You know what? Marty Ozinga is rich because he owns a big concrete company. I'd rather be represented by someone who knows how to run a business than by someone whose primary qualification for office is that she's been in it for God alone knows how long.
If memory serves, Debbie Halvorson unseated a family member from that post s few election cycles ago. Flora Ciarlo--a "second" cousin of mine--used to be our state rep. (She's my parents' niece.)
I have no idea what Ozinga's stance on the "third airport" deal is, but Halvorson "voted against it before she voted for it"--she got elected on a "no new airport" platform, and has since changed her mind. If Ozinga opposes the plan, he's got a good wedge issue, because a lot of locals don't like it.
...I don't care what his position on the airport is. The only Democrat I've heard of supporting the idea of tax cuts and national defense is John F. Kennedy, and he's been dead since 1963--I won't vote for any of 'em until they clean up their collective act.
* * *
I was mulling a couple of story ideas and had to stop myself before I got too pessimistic.
The story I was thinking of was set in 2055, and I was thinking about a doctor using a medical scanner not unlike a tricorder from Star Trek; and I thought, "You know, that may be a bit too high-tech."
Then I thought, "Doofus, that's almost forty years away. Right now, you've got an MP3 player which can be concealed in one hand, holds two hours' worth of music, and can play it all in high-fidelity stereo on one AAA battery. That was impossible 40 years ago. Okay? IMPOSSIBLE." (And in fact it's probably more like four hours of music.)
I mean, in 1968, a transistor radio smaller than a pack of cigarettes was possible, though I don't know how often it was done; but portable devices that could store music and play it back were bulky, cumbersome, heavy, and power hogs.
Shoot, Sony's original Walkman was a revolutionary device thirty years ago.
But it made me realize that I--if anything--was ascribing too little power to the medical scanner, but that was fine. It was possible, I realized, that in 40 years' time, technology would be sophisticated enough to manage it.
* * *
We went to Olive Garden for dinner this evening, and it was a real treat.
The food was delicious, first of all; I had a chicken dish that I can't recall the name of, and the sauce was perfect--it literally could not have been any better than it was: adding anything else to it would have spoiled it. The salad dressing was strong but not overpowering; I should have tasted it before applying it, but I'm used to italian dressing that's weak. This was not, but it also didn't taste like GARLIC/VINEGAR/SALT EXPLOSION!!! like many italian dressings do. So the dregs of my salad were a bit heavy on salad dressing.
The restaurant's sound system was playing a nice mix of "old favorites" and Mom really liked it. I don't mind that music, either, and in fact I find it a lot more conducive to enjoying a meal than the "rock/pop mix" you get at restaurants like TGIFriday's, Applebee's, Red Lobster, or Outback. (And it's definitely better than "R&B/Soul" that you get at some places, blech.)
So here's a big "thumbs up" for Olive Garden.