Sadly the road trip ended over a week ago

Yes, I had to leave Seattle on the 16th, which was a pretty fun town, by the way. The view from the top of the space needle was very cool. They have some good breweries and an excellent little Belgian brewpub called The Stumbling Monk. For more tourist stuff, there is of course the Pike's market. Yes, they throw lots of fish around. Shoppers would also get lost in the multi-levels of gift shops plus the produce and flower market area. I'm not a big shopper, so I wandered through it all fairly quickly.

The Seattle-Tacoma zoo is very well done. In land area it's not particularly huge, but they do a great job with the programs. I'm sure it helped that I was there on a Saturday, but it seemed like almost everywhere I went in the zoo, staff was feeding animals, putting on a show, or giving talks about the animals. In that sense I thought it was better than the more famous (and costly) San Diego zoo, though I think I went there on a weekday.

I've been back to work for a little over a week now. Bleh.

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Here's a little politics: A US government intelligence report apparently says that the war in Iraq has actually worsened the terrorist threat to the United States. Gee, ya think? You mean we're not "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here"? Of course not. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and wasn't a credible threat to the US. Now many more of them hate us. Mission accomplished?