Tomorrow I return to work after taking a week's vacation. I haven't had a vacation in 2-3 years, and I'm not sure I'll get one next year since I won't have been at a new job for a year. And this one doesn't seem to have done it's job: rest and relaxation. The relaxation was there, but the rest was lacking. Maybe once I get back to work, I'll feel a bit more normal.

This was actually the "stay-cation" that is apparently popular this year. In these time of high gasoline costs, we elected to stay close to home and do some camping in drive-able destinations. I went with a friend and stayed the first few days with my family. My family has always camped, since we were children and spent half the summers in campgrounds. My friend does what I am going to call "tenting." He plans a recreational activity (4-wheeling) that he intends to take up most of every day, and the "camping" ("tenting," in my vocabulary) consists of lighting up a mini-charcoal grill, heating a piece of meat and accompanying that with a store-purchased salad. While this would be great if we were traveling and wanted to save money while avoiding hotel rooms, he obviously needs to experience true camping. I think he got a taste of it for those few days with my family, and he even commented on our familiarity with the camping life.

As much as I was looking forward to "camping," I was disappointed in the result. However, the 4-wheeling was fun. And spending 1-on-1 time with him was good. I think the issue for me came not from the actual activity; moreso, it came from my expectations of something that I should not have anticipated with such aplomb. The trip turned out to be exactly what was described to me, but I had interpreted the word "camping" to expand the described-activity to include my historical experience of "camping." I really need to learn not to assume things, or I will end up with the kind of experience I've had.

Through it all, though, I saw some fantastic country. It's been a while since I've seen such "country," and I welcomed the reuniting of me and all that is fresh and green. And on the ATV, I went places I would never have gone had I not been with my friend. We saw wildlife such as deer, turtles, raccoons, skunk families and all kinds of birds. We experienced wildlife like deer flies and mosquitoes. We tented in thunderstorms and tornado warnings--and lots of hot sunshine.

Tomorrow, I will return to work. I hope this vacation was enough of the "wild life" to last me a while.

Today a girl's body was found in Vermont. She's been missing a week, and her uncle is accused of causing her death. He is also charged with possession of child pornography in an unrelated matter--as is her stepfather. There is also information on a possible sex ring through the internet, but I'm not clear on that.

But those charges don't matter. The child abuse doesn't matter. Nothing matters in light of death. This young woman will never be an adult female, and she will never know what her life could have been.

In every death, I encourage celebrating the life. Funerals are for the living, those who remain after a person dies. Those living people usually seem to focus on the loss. I can understand this. That grief is too great for many to bear. But, to help get us through that time, we look to the life of the deceased, and we know that they lived a life that experienced much. This is true for everyone.

Yet, this young woman in Vermont is dead and we cannot celebrate the life that should have been. I will try to think of the good things in her life, but it is difficult when I know what she probably went through as time moved forward toward the final day. It is not a pleasant thought. So, instead, I will try to imagine that this girl's death is an end to bad things in her life, and now she is released to no more pain. This is a good thing.

But, in reality, I want her to be alive and to not feel pain. I want her to have it all. But it doesn't matter what I want. She's not going to get any of it. She's dead.

Death is final. And that's not going to change. I hope the person who did this to her knows this. And I pray that this is truly understood. I understand, and it makes me cry--and pray some more.

I seriously started my job search today by visiting our local work force center and talked with a counselor there. Knowing my job will end in four months is not a relaxing thought, and I am hoping to get a jump start on the process now. I don't want to leave early, and I'm kind of afraid to start another job with people I don't know. To test my skills in an arena that is new to me will be nerve-testing, but I guess everyone has to do it at least a time or two in their lives. I just wish I could keep going forever in this job. Unfortunately, company mergers happen and things aren't always as we want them to be.

One of my best friends has been diagnosed with breast cancer. A small cancer appeared in one breast during her annual mammogram, and she is now insisting that she have a double mastectomy, and tomorrow she will be discussing removing her ovaries with another surgeon. I would normally think this is going way overboard for a single, small cancer, but not with this woman. Her mother and one sister died of cancer; her other sister has also had breast cancer and is still in the recovery stage. Her mother's spread to the ovaries after a mastectomy, and her one sister's was too far spred before they found it.

I have several sisters and stepsisters, none of whom have had to personally face this situation, and I cannot imagine the pain this woman and her family are facing. I can try to imagine it, but I don't think it is real enough yet to have a powerful enough imagination to truly realize the true impact on this woman, her life and her family's life.

