2 thoughts

1: I just took out the garbage a few minutes ago.  When I threw the bag into the dumpster I heard something scurry out from behind it.  Looked down, sure enough there was a skunk walking among us.  Obviously I gave it a wide birth while I was on my way back in, because obviously I didn't want to get sprayed.  (They can also bite, if you really annoy them.)  One good thing about the new place, though, is that there's enough room out back to get stuff done regardless.  At my previous residence I saw a skunk near the trash cans one winter night and immediately made a u-turn.

2: I remember I was in college during the first World Trade Center attack.  You know, the one with the truck full of explosives that didn't actually do what it set out to do.  Not just in college, I was also on the school paper.  A story occurred to me regarding possible upticks in actions against people of Middle Eastern descent.  I thought getting some white supremacists on the record might lead to a good - or at least attention getting story - and I considered going undercover.  Bad, bad idea in retrospect, and it's good that it died from inertia.  While I'm fairly stoical about a lot of things, expressions of hatred do visibly get under my skin.  Also even though I'm entirely of Protestant British Isles heritage, some byplay of genetics has left me looking faintly Jewish.  Like both Jews and antisemites have noticed this.  So I wasn't going to cut it as a fake neo-Nazi.