More 7's Please (And a Rant)

I had this brilliant idea about making a blanket for Trevor. Davis has a fairly intricate hand knit blanket that a woman gave me at his baby shower. Very sweet, especially since I didn't know her all that well.

Anyway, my idea was to use the Pattern-A-Day perpetual calendar. I'm planning on doing 11 big blocks (19" X 20") using dates that are important to our family (birthdays, anniversaries and such). Plus one block of stockinette with his initials purled in. I figured I'd do a block a month and then I could give it to him for xmas.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! How freakin' delusional am I??? Here it's almost halfway through May and this is all I have...

That's not even half of one block. sigh.

Now there are two things I have to knit (OK, only one is "have to") and they both need the size US 7 32" addi's that are stuck in this block. I'll probably bust out the block and then use the needles for the other projects and then someday, maybe when he goes to college, he'll have a nice, new blanket. sigh.

(BTW, here's the sight that has the errata for that calendar.)

Last weekend, Dave and I watched Gunner Palace. It's a documentary about soldiers in Iraq, made in 2004. It's pretty good. It's depressing and sad and a bit hopeless. There are funny parts, too and there's no visible violence/gore so I suggest watching it as soon as you can. The saddest part, for me, was hearing the AFN (armed forces radio network) news blurb saying that our government was going to send 187 billion dollars to help our troops - getting them the equipment they needed to be safer, etc. Then they show some guy joking about how much of that money they actually get - showing the "high grade Iraqi metal" (scrap metal salvaged from suicide bombed cars and buildings) that they were having to use to reinforce their vehicles. It makes me sick.

Then I find this article. It tells how there's this system that already works being produced; this system can detect and diffuse RPG's (rocket propelled grenades) within a certain radius of a vehicle. This could save countless lives and limbs of our troops but the ARMY won't buy them because they have an $70 million contract with Raytheon. Raytheon, who is developing the same technology but estimates that they are 5-6 years from completion. WTF??!! So, not only is the government screwing our troops, the Army is jumping in for a sloppy seconds screw as well. Does this give anyone else a headache?

In a perfect world, the Army would bite the bullet (so to speak), end the contract, and go get the systems that are already working. In an even more perfect world, Raytheon would gracefully bow out and let them get what they need.

Then I see things like this movie called Delta Farce coming out. So, yeah, let's take the fact that our troops are overseas, losing vital body parts and dying and let's make a farce out of it for some quick cash. It's the American way, right? I love America and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else but sometimes it makes me so mad that it's OK to belittle such important things.
Freedom of speech, they can exercise it by making such drivel and I'm exercising it here. I only wish common sense were as prevalent.

Praying my active duty friends are safe, Ruth!