Monday, Monday...

The house is slowly taking shape. We find ourselves rethinking furniture placement, and room usage.
Perhaps the book cases could fit in the Marley room (newly de-Marley'd) if we tear open the ceiling to allow the bookcases to be tilted into place.

Perhaps the large mahogany office furniture would work downstairs. (And it does...we feared it would make the room look heavy and dark, instead it defined area and added a rich feel. Wish we had realized this when the movers were here to schlep the heavy pieces down the stairs. Laura and Bernie made it happen with the use of a dolly and determination.)

With the office now downstairs, the room upstairs that was to be the office is now to be ?????

Perhaps the Marley room could work as a hat/sewing room, what with the tile floor being so much more sewing friendly and all?

Decisions, decisions.

Sunday it snowed about 8 inches. The three of us enjoyed sitting at the kitchen table watching birds visit the newly installed bird feeder. Laura got some great pictures and promises that she will post them on her blog soon.

She is flying back to San Diego this afternoon. Always hard to see her go, and she wished that she could have stayed longer as she was simply brimming with great ideas (such as using our single oak nightstand for extra storage inside my closet) and loves making a house a home anyway. Talented girl that she is...we hope she will have her own place very soon.

During the night more snow fell, and we received an additional foot of snow. Bernie got up and shoveled out our cars which now need to stay in the driveway until we can sell/give/place the garaged items that we won't be needing.

How funny that the heaviest of all the snowfalls happened as soon as the garage was full, and that snow is predicted to fall daily for the rest of the week.

Well, such is life, and it is a good life too. I read the news, and realize how quickly days such as these could become only a fond memory. I kept seeing reports of the missile launches from Iran and North Korea that seemed to be cause for great concern.

Was it really so threatening for Iran to launch a communications satellite?
Was a similar missile from North Korea such a big deal?

Surely they weren't really planning on blowing America away. Wouldn't that sort of attack mess them up too?

I found the following article (copied below from this link) that explained what was really at stake in simple language. The old "duck and cover" drills of my elementary school years never sought or knew to address what a modern "explosion" could create.

For me to say that blogging would be a thing of the past and the least of our worries would be simply to jest.

To say life as we know it would end would be far more accurate.

The article's reference to Hurricane Katrina is chilling. New Orlean's levy systems were known to be at risk, yet no funding was allocated for their improvement. Today's missile threat is preventable, if we take proper precautions now.

If we mis-judge this threat, there may not be any resources "later" with which to rectify the error in judgement.
And no one would likely be arriving from anywhere to help us either.

Newt Gingrich: A Single Nuke Could Destroy America
Sunday, March 29, 2009 4:23 PMBy: Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen

There is a sword of Damocles over our heads. It is a threat that is real but has been all but ignored.
On February 3rd, Iran launched a “communications satellite” into orbit. At this very moment, North Korea is threatening to do the same. The ability to launch an alleged communications satellite belies a far more frightening truth. A rocket that can carry a satellite into orbit can also drop a nuclear warhead over any location on the planet in less than forty-five minutes.
Far too many timid or uninformed sources maintain that a single launch of a missile poses no true threat to the United States given our retaliatory power. A reality check is in order and must be discussed in response to such an absurd claim:
One small nuclear weapon, delivered by an ICBM can, in fact, destroy the United States by maximizing the effect of the resultant electromagnetic pulse upon detonation.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a by-product of detonating an atomic bomb above the Earth’s atmosphere. When a nuclear weapon is detonated in space, the gamma rays emitted trigger a massive electrical disturbance in the upper atmosphere. Moving at the speed of light, this overload will short out all electrical equipment, power grids and delicate electronics on the earth’s surface. In fact, it would take only one to three weapons exploding above the continental United States to wipe out our entire grid and transportation network. It might take years to recover from, if ever.
This is not science fiction. If you doubt this, spend a short amount of time skimming the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack from April 2008. You will come away sobered.
Even as the new Administration plans to spend trillions on economic bail outs, it has announced plans to reduce funding and downgrade efforts for missile defense. Furthermore, the reluctance by the United States to invest in a modern and credible traditional nuclear deterrent is a serious concern. What good will a bailout be if there is no longer a nation to bail out?
Fifty years ago it was not Sputnik itself that sent a dire chill of warning around the world; it was the capability of the rocket that launched Sputnik. The rocket that lofted Sputnik into orbit could also serve as an ICBM.
Yet for all its rhetoric, the Soviet Union was essentially a rational power that recognized the threat of mutual destruction and thus never stepped to the edge.
The world is different today. Intercontinental range missiles tipped with nuclear weapons in the hands of leaders driven by fanaticism, leaders that support global terrorism, leaders that have made repeated threats that they will seek our annihilation. . .can now at last achieve their dream of our annihilation in a matter of minutes.
Those who claim that there is little to fear from Iran or North Korea because “at best” they will only have one or two nuclear weapons, ignore the catastrophic level of threat we now face from just “a couple” of nuclear weapons.
Again: One to three missiles tipped with nuclear weapons and armed to detonate at a high altitude—to achieve the strongest EMP over the greatest area of the United States—would create an EMP “overlay” that triggers a continental-wide collapse of our entire electrical, transportation and communications infrastructure.
Within weeks after such an attack, tens of millions of Americans would perish. The impact has been likened to a nationwide Hurricane Katrina. Some studies estimate that 90% of all Americans might very well die in the year after such an attack as our transportation, food distribution, communications, public safety, law enforcement and medical infrastructures collapse.
It is a blow we most likely would never recover from.
Two things need to be done now and without delay.
1. Make clear in the strongest of terms that if a rocket is launched by either Iran or North Korea on a trajectory headed towards the territory of the United States, we will shoot it down. The risk of not doing so is beyond acceptable. And if they construe this as an act of war, so be it, for they fired the first shot. The risk of sitting back for thirty minutes and praying it is not an EMP strike is beyond acceptable, beyond rational on our part.
2. Funding for EMP defense must be a top national priority. To downgrade or halt our missile defense program, which after twenty five years of research is at last becoming viable, would be an action of criminal negligence.
Surely, with such a threat confronting us, a fair and open debate, with full public access and the setting aside of partisan politics, is in order. In the meantime, a policy must be stated today that we will indeed shoot down any missile aimed towards the United States that is fired by Iran or North Korea. America’s survival, your survival, and your family’s survival might very well depend on it.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. William Forstchen is the author of "One Second After," an account of a town struggling to survive after an EMP weapon is used against the United States.

You can read an earlier government hearing about this here.