This past weekend was the annual autumn celebration over at Hasufin and Mika's place, a get-together in which we get together to enjoy the coming of fall.. or whatever passes for it in the DC metroplex. Unlike Pennsylvania, in which Halloween costumes are often designed with wet weather insulation in mind, autumn doesn't actually arrive until the final week of October or therabouts. It tends to stay pretty warm down here right up until the end.

In other words, temperatures in the 70's and 80's right up until Samhain, which is usually in the neighborhood of thirty degrees Fahrenheit, where …

I've been trying to figure out how to write this post. I've tried the poetic way, the emotional way, and a few other tactics that just don't seem to work, so I'm going to go with the honest way:

An old friend of mine, Dee Mikula, is shipping out soon. She isn't in the military, but works as an EMT in Seattle and is registered with the Red Cross as a first responder in disaster situations. In 2004, she worked in central Florida during hurricane season, and on Tuesday, the ninth of September she's flying down to the Gulf to …