We’re back! The trip home was thankfully uneventful. I slept for 11 hours last night and feel terrific. What a trip! I’ve spent some time this afternoon going through my photos and picked out some of the best. Also, while I didn’t have much time (or interest) over the last week to post while in Jordan, I’ve included photos of Petra, Kerak & Jerash in this ‘best of’ collection. These shots are edited and are mostly of the monuments and sights. Very postcardy. But that’s what I like to do.

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Aswan is the southernmost big city in Egypt. We took the train there from Luxor in order to see the remote site of Abu Simbel on the Sudanese border and to cruise down the Nile in a felucca sailboat for a few days.
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More pics inside…

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Whew. It’s kind of a blur (not the photo). I met this friendly lass with a beer the size of her head and later on ended up in a white stretch limo with an obnoxious gang of malcontents. Was a good birthday.

We’re at the Greek Theater in Berkeley for a Bloc Party show.

Elyse and I are about to step into A Scanner Darkly. Review to follow.

Elyse and I biked out to the ocean today, taking advantage of a perfect summer day. We’re in gg park now watching 100′s of people swing dance near the DeJoung. Happy father’s day!

Just trying out an updated version of WordPress. This photo was taken from my phone a couple of days ago (over Colorado) on my way back from Kansas City. This post is from my phone as well. I’m trying out a moblogging plugin that resizes images I email from my device. Pretty cool.

Tom Friedman of the Times:
“At one level this election was about nothing. None of the real problems facing the nation were really discussed. But at another level, without warning, it actually became about everything. Partly that happened because so many Supreme Court seats are at stake, and partly because Mr. Bush’s base is pushing so hard to legislate social issues and extend the boundaries of religion that it felt as if we were rewriting the Constitution, not electing a president. I felt as if I registered to vote, but when I showed up the Constitutional Convention broke out.

The election results reaffirmed that. Despite an utterly incompetent war performance in Iraq and a stagnant economy, Mr. Bush held onto the same basic core of states that he won four years ago – as if nothing had happened. It seemed as if people were not voting on his performance. It seemed as if they were voting for what team they were on.”

And Bill Bennett:
“Having restored decency to the White House, President Bush now has a mandate to affect policy that will promote a more decent society, through both politics and law. His supporters want that, and have given him a mandate in their popular and electoral votes to see to it. Now is the time to begin our long, national cultural renewal (“The Great Relearning,” as novelist Tom Wolfe calls it) — no less in legislation than in federal court appointments. It is, after all, the main reason George W. Bush was reelected.”

Shawn and I made a fateful journey to Slough this week. Our time there was packed with high adventure, including several trips to the Slough bus station and hour upon hour of usability testing. We made it in to London for a few pints at one point, but the highlight of our time was studying the local inhabitants of Slough in an attempt to pick up some office management tips.
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