I saw the headlines on the newspapers this morning: Tolls to pay for upgrades to the 520 floating bridge could be as high as $6.85 for a round trip. This thought came to me: This may not be what Tim Eiman and his supports want, but it is exactly what they asked for.

What the Eiman supporters want, of course, is for someone to build roads for free. Since even they know that’s unlikely, what they ask for is to be taxed only for things they plan to use. (I drive to work - why should I pay to build light rail? I live in Kirkland - why should I pay for street repairs in Renton?, etc.)

So, here we have it. Repairs to a state highway funded only by those who use it, with no taxes involved. The cost could have been divided among the millions of tax-payers in Washington, but it is to be divided among the thousands who use the bridge.

Yes, I think a nearly four dollar toll is high. Yes, I would have been willing to pay more taxes to fund the project. But The State has given its citizens what they asked for.

Last night, after watching The Bothersome Man (which Phillip had borrowed from the library), I went to bed early.

The alarm sounded this morning at 5:30. I got dressed for playtime, and Phillip went to the bathroom. I decided to get a little more sleep before Phillip returned.

I woke up. Phillip was getting dressed. The boys were quiet inside the cage. I put on my glasses. Phillip was putting on work clothes, not playtime clothes. I looked at the clock. It was about 6:30.

“Did I sleep through playtime?” I asked. “You can say that,” replied Phillip. “I’m going to work. The alarm is going to go on in about three minutes. Don’t be late.”

Recently, Phillip made a unilateral decision to move playtime from 11:00 at night to 5:30 in the morning. The Boys seem to like morning playtime better. They are late risers at night, and seem to have more energy in the morning, right before bedtime. (That seems kind of backwards to me, but they are sugar gliders.)

My alarm is usually set to 5:30 anyway. So now, Phillip gets up a little earlier and I lose a little time online. Playtime tends to be shorter in the morning, but Sonar and Max tend to make more of the morning time.

Phillip and I saw The Dark Knight at The Cinerama (the best movie theater in Seattle) yesterday afternoon. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it. Yes, the movie lives up to the hype. I’d even say that the movie is better than the hype. This is one action-packed superhero movie, but it is also full of ponderings on the value of hope, the basis of human nature, and what exactly being a hero requires. I felt it fully justified its two-and-a-half hour length.

Yes, Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker was a masterpiece, but I don’t think enough is being said about Aaron Eckhart’s wonderfully complex job as Harvey Dent.

(An interesting bit of trivia from Internet Movie Database: The Dark Knight was the first Batman movie without the name “Batman” in the title.)

When I was a kid, I didn’t read many superhero comics, so the recent trend of superhero movies has reminded me of my ignorance of the genre. What I knew about superheroes came from TV - Superman, Spiderman, The Green Lantern, The Hulk, and Batman. I knew of other superheroes: Captain America, The Flash, Aquaman, and so on, but I didn’t know much about their histories. I admit that I’d never heard of X-Men before the movie came out. I had to ask Phillip if the movie’s origin of Iron Man was true to its comic book version. I had no idea. All this being said, Batman has always been my favorite superhero. (I like the old style of calling him “The Bat-man,” by the way.)

Maybe Batman is my favorite because he isn’t, technically, a superhero. (Iron Man isn’t either, but Batman came first.) Batman wasn’t genetically altered by radiation, he isn’t a mutant, and he isn’t from another planet. Batman is a private detective with weapons.

Superman, possibly the most popular superhero, is my least favorite of the big names. Superman seems rather one-dimensional to me: a character of pure goodness, an odd sense of American jingoism, with unstoppable powers, and only one weakness. And how, exactly, does Superman fly?

