Washing my hat and some other stuff

At least one reader of this blog has expressed continual concern over the smelly hat I am often seen wearing. As winter is approaching, I’ll soon have to put it up till spring (I’ll pull it back out if I go to Central America this winter). To get my hat ready for storage, I recently washed it. Of course, it was an accident, but I’ll share the story along with a photo. I was hiking with my son and we’d stopped by a creek. I’d dropped my pack and was taking some photographs when all a sudden, the wind blew hard. My hat blew off and landed in the creek at the top of some falls. I sat my camera on a rock and tried to grab it as it was drawn down several small falls and got caught in a large eddy at the foot of the last one. Seeing my hat sink down the hole required drastic measures. I immediately pulled off my boots and socks, my shirt, and was getting ready to strip completely (this is in a remote area and no one was around) and plunge into the cold water (the hole to be at least 4 feet deep). Occasionally the hat would come back up, only to be pulled down again. But right before I got completely stripped, the creek gods showed mercy and my hat washed out. I didn’t have to embarrass myself in front of the wildlife by going completely buff, and only had to wade into ankle deep water to retrieve my hat. My son, at this point in the saga, grabbed my camera and snapped this picture.

For those of you who have read all this and are still with me, let me now change the subject and say that I am not always proud of the extreme dislike I have of our president. Although I believe that followers of Christ can disagree with one another (and I greatly disagree with lots of Bush’s ideas), I try not to hate him. But it’s hard. Very hard! Jane Smiley, author of A Thousand Acres in a recent blog at the Huffington Post reminds me why it is that I dislike the guy so much. She's harsh, but makes some good points and I encourage you to read it.

Finally, I have a request. Can you folks stop changing your urls? I’ve worked hard to update my blogroll, putting the correct URLs. Hopefully all the links are once again working.