This collection of entries is from November 22, 2003.
So both Carol and I had a bad night trying to sleep. Don't know why, we just didn't sleep. Carol went to work this morning (it's her busy season). I got up and just hit Blogshares for a while. I had errands to run today and I was putting it off for a little bit. My internet connection has been a little "iffy" the last couple of days - I think there's a router inside the Comcast infrastructure that's a little flaky, causing some connectivity issues every 5-10 minutes (at least that's what it looks like on a tracert). So, manipulating my Blogshares account takes a hell of a lot longer than I wanted. I caught up on my TiVo viewing while hitting refresh in my browser for a few hours.
When I went out, it was foggy & misty. I had to go to Home Depot to get lightbulbs (the lights on the front of the house are out) and find some hickory chips for this week's turkey adventures (I barbecue a turkey every year - you can see it all happen in last year's blog entries).
I pulled into the parking lot and saw that the PETsMART next door to Home Depot had a dog rescue group running an adoption day. I git what I needed at Home Depot and then went over to check out the dogs - all mutts, but all look just "sweet". Inside there was a dog training session going on with all puppies. Not real young puppies, but older puppies (definitely not older dogs). Everyone was just sitting in their chairs, not saying a word and not moving, and the puppies are all interacting and chasing each other and just having a grand time.
Since Carol was working, I grabbed a soup and sandwich at Panera. That's when I realized that no matter how gloomy a day it was outside (it was dark along with that fog and mist), the people here were genuinely nice. Not that forced-customer-satisfaction-nice, this felt real. There was this young female worker that walked by me while I was waiting for my order. She was getting some water at the fountain area and she asked me how I was doing today. She had this great smile on her face and it took me by surprise and made me smile and I realized that I all of a sudden felt better about my day. I was tired as all hell, but emotionally I felt better. Sounds weird, but I'm glad I went to Panera for lunch!
I realize that perhaps many of you out there may not have been around 40 years ago. I was. I remember I was in first grade and the principal was playing the radio over the P.A. system so that the school could hear what was going on in Dallas. I remember going home early from school. I don't remember much else, except watching the funeral cortège on our TV a few days later. I guess when you're 6 years old, you don't have a good grasp of the enormity of this event. Hell, I barely understood what a President was.
I have a tendency of believing that conspiracies exist in some situations. Sorry, people, I don't believe it about this one. Yes there's some oddities about what happened, but I think there was a lone gunman.
I wonder, around this time every year, what would have happened if the event in Dealey Plaza never happened. How much different America - and possibly the world - would be?