what it’s like . . . when it’s unknown if a trip to school will be your last.

I wonder if my family is OK . . .

This is a big challenge for us. We are courageous people. We are brave.

Virginia Tech?

Not quite.

I’m not here to make the claim that people in the US value the lives of our own more than the lives of others. (One could make that argument, though, and one would have a pretty healthy leg to stand on.) What happened yesterday was a tragedy, plain and simple. What happens to civilians every day in Iraq (and Darfur, Somalia, etc.) is also a tragedy. And my complaint is, it’s not covered.

Near as I can tell there have been three newsworthy stories in the past month:

• Anna Nicole Smith died.
• Don Imus is a racist, sexist gasbag.
• (As CNN so stylishly presented it with cutesy graphics:) The Massacre at Virginia Tech.

We certainly didn’t need more than 10-15 minutes on the first two items, and I’m not sure we needed constant live coverage of the third. Is it really too much to ask for a purported news channel to show news when it’s not showing programs that feature peoples’ opinions about news? Is it any wonder I’m jaded?

I turned on my shower at 6:43 this AM.

By 6:50 the water was tepid enough for me to enter the shower, after seven entire minutes of being ice cold. A few minutes later it was so hot that I had to adjust the temperature on the fly for a minute or so after that.

I know that we’ve gotten a new boiler put in for my part of the building. Does anyone know if this is normal behavior for a new hot water heater? Some kind of odd on-demand boiler that only heats water when you need it? Anyone? Anything?

It just seems inefficient, especially when you consider that We The People do not pay the water bill in this particular apartment complex, not to mention the wastefulness of my running water for no purpose for seven minutes.

Bah.