We're in Chattanooga, TN. This town is highly recommended, for the following reasons:

1. The hotel has Internet access.
2. We had dinner at Outback Steakhouse, which generally doesn't sound like a very promising start to a sentence, but the food was good and we met a wide variety of fascinating people.
3. It is a fun word to say. Chattanooga. Chattanooga. It is like all the best parts of chatting plus all the best parts of noogies.

The subject line above refers to the start of The Extremely Secret Project that I'm doing with my brother beginning on January 1st. Further information about this project--which you may all find hideously annoying but I think given time you will begin to like it, although admittedly I have been wrong before--will be posted on this blog as soon as Hank and I have talked and decided we can post about it.

And finally: There are 354 days (usually) in the Islamic calendar. So how come everyone got together and decided that Saddam "I Am A Total Asshole And Would Belong To Team Karen If I Were Still Alive" Hussein should die on an outrageously provocative day? Is there an intentional desire to increase violence between people of different religious backgrounds? I can't think of any other reason to kill a guy on a day some people think is the start of Eid al-Adha and others think isn't. I realize this isn't a political blog, and that it certainly isn't a blog about Islamic politics, but this was an awful decision by the Iraqi government. Why not yesterday? Why not three days ago? Why not a week from now? It's starting to look like the Iraqi government is on Team Karen, too.