This woman has not had an easy life. In the past ten years, she has had a good man to share life, but there's been many trials in her life, and this is just not fair.

I realize that my mammogram is a couple months late, as is my annual physical. I think I better get on the stick and get them scheduled soon. And as I wait for my appointment, I will be visiting this wonderful woman in the hospital and praying that she has many more annual physicals to experience in the many years to come.

Today the Supreme Court decided on a 5-4 vote that people have the right to bear arms in their homes, and the community cannot require those arms to have such things as trigger locks that can prevent self-defense as intended by the gun owner. This week, I'm thinking the Supreme Court should be lauded. At one point, they also decided that every person held by the government has a right to confront their jailor in a US Court of Law, and this week a gentleman that the government was holding in GITMO as what they called an "enemy combatant" for six years found that our court system can be just. The government must take certain steps to charge this man with a crime or release him. He cannot be held indefinitely, and I like the way this Supreme Court bench in is thinking these days!

As for the right to bear arms, I read most of their decision but didn't have much time to read it all. Still, I got the point, and I was very impressed by the writing. It is obvious to most people that the second amendment gives individuals the right to bear arms, but the sentence construction made some people think that right was rather ambiguous. This decision made it clear that the right of a person to bear arms is not ambiguous, and government shall not infringe upon that right.

While the decision only addressed the right of a person to bear arms in that person's home, I think it left things wide open to affirm a person's right to bear arms in any public place. Clearly, the court expressly stated they were not addressing issues such as felons or incapacitated individuals being restricted from having guns, but the issue of whether a person should be able to carry guns in public places is ripe for argument. Personally, I think that a convicted felon who has served their time should be able to bear arms, but I think I shall not live long enough to see that right affirmed.

There is a dangerous potential for people to take slippery slope and slide to the thought that allows our justice system to be used as preventative measure in addition to the disciplinary measures it is imbued with. I truly believe that our Court system needs to provide disciplinary measures when a person is convicted of wrongdoing, and that disciplinary measure--when doled out as a measure of corrective action against a deed of wrongdoing--will inherently serve as a deterrent to further criminal actions on the part of the accused and on the part of those who would seek to imitate the illegal act. However, I think it is absolutely wrong to increase that discilinary action against a single person out of proportion to the wrongdoing solely as an emphasized deterrent to future criminal actions. If the punishment truly fits the crime, then we don't have to worry about additional punishment that will prevent future action; that deterrent will be inherent in the correct punishment.

I keep imagining a man going to jail for theft of something worth about $5,000.00. In my mind, he proportionately gets a year's jail time, probation for five years, restitution and needs to commit no similar offence for two years after the probation period--and he needs to personally apologize to the victim, making that apology. This seems adequate punishment to me. However, there are those who would want this man to pay back ten times the amount he stole, be in prison for a year for every $1,000 he stole, no time off for good behavior, and then not be allowed near a bank or cash register for ten years. Those who argue for the harsher sentence would reason that the first sentence would be adequate for that person to learn a lesson--but, they would argue, we need to send a message to others who are thinking about robbing someone of $5,000: crime doesn't pay.

That kind of thought is dangerous. It more than punishes the accused; it deprives him of life and teaches the accused that the justice system is not at all just since it goes way beyond what is necessary or appropriate. To provide the second sentence is to make a convicted person pay the punishment not only for his own crime, but for all those who may commit a crime in the future, a crime that has not yet happened. With this kind of thought, that first criminal is expected to pay a price so that others won't do the same in the future. It's not right for one person to be forced to pay another person's bill, especially when there's been no good or service provided.

I hate guns, but I can understand their importance in some people's lives. I truly believe it's not the gun that kills, it the person holding the gun that kills. So, why not cut off the hand of every person that might one day pull the trigger on a gun because there may be the intent to kill? Given that reasoning, every baby born would have all their hands cut off. In the same way, why are we taking the guns out of the hands of every person who knows how to use one...or wants to learn how to use one? They all have the potential to kill...the people holding a gun, and every person that has the fingers and hands that can hold and shoot a gun. The gun is just an extension of the hand. And that hand is operated by a person, a person who has the ability to think and to use (or not use) a gun wisely. Until we learn to limit people's thoughts, killing will happen, and guns may be the tools that are used to kill--and sometimes it's just that someone isn't allowed to use antibiotics to kill the infection that eventually kills that person. If we truly want to prevent killing, then we need to look at the way people think, and we need to know that we all need to respect each other and give each other credit for knowing we should not be using a gun to arbitrariily kill each other just because we have the ability to do so.