Been laid up with a blown back so my blogging has not been consistent lately. Observations regarding TV, which is all I could basically do:

McCain's ads are so lame it is ridiculous, especially when compared to the very personal Obama ads. Look into the camera, stupid. Voice overs are rarely any good. He's old. His people are old. He's going to lose.
Olympic trials are sent to us piece meal by the shit for brains at NBC. Those of us on the coast get results of both the trials and Wimbledon three to eight hours late, which means they are over by the we get them. Exception is Wimbledon which we get on live streaming video if we want to cough up $25.
Fires sort of hit me. I grew up in the Big Sur area (Carmel) and camped out there, fished there, and used the trails and so on. Losing this area really hurts. It takes a hundred years for the redwoods to grow back at all and full sized takes 500 years.
Housing news: I grew up in the Monterey Bay area (includes Santa Cruz, Salinas Valley, and south to Morro Bay) so I have literally hundreds of old friends up there. In talking with them over the weekend I learned that people with money (everybody up there now) are buying foreclosed properties at the rate of twenty per person. It would seem that no high end houses located in valuable real estate will be on the market for long. They will be leased or rented as they show.