Time marches on relentlessly along with the inevitable changes that cause wrenching upheaval. Sometime last week my beloved Kerry-Edwards