DOES THE GROUND FEEL COLDER TO YOU?

In what I consider to be an incredible development, it appears that Palestinian terrorist groups have all agreed to temporarily halt murdering Israelis. Someone send the devil a sweater! Alternatively, if this holds, I'm optimistic about the possibility of a peace agreement. After all, there very nearly was one in 2000 before Arafat spiked it.

We don't have cable TV, so I can only assert that this development is being drowned out on the news channels by the more popular, though clearly less important, Katherine Hepburn death story. I can't say I was ever much of a fan of hers. Well, what two celebrities are next? I fear Bob Hope is feeling a little nervous right now.

On the other hand, I had a greater appreciation for Gregory Peck, mostly due to his role as Atticus Finch, among others. As Jill said that night the story of his death broke: "Well, Bill, now you're the sexiest man on the planet."

YARD WORK CONTINUES

Jill finally got to put her 5th anniversary present to good use today. We rearranged the patio and put her water fountain outside, which features a maiden pouring water out into a basin. It looks great surrounded by the citrus plants and one of the banana trees.

I spent the whole day moving a lot of dirt and gravel. At one point though, I was taken aback by how I told Jill that I was going to put a handful of weeds into the yard debris bin. "Just a second, I gotta put this thing in the thingy". Now who does THAT sound like?

HONG KONG POLITICAL PROBLEMS

Here's a link to an interesting story in the British liberal newspaper The Guardian about how Hong Kong is struggling to honor its pledge to the UK to retain greater personal freedoms than mainland China given political pressure from Beijing. Not a huge surprise, but the story has more detail and history of Hong Kong than is normally found in U.S. papers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently lifted its SARS travel ban to Hong Kong because the situation is now under control as measured by potential contagious cases and necessary incubation period. By August, all should be even more smooth. In the meantime, there's apparently a lot of good deals on hotels to be found and we're on the case.