Random

• We just heard from our good friend Mal Hamill. He and Linda are moving to Roma, which is about 500 km (300 mi) west of Brisbane, Queensland, totally-middle-of-nowhere, Australia. Linda is graduating from Trinity Theological College and will be the circuit riding minister to several rural Uniting Church congregations. She'll do a great job!

• The appraiser came this morning. Sale of the condo still seems to be on schedule and on track.

• "The mayor of Providence wants to slap a $150-per-semester tax on the 25,000 full-time students at Brown University and three other private colleges in the city, saying they use resources and should help ease the burden on struggling taxpayers." I'm not an economist (nor have I ever played on on TV) but it seems to me that the amount of taxable income the students generate through the local businesses they patronize more than off-sets the direct burden they place on the municipality. ~ link

• One of the advantages to living on Guam is access to Asian junk food. Choices from the US are limited (probably a good thing) but there are lots of interesting options from the Philippines, Japan, and Korea -- such as Chocopies. Kent introduced us to this Korean version of the Moon Pie when we were with him in Seoul last month. Subsequently I discovered that they sell them at a little neighborhood market in our village. ~ link

• Obama's good word to my fellow ASU alumni. ~ link

• Arizona's Hispanic surge expected to continue ~ link