The Dark Knight, along with Batman Begins before it, answered one of my big Batman questions: Who built the Batcave and the Batmobile? Did Bruce Wayne construct them himself, or are there groups of construction workers and automotive workers walking around Gotham City sworn to secrecy? Batman Begins answered that question nicely, but only to a point. During the big car chase in Batman Begins, I commented to Phillip, “Wouldn’t it be funny if someone at Wayne Industries saw the chase on TV, and remembered working on that project?” Well, something similar to that did happen in The Dark Knight. But then the movie took the question a step further. The citizens of Gotham City, as portrayed in The Dark Knight, are not stupid. It wouldn’t take a genius to eventually figure out Batman’s true identity - The Dark Knight acknowledges that, but explores the question of “What would happen if someone did figure it out?”

I was also pleased that the Gotham City Police were not bumbling idiots who would never be able to catch someone like The Joker without Batman in town. This latest Batman is a hero, but he is not a lone savior of justice.

Oh - and the special effects in The Dark Knight were amazing.

This is the name I give today to the marketers from Greenpeace, Childrens International, Clearwire, LaRouche For President, etc, etc, who aggressively approach me on my walks home from work: Human Popups. Some of them may be good causes, but they are as annoying as popup advertisements on web pages - so annoying that I don’t want to listen to what they have to say. It’s a shame, really. It makes me want Seattle’s aggressive panhandling law to protect me like a physical form of popup blocking software.

I’ve written before that this blog gets a lot (comparatively) of hits from people looking for information on Frank Llyod Wright’s Fallingwater. (This blog is not about Fallingwater.) Now I’ve found out that some other blog (which I won’t name because it’s probably a spam-generator) has linked to this blog, listing it as a travel resource - because I recently wrote, “Maybe all of my dreams are about traveling.” (This blog is not a travel resource.)

I find this very funny.

I found the last of the original carnivorous plants dead, yellow. and on its side in the soil, this morning. We don’t know what happened. Was it too much water, or too little? Too much light, or not enough? What was it?

Meanwhile, the plants from Indoor Sun Shoppe seem to be doing all right.

In the dream I remember from this morning: I was in a college bookstore, buying the books I’d need for the new quarter. I was thinking that, instead of buying the same English books every quarter and then selling them back and then buying the same ones back the next quarter, perhaps I should consider keeping the books. I found one of the books I’d need. I recognized it as the one I had last quarter. I couldn’t find any of the other books I’d need. I wandered around the book store, until I found the line for the cashier. It was very long. I couldn’t remember if I’d bought the book in my arms. I opened the cover. The price was penciled in as $9.00. I hadn’t bought it yet. I wondered if I could sneak out without paying for it. I realized that I’d forgotten to find out where my new dorm room is.

I was in the lobby of a dormitory. I was waiting for someone to show up to tell me where my dorm room is and who my new roommates will be. I could see that outside, it was pouring down rain. I decided that I was going to lie to my new roommates and say that I had lots of friends, but they had all decided to go to another college, while I had decided to remain loyal to my old school.

End of dream.

We hadn’t done any geocaching since our stay in Port Townsend. We’d dropped off one of the Travel Bugs we’d picked up that weekend in one of our own caches, but we still had a TB and a geocoin that we’d been holding on to past the accepted 14 days.

I was itchin’ to cache. I wanted to go out after Phillip’s dental appointment this morning, but I was torn between going after another page in the King County Thomas Guide Challenge (I do not want that project to die) and going after some local caches. There were four geocaches hidden recently, by the same cachers, in nearby Genesee Park that interested me, and there was a certain evil cache on the UW campus that has so far stumped us.

Phillip didn’t feel like geocaching, so I went out solo this afternoon. I decided to do those four new caches in Genesee Park. All four caches were listed as small, but that had had TBs and coins in them. I wasn’t sure if the TB we had would fit into any of them, but I brought it and the coin with me.

I asked our TomTom to give me a route to Genesee Park - no specific cache, just the park. It was the first time I had ever used the TomTom without Phillip navigating. It worked perfectly, and guided me to a parking lot in Genesee Park without incident. I love that thing.

