And what was iffier than dealing with food, sports, and sex?

WORD COUNT: 17,555

And what is my readership for today going to be, using the last sentence I've written so far in my National Novel Writing Month story “The Judgment of London”? What made me laugh when I typed that sentence out this morning was that sex is not something I usually talk about casually. And just so you know, I usually don't – but sometimes you can be tap, tap, tapping away on the keyboard and something just works! I was going to start an entry here yesterday NOT with a paean for Veterans Day but rather with a character whom I will never look at the same way again. Jafar, the main villain of Disney's Aladdin franchise, has been appearing live as a principal villain in the ABC series Once Upon A Time in Wonderland – less colorful, but the past week's episode of that show detailed an origin of who you probably know as the once-grand vizier of Agrabah.

Jafar is the illegitimate son of the Sultan, and he was cast out and sought to learn “dark magic” to get his revenge on his father. And you thought the Skywalkers had family issues … anyway, an interesting implication of that is, that since ABC is also owned by Disney, a really strange implication of that is that Jafar is Jasmine's half-brother. So in the scene in the original movie where Jasmine kisses Jafar to distract him from Aladdin's attempt to regain the Genie's lamp and Abu and Iago take a moment from pounding each other to show how grossed out they are … hey, they might know something we don't! (And let me step back for a minute and say how proud I am and respectful I hope I am of those who've served in our armed forces … alas, I was not able to do this for medical reasons and it is my one big regret in this life.)

And apparently for my graduating class, there has always been the Grateful Dead. Ok, that's for the high school graduating class of 1983 (whose students would have been born in 1965; I was born six years later) the closest one to me in a series of ten lists produced and released in Tom McBride and Ron Nief's The Mindset Lists of American History (ISBN 9780470876237), a way developed by two Beloit (Wisconsin) College professors at the turn of the century to keep our references current. They release a new one every August which can be found online and has gotten really popular even among the non-collegiate set. BTW, grateful dead was originally a type of ballad and Jerry Garcia and company opened a dictionary when they were trying to decide what to call themselves and happened on this word! See, you read and you pick up a little bit of everything ...

So this weekend when I was not expanding my word count I was out sharing the Shaklee opportunity with people I know from church and around town – Friday night worked out great when Tara and I met a friend (now I just need to do some research comparing the price of individual vitamins to our Vitalizer package – I figure if I write this out I will remember to do it!) while Martha was home with the kids, though she was unwell. Saturday afternoon I brought Sarah with me to meet Tara and another friend I know from church who walked across the street (you can still do that right now, none of that s-stuff on the ground) to meet us and for the time in a long while I got to buy our guest a cup of coffee; it's what I always offer to do, but usually they've got something by the time I arrive!

We should have excellent results … this Sunday morning everybody met downstairs and we received a presentation on God's Global Barnyard, a program to raise money to supply animals for poor families in other countries to provide income by their use, not just as a food source. This got really fun when we got marshmallows, uncooked spaghetti, pipe cleaners, straws and time to build our own barn with it – I think the Giffords alone are prepared to start their own architecture school, our issue (Robert, Sharon, Breanna who's back home!, Josceline, Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey, and I) was that we built the barn too big, so when Darla snapped a photo of it on our table, two seconds later it collapsed. Seriously, I walked around and saw some great farms. People didn't take those home of course; they took home banks their kids could assemble and collect money in it until next month.

And now to writ, David