Abby and I just returned from a week-long trip to see Abby’s daughter Chele, her husband Tom, and our grandson Paul. We both had a great time and shot tons of images. Trip report to follow.

The only quirky thing about the travel was that Transportation Security Administration workers confiscated a “knife” I inadvertantly packed in my carry-on. It was pretty silly, since it was the tiny knife that folds out from a nail file kit. I didn’t care, but come on, TSA. Richard Barron is going to bring down Western civilization with that? (A sidebar would be to affirm that the 9/11 hijackings didn’t rely on weapons as the main means of control; they were strongarm takeovers. And of course, that card has been played from the terrorism hand, and can never be played again.)

In the news and in the streets all week was the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial in Florida. He was acquitted of unlawfully killing Trayvon Martin. You can read more about it all over the net, so I’ll get to the meat of it: Americans are spoiled crybabies who stomp and scream when they don’t get their way, and this is one of those times. The country is on fire with calls for protests, and exactly none of those calling for protests sat on the jury. If you believe in our legal system and democracy itself, which most of you do not, you have to accept the judgement the court.

While in Baltimore this week, I had these dreams:

• We are climbing a mountain when an avalanche causes a shift in a river. We are isolated with no hope of rescue. Efforts are made to survive, including cannibalizing my office. As we do this, a crew shows up to remodel. One reporter moves a large cabinet because he says there will be so many reporters there won’t be room for his desk. We find the crew has stripped my office walls to the the studs and have moved everything. They don’t seem to know who I am. They offer me a choice of a Nikon D80 or an N90, both of which are insulting to me.
• I am at a street festival to celebrate a train making a u-turn on Broadway. Giant inflatable u-turn signs are brought in. At some point Abby accuses me of sleeping with a former coworker. The two way radio used by the train is set to the wrong channel so we hear my sports editor ordering at a local restaurant.
• I invite Chele and her entire office to move to Oklahoma to open a new gym called “Horse Ain’t Us.” The commercial for it is narrated by Homer Simpson.