Due to travel, I wasn’t able to comment on this until now.
Former Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich
After anemic showings in the early primaries Dennis Kucinich has ended his bid for the White House. Instead, the former candidate will focus on his reelection campaign to the US House of Representatives. This marks the withdrawl of one of the more interesting characters in the campaign who may, in fact, represent the people’s view point more accurately than the remaining candidates on the Democratic slate.
Bye Dennis, thanks for making the race interesting and for daring to have and express an opinion. That leaves Ron Paul as the other interesting candidate
still in the race, but it’s only a matter of time until he too joins the Deadpool. Still alive, on the Republican side: Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and Rudy Giuliani. On the Democratic side: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Mike Gravel.
I arrived home from Germany yesterday, after 22 hours in transit. This consisted of a taxi ride from the hotel to Hauptbahnhof (train station), a train ride from Heidelberg through Mannheim to Frankfurt am Main, then a 12 hour flight (was supposed to be 10 hours, weather, delays, etc.) to arrive home where it was raining cats and dogs. Once off the plane, it took another hour for the bag to arrive from baggage claim. Then I waited another 45 minutes for the parking shuttle – it was soon apparent why, San Bruno was flooded on the 101/380 entrances and exits. The water in the parking lot was knee deep around most of the area, luckily (and without forethought) I parked in a relative high ground spot where the water was only ankle deep.
After sailing through the flood to enter the freeway system I was on my way home, normally a 20 minute trip. I made it within sight of Montara when I was stopped by an active mudslide blocking both lanes of Highway 1. There was no choice but to turn around and come in on Highway 92 from the south. The airplane arrived in Bay Area air space at noon, we landed at 1:30, I was finally home at 5pm. To make it even more interesting, the night before the trip I was only able to sleep for 2 hours and I wasn’t able to snatch any Zs on the plane (I’ll leave out the discussion about my traveling partners on the flight, it’s better to just forget it…)
But it was all worth it to come home safe and sound and see the family. Despite the challenges, I arrived in a good mood and managed to stay awake until 8:30 or so and slept the sleep of the dead for a few hours. I feel much better now. Wonder if Highway 1 is still blocked?
Last night I reached my saturation point for “local.” Given my state of being extremely language challenged, I wanted to go into a place where I could read the menu and make low stress choices with predictable outcomes. Fortunately, I stumbled into The Talbot right by the old bridge in Heidelberg, a British Pub complete with darts, football (European style), and fish and chips. Suffice to say, it hit the spot and made me feel at least a little more at home to be able to communicate easily with the waitress for instance. The food was forgettable, but it was just the right place at just the right time to provide a psychological boost.
Since I’m likely to make this trip often in the future, it’s nice to know that places like The Talbot exist. However, it’s clear I’m going to need more than the twelve German words currently in my vocabulary to truly be productive and enjoy the experience.
Have you ever wondered what to do with those energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs when they burn out? One shouldn’t just toss them into the garbage due to the small amount of mercury (~5mg) in each bulb yet it’s not really apparent what to do with them. Presently, there are a number of pilot programs that collect and hopefully recycle the bulbs, but a sustainable and clear recycling stream has really yet to emerge.
One has to wonder if this is a business opportunity? The Wall Street Journal online has a good article discussing the pros and cons of the current state of electronics recycling including cfls (ignoring the pejorative title “The Dark Side of Green Bulbs”.)
