17 MAR 03: THE END OF THE ROAD
President Bush gave his final ultimatum to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein tonight. It was such a Texan moment - about the only thing missing was someone singing the theme from the movie "High Noon."
(OK, CBS - if there's a 48-hour deadline on Saddam Hussein, why don't you suspend all programming and show "48 Hours" for awhile?)
I personally take no pleasure in seeing war come. I'm a Christian, who believes in Jesus Christ as "Prince of Peace." It gets confusing when my Pastor goes to other Bible verses, where God calls Himself a "Man of War." Is this a "good cop - bad cop" thing?
The church I attend loves to look forward to Christ's return, bringing 1,000 years of peace on earth. Yet my Pastor lately has been criticizing anti-war protesters as "nambies." He's stopped short of saying they're "namby-pamby" - which is strange, since no one in our congregation is named Pam.
The last few days have marked a different sort of end for me. I filed the city papers to close the LaughLine web site. They decided NOT to refund the 82 cents in property tax I had coming back.
(It's not easy to sit in the property tax office and tell the man, "I am a dot-com failure." But at least I didn't tell him I'm a failure in romance, too.)
As I walked through the Government Center basement parking lot, I couldn't help noticing a spot marked for a "Treasure Vehicle." [True!] This was news to me - that pirates dumped buried treasure in the Chattahoochee River years ago.
I've also been looking back a bit recently, as last week marked ten years since the blizzard of 1993. I'll always remember it for several reasons:
+ A former roommate trudging through the piles of snow from across the street, bundled up so much I almost didn't recognize him - all to borrow a cup of flour.
+ The exercise I received at sunset shoveling away show on my sidewalk and around my tires with a snow shovel SO BIG it probably will pick up half of the next snow in Columbus at one time.
+ Driving in the snow to Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport - and going jogging that evening IN MY SHORTS inside the long underground Transportation Mall. After the last couple of years, that's probably impossible now. Security guards would be waiting at every other door to ask questions.