Sunday swim

Late this afternoon, Paul and I enjoyed the first swim of the season, in our community pool. We swam for about half an hour before an ominous dark cloud crept in. Right now, it's just starting to rain, with little splatters bouncing off the azalea bush outside.

It's been a sweet, lazy weekend. This morning, Liberto and Shawn drove out to Tybee to go fishing. Instead, they accidentally caught a seagull which swooped down and tried to snap the bait off the hook in mid-air, as Shawn was casting, and got tangled in the line. Between the two of them, Liberto and Shawn were able to reel it in and carefully disentangle it and send it on its way. It put up a big fuss, of course, and bit Liberto's finger in the process. I am pleased, of course, that the two of them did the right thing. As I told Liberto later, "The way a person treats animals reveals everything about that person's character." A few years ago, when Shawn was living here, he drove several huge buckets of water from our fish pond down to our docks to empty them there because there were minnows still swimming around in that water and he didn't want to just toss the water on the ground and watch the minnows thrash around and die, as many other people might have done.

This afternoon, Liberto and I went to the gym, but found that it had closed at 4:00. But he already goes three times a week in the mornings before work, and I've been keeping up with going too, but not early. I sleep late every day, and it's wonderful.

I was watching Face the Nation or one of those pundit talk shows this morning. I think it's important to listen to all points of view, not just what I want to hear, and that's why I listen to discussions on Fox as well as CNN and read opinion columns by conservative and liberal writers alike. One thing I know is that around here, Obama is not well-liked, which is to be expected in this ultra-conservative state. It's hard to tell from where I sit how voters across the nation feel, but I do have a gut feeling that Obama won't win re-election in 2012. I know the Tea-Partiers are vastly exaggerated and their numbers are actually small, but I'm not sure he has the same widespread support he had in 2008.