Journal of a Sabbatical

March 26, 1999

MiGs fall out of the sky

Today's SFOR Press Briefing

NATO Home Page

March 26, 1999
Plum Island
2 killdeers
2 American tree sparrows
110 Canada geese
18+ black ducks
15+ redwing blackbirds
1 American robin
3 horned grebes
1 common loon
assorted common grackles and mourning doves
11 white tailed deer

I had jury duty today in the Lawrence District Court. The new courthouse is pretty nice. I didn't get to be on a jury. They had about 3 times as many jurors as they needed. There were only 3 cases scheduled to go to trial today and two of them settled before they even impaneled a jury. The third one was a small claims case for which they did impanel a jury but my group of jurors didn't get called for that one (there were three groups). The rest of us got sent home around noon.

I was thinking about Bobby in Bosnia this afternoon again, wondering if the Serbs would go after SFOR in Bosnia in retaliation for the air strikes, and then I turned on my radio to listen to All Things Considered and the lead story was about the 2 MiG 29's shot down over Bosnia. Am I psychic or what?

Last night I was talking with some of the group members after the meeting and they thought my fear that the Serbs would go after SFOR in Bosnia was unfounded. They also thought Bosnia is a lot further away from Kosovo than it actually is. I'll grant that my other fear - that an all-out Balkans war will interfere with my plans to go to Hungary this spring - is pretty groundless. And besides that, every place in the world is dangerous.

So after jury duty and worrying about BiB, I decided coffee from Fowle's and birds were the only thing that would cure my headache. I drank a large coffee while sitting at the boat ramp watching goldeneyes, who seem to be mostly paired off now and not doing much competitive displaying. After I finished my coffee I was irresistibly drawn to the refuge, where now that it was getting toward sunset the deer were out in force. I counted 11 without binoculars. There were probably more.

This just in: I exchanged e-mail with BiB. He says he's seen "s*** that most Americans see on CNN, and then some!!!" I will now ramp down the official elder sister worry policy by one order of magnitude.