depriving the dictator's children this christmas...

Well, the US has banned flat panel tv screens and ipods from being exported to north korea. way to make a tough stand against an evil dictator, US gov! how will they be able to drown out the sights and sounds of the children they are starving if they don't have liquid crystal diplays and a vast array of musical selections at their fingertips? this will surely break them! i mean... i'm glad they have started something...but it needs to go much further...much much much further.

ahem. in diametrically opposite news, we received the World Vision gift catalogue in the mail and it is the cutest thing ever. i shall paste in the link here as well because you totally need to go look at the adorableness therein. on the red nav pane to the left they have links for all the gifts--the sheep and goats are so frickin cute, i was dying. they have one gift where you can give a cow, a goat, and a sheep and they called it "the big three" of milk providers. you can also give a tilapia fish pond for a very reasonable amount of money, so that might be where i finally end up. of course, for one of the donations you get this little plush pig that is uber cute...and owen might dig it. hmm. under Nourishing Food there is a place where you give 50 dollars and it gets matched 9 times by government grants so that your gift ends up being like 450$ worth of food.

in other news: every day when i drive to work i drive through what is arguably the most beautiful stretch of highway in san diego--the 163 as it goes into downtown. it's like they took a swatch of new england and transplanted it. there is so much foliage that you can't see the masses of human dwellings on either side, and the middle part has this lush grass dotted with little red flowers and large, shady trees, and almost every day i wish i could pull over and frolic in it.