December 26, 2002: So here's what I'm wondering about on this day after Christmas. North Korea is ramping up its nuclear facilty that can create plutonium, and its ramping up its rhetoric, too. Seems to me that North Korea is a lot more dangerous to the U.S. than Iraq and is blatantly doing what Iraq is merely accused without proof of doing. So what's happening? Is Bush calling for regime change? Not a bit of it. He's off on vacation and not calling for anything. As usual, I don't get it.

December 25, 2002: Merry Christmas to all! I got a lot of nice gifts from Santa, and from my family as well. My son took some of my rapidly deteriorating cassette tapes, cleaned them up and burned them onto CDs. Some of the stuff is very hard to find these days, like the two Billy Ward and the Dominoes tapes from Holland, so I was glad to get it. He also fixed up my Kingston Trio STEREO CONCERT PLUS tape, and it sounds great. I got some DVDs, too, and lots of other great stuff, including a book from my daughter. The book allows me to generate Shakespearean insults. Maybe I can use it somehow in a novel.

December 22, 2002: We were told of Laura Higgins' murder last night. She's the youngest daughter of Marjorie and Roy Powell, two members of our Sunday School class, and she was found shot to death at a warehouse owned by Perry Homes. She was a model-home decorator for Perry and had gone by to check on a piece of furniture. Her purse, keys, and cell phone were taken. I don't know how parents ever recover from something like that, and my sister, whose daughter was murdered, certainly never will. I have no idea why someone would have been hanging around the warehouse, but my theory is that he's the kind of guy the death penalty was meant for. I hope they catch him soon.