An eclectic day

Mt. St. Helens had a minor eruption, I went boomeranging, and the vice-presidential debates happened today.

Mt. St. Helens has been building toward a sizable eruption for a couple of weeks. There have been frequent tremors and a lava dome has been building within the crater. There have also been steam releases in the last couple of days. The eruption today was a pretty sizable release of steam and ash but it apperars that it isn't done yet.

I have been boomeranging since 1985 although admittedly, I haven't done it a lot in several years. I started out when my friend Jacques decided that we needed to go to Toys-R-Us to get a frisbee. When we were there we happened to see a boomerang and he decided to buy it. We followed the instructions, took it out into a field, through it and watched it crash about 30 yards out. After several tries, we had to find out whether it was the boomerang or us so we went to the library and looked up everything we could find out about boomerangs. One of the first things we found was a book by Ben Ruhe called Boomerang: How to make, throw, and catch. Ben was considered the godfather of American boomeranging and through his book we learned that the boomerang we had was junk. We got a design and started making them and continued looking for new sources. In looking, we happened to come across an active thrower in Delaware, OH by the name of Chet Snouffer and a guy in Louisiana that put out a catalog called the Boomerang Man. Chet, it turns out, was the world boomerang champion and was having a workshop about a month after we called him. We obviously had to go. The Boomerang Man just had a lot of boomerangs and he got a lot of our money. For about three years we were very heavily into boomerangs. We bought wood and had a boomerang factory in Jacques' basement. We also went to several tournaments. I was never any good but a couple of my friends were on the national team one year. Nowadays I have a few hanging on my office wall and I make a point of going out to throw at least once a year. I have about 40 complete boomerangs and several broken ones.

And now for the Vice-Presidential debate. While I thought Edwards one, I was annoyed that neither could stick to the point of the question and both seemed to be on a single mantra. I was actually kind of impressed that Cheney was able to keep his cool even when Edwards scored some very sharp points. I was very impressed at the very pointed questions that Gwen Ifils asked. Hopefully the Edwards win will extend the good guys run of luck and they may actually be able to show a lead in the polls.

And I will end this here and wish everyone who reads this a good night.