After I parked, I turned on the Magellan, and discovered that one of the four caches was less than 300 feet from where I’d parked. I searched around likely spots for a small cache container to be hidden. I couldn’t find it.

I looked at the list of closest caches. Two of the four caches were south of me, one .2 miles away and the other closer than that, and the third was .35 miles north of me. (Genesee is a big park.) I decided to go for the farthest cache - the one to the north. I decided to walk to it, instead of driving. It was a nice day for a walk.

The second cache, the one to the north, was very easy to find. For one thing, it was huge - larger than some large geocaches I’ve seen. For another thing, it wasn’t very well hidden. But I wasn’t entirely sure I’d found the right geocache. The coordinates matched, but it was much too large to be “small” - and the cache owners had neglected to put the cache name on either the container or the log book. I decided to believe I’d found the right cache, and I signed the log. The cache, if it was the right one, had lasted about two weeks, but I was concerned about the longevity of it. It was so large and so out in the open, how long will it be until it gets muggled? Should I risk dropping someone’s Travel Bug in it? (The cache container was certainly big enough for the TB, plus maybe fifty more of the same size.) I was aware, however, that these new caches had been getting a lot of activity since they were published, so I risked dropping the TB. I will be watching the cache until the TB gets picked up.

I returned to the first cache and, guessing that I was looking for something large, I looked in places I hadn’t looked before. I still didn’t find it.

I went after the farther geocache to the south. It was the same size (and same type container) as the second one. It was a little better hidden, but I found it quickly. I knew then that I’d found the correct geocache to the north.

I then went after the other geocache to the south. It was the same size and type of container has the previous two. It took more work to find, but not much more.

I was then convinced, based on the size and accessibility of the other three caches, that the first geocache had been muggled. I had looked everywhere for it, and none of the others had been nearly as difficult to find. The geocache was so close to our car, however, that I decided to look one more time before moving on.

I came at the first cache from a different angle than I had the previous two times I’d looked for it. This time, there was a geocacher, someone known to me, at the cache, signing the log. I signed the log, too. (There are a few sticklers who will argue that I hadn’t actually found the cache - the other geocacher did - and therefore it shouldn’t count. I am not a stickler for the geocaching rules. Besides, I am confident that, coming from the angle I did, I would have soon found the cache myself.)

I decided to do a little more geocaching. I looked at the list of nearest caches, and saw a micro about a mile away. Rather than ask our TomTom to me to the coordinates (which I hadn’t entered into it beforehand), I decided to ask our Magellan eXplorist for a street route. I was feeling a bit nostalgic for the Magellan street routing, for some reason. It got me to the cache, which I found easily, without problem. I remember when the eXplorist street routing was a giant advancement from using our Garmin point-to-point. This afternoon, the eXplorist street routing looked absolutely primitive, compared to the TomTom.

I went after one more micro cache, using the TomTom to guide me. I found the cache quickly, and decided to go home.

Six Finds, no DNFs, an enjoyable level of mishaps, and I met a fellow geocacher in the field. It was a good day.

Patient scheduled a 9:00 appointment yesterday, with his doctor, for “an urgent matter” (the patient’s words). Patient arrived one and a half hours late for his appointment. Patient got upset when the doctor couldn’t see him. Patient got even more upset when the triage nurse didn’t have another appointment with the doctor until 1:00 the next day (today). Patient accepted it, finally, and left. Less than a half hour later, Patient returned and complained that he needed to see a doctor sooner than one o’clock - it was urgent. The triage nurse cancelled the 1:00 appointment, and gave Patient an 11:00 appointment (today) with a different doctor.

At 11:30 this morning, Patient called and said that he wasn’t going to make it to his 11:00 appointment, and needed another appointment. The triage nurse gave Patient a 2:30 appointment today.

Patient arrived at 2:50 for his 2:30 appointment, and the doctor agreed to see him - after the doctor had seen the 3:00 patient.

At 3:15, Patient was complaining to the front desk that he’d been waiting a long time for his appointment.