Thinking for myself Too often I seem to push decision making off on other people, or just not get involved in thinking about something I should think about. Sometimes it is good to let someone else take charge, "delegating" is one of those things you are supposed to do. But sometimes it seems like I am trying to please too many people and am avoiding arguments at times when I should argue, or at least seek more information. And sometimes I'm just afraid to listen to myself, to make the hard choice I know I should. Sometimes there really may be no other option than what I'm doing. Am I being realistic, or just being scared?

A happy birthday time Yesterday our boy turned 3. This was the first birthday for him since he came home from Guatemela, and it turned out pretty well. Since it is the Fourth of July weekend and a lot of his friends are away, we didn't have a regular party yesterday (we're doing that later in the month). Instead, we took him to Davis Farmland, which is a great place for kids his age. He petted and fed calves, goats and sheep, played in the playgrounds, ate lots of ice cream and generally had a great time. We were there for more than 4 hours and it was very hard to get him to leave. His favorite present was a simple toy drum that he can wear around his neck and drum away all over the house. This is a big weekend for us; today one year ago was the first time we met him in Guatemala, as well as the day his adoption was final there. In some ways the year has flown by, but it also somehow seems impossible that he's only been here a year.

Silly planet Saturn is for certain an oddball planet. I mean, it looks like some kind of imaginary planet you'd see on a cartoon. And when you look at the pictures from the Cassini-Huygens probe, it looks like a fancy piece of computer-generated art. (I'm assuming here that the JPL and Nasa are not just computer generating this stuff!). The rings are too perfect to be real, but too bizarre for anyone to invent. To heck with Mars, this is a planet I'd really like to visit.