The awesome part is... Robert Heinlein is my favorite author!!

I am: Robert A. Heinlein Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.

Which science fiction writer are you?

I'm turning into a big ol' sap in my old age.

NBC Nightly News had a beautiful tribute to Peter Jennings tonight... and they showed Jennings' empty chair. That got me. My throat closed up and tears just poured down my face.

Peter Jennings will be sorely missed.

On another note...

I was accosted this morning by Jehovah's Witnesses. I was sitting on my couch watching Northwest Cable News, and I was still in my nightgown. A woman and her young son, I'd say about seven or eight years old, came to my door, both wearing black dress clothes, and the woman was probably six months pregnant. As they approached my door, I thought it was perhaps a neighbor of mine I'd met over the weekend as I walked around the block with Gracie. Once I opened the door, I realized that it wasn't the neighbor.

I also began to regret opening the door.

First, I was still in my nightgown, and thinking it WAS my neighbor, I didn't stop to grab my robe. Second, my visitors wanted to talk to me about natural disasters becoming more deadly, which must, of course, be a sign that the Apocalypse is near.

Could it be, possibly, that natural distasters are killing more people because there are more people on the planet?!

I let the boy go through his memorized patter, but when his mother asked if I wanted his magazine to read, she seemed shocked when I declined politely. She then went on to say that none of my neighbors seemed interested in this phenomenon.

Maybe she didn't get the email that Washington has the lowest church attendance of all fifty states.

I did accept the mini pamphlet the boy handed to me, which is how I found out they were Jehovah's Witnesses. I'd already ruled out Mormons since the boy was in a black shirt and black tie, instead of the requisite white shirt and black tie for Mormons, plus he was with his mother, and there was no bicycle in sight.

I do NOT like Jehovah's Witnesses. Let me rephrase that: I do not like their beliefs. Individual Witnesses are probably fine to be friends with and hang out, but it is certainly not a belief system I will embrace as long as I can draw breath.

Here's why: When we lived in Virginia, my friend downstairs babysat the son of a woman her husband worked for. We'll call the son N, and the woman A. N was about twelve years old at this time and looked rather like an Irish version of Harry Potter. His parents are divorced, and his mother A had fallen in love with a man H at her church.

I always sort of raised my eyebrows regarding their religion (they were Witnesses) because when my friend's daughter celebrated her birthday, N could not participate in the festivities because Witnesses don't do birthdays. But if that's his family's belief, there wasn't anything I could say.

However, his mother A started getting in trouble with the church. The man she had fallen in love with, H, was divorced from his first wife due to infidelity. He was on "probation," if you will, with the church and could not date anyone in the church because of it. A and H were passionately in love and could not deny their feelings, so they began to see each other on the sly, without the church's knowledge.

I could not understand why someone would choose to be part of a church that would get that involved in one's private life.

Then came the kicker which solidified my dislike of the Jehovah's Witnesses' church. The church began to suspect that A and H were seeing each other, and they began to go after N, trying to get him to inform on his mother because it was "obvious" that his mother was "sinning."

What kind of church would corner a 12-year-old boy in order to get him to inform on the only parent that was involved in his life?? They kept pressuring him to tell them whether H was over at their home at all, and whether he knew if A and H were seeing each other. If he didn't tell what he knew, they told him, he and his mother would be excommunicated from the church.

It got to the point where A and H would only see each other when N wasn't around so N wouldn't have to feel caught between his mother and the church.

Had it been me, I would have told the church where to shove it because the relationships I have in my life should be between the person in question, me, and God. NO ONE ELSE. Besides, I thought the Christian God was a God of love, not of deceit and suspicion and punishment.

And on a completely unrelated note: Ricky Williams is back, playing for the Miami Dolphins. Couldn't he just STAY retired?!