Long weekend, though we didn't get much accomplished. Next week DH is off for vacation again, and we hope to finish up the last of our renovation on the enclosed backporch. There's not much left to do, but we want it completed. For now, we are using both rooms...just need to finish the painting, etc.

Saturday I finally got around to creating two long planter flower boxes and putting them beneath the picture window. I had been collecting artificial flowers for a couple months, buying them at various low-priced places like General Dollar and even the Salvation Army store. The two dark-green planters were on sale, since most garden shops were clearing out their summer stock. The overall effect is great, gives the house more "curb appeal." I'll try to get a photo soon.

Great weather here today, and I went on my bike ride around 2:00. I actually explored another nearby subdivison, but one which is in an opposite direction from the others I frequent. It is almost ALL uphill to get there, plus I have to ride about a half mile on this busy highway in front of our house. That's why I'd put it off. But the riding there is great, in that there's some challenging hills and NO traffic to speak of. Perhaps that will be my new destination, once the weather cools down more. Today it's near 80, almost TOO hot to be out riding at 2:00; but I needed the exercise.

The Presidential election is soon going to be 'history.' Today there's a news report which should make all people with half-a-brain KNOW that Bush and his cohorts are off-track badly in Iraq. Read it and weep:

U.N.: Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Several hundred tons of conventional explosives were looted from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the U.N. nuclear agency told the Security Council on Monday.

A "lack of security" resulted in the loss of 377 tons of high explosives from the sprawling Al-Qaqaa military installation about 30 miles south of Baghdad, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said.

The IAEA fears "that these explosives could have fallen into the wrong hands," said spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.

The development immediately became an issue on the U.S. presidential campaign trail, with the White House downplaying the threat from the missing cache of weapons but Sen. John Kerry's campaign calling the disappearance a "grave and catastrophic mistake."

ElBaradei told the council the IAEA had been trying to give the U.S.-led multinational force and Iraq's interim government "an opportunity to attempt to recover the explosives before this matter was put into the public domain."

But since the disappearance was reported in the media, he said he wanted the Security Council to have the letter dated Oct. 10 that he received from Mohammed J. Abbas, a senior official at Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology, reporting the theft of the explosives.

The materials were lost through "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security," the letter said.

The letter from Abbas informed the IAEA that since Sept. 4, 2003, looting at the Al-Qaqaa installation south of Baghdad had resulted in the loss of 214.67 tons of HMX, 155.68 tons of RDX and 6.39 tons of PETN explosives.

HMX and RDX can be used to demolish buildings, down jetliners, produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weapons. HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex - substances so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just 1 pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people.

Last night I reread six chapters of a novel I'd worked on several years ago, but never completed. It was titled, "Savage Sport," and I had forgotten how well it was developing. Maybe once I finish the rough draft of the novel I'm working on now, I'll give it another shot. One thing that is always weird -- rereading something I've written years ago, it's almost like I've never seen it or read it, as if I'm reading another author's work. Eventually though the kernel of the plot idea comes back to me, and I know where it is going, how it'll end. Still, it's interesting to occasionally reread something I wrote long ago. I would guess all writers feel that way too.

Had a wonderful, fun visit with my sister Friday.

And that's it for today.