Needed to hike

I needed to go off and hike but neither my car nor my cell phone could get me to the park I chose so I gave up and went to the park I could find. I saw a heron hunting and a cormorant.

You remember all those deer that like me? And the elk? And all those cicadas? I don’t have a point. I’m just showing you a picture of someone who also seemed into me today. 

We seem to have just avoided a government shut down.

New movie:  Elite Ukrainian commandos on jet skis conducted a daring raid on a Russian electronic warfare station in Crimea, based on a true story! Members of the group talked to the Times of London. A group of about 20 soldiers from the Brotherhood Battalion did this on Ukraine's Independence Day, August 24. Each jet ski carried two Ukrainian frogmen and traveled 125 miles across the sea to reach the peninsula.

Also exciting, also a movie, but with more of a dopey comedy aspect: There is a logistics hub at Rzeszów, Poland, also called J-Town because Americans could not pronounce Rzeszow. It is 60 miles from the Ukrainian border and moves billions of dollars in weapons  through Poland. Polish authorities heard of a Russian-organized espionage ring targeting the hub from …..  an inebriated man stumbling along. He spotted a suspicious camera pointed at railroad tracks not far from the local airport. This led to an organized search that found more cameras at rail stations and rail crossings. In March, the country’s security services announced that they had dismantled a spy ring that was planning to derail trains used to transport weapons destined for Ukraine. 


If you are a woman in combat and you are small and you are wearing the smallest man’s uniform and it still doesn’t fit, the excess fabric can slow you down and reduce your effectiveness. If you have to roll up your sleeves the excess fabric may interfere with shooting by catching on the rifle. It is important to effectiveness and safety to have uniforms that fit. Iryna Nykorak began putting together a design for women that allows more difference between hip and waist and something other than straight up and down for shirts. Arm Women Now has distributed more than 5,300 uniforms to female soldiers. The ministry of defense has issued thousands of pairs of their underwear to fighters across the country.


Switzerland's Federal Council has approved a 100 million Swiss franc ($109.57 million) package to demine parts of Ukraine. No chocolate.