and when our government has systematically and repeatedly drowned innocent people to within an inch of their life without any court oversight can really take a guy's spirts down a peg.

But other than that, not so bad.