House Guest

Bill and I have a house pest guest this week, or rather I do. Bill's away on business for a couple of days. My nephew came to jolly old New England for a visit. We did the touristy things including a whale watch on which we saw more whales than I can count. They were having a very active feeding day, so we lucked out.

We did the trolley tour, stopped by the USS Constitution and saw some truly big guns. My nephew is a Marine so he was fascinated by the ship and wondered how the ship's sailors had landed such a cushy berth.

I won't go into details, but my nephew has adopted some strange ideas for a Marine. He is somewhat pacifistic; for instance, hoping that we can solve our terrorist problems with diplomacy even though there is proof that we cannot. I agree peace is better than war, but it takes two to have peace and only one to have war.

Another thing my nephew has swallowed hook, line, and sinker is global warming. He dragged me to see Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's movie on that topic. Talk about preachy. Cotton Mather and the old puritans had nothing on Al Gore when he goes into his full preacher mode. I've read up on pros and cons of global warming. I believe there's something to it, but I think it's not caused by man. Man may contribute a small amount, maybe, but we are not the cause. THe world has gone through hot and cold cycles and will continue to do so over time.

Try to get that idea into the shaved head of a young Marine. He's also religious. He gets it from his mother. He won't play poker or watch it on TV--aaaarrrrgggghhhhh. (I'm glad my family doesn't read this blog. I'd be in trouble.)

Well, on a positive note he is a crack rifle shot. He's never shot a pistol before (his mother), so I will be taking him out to the range today. I'll let you know how that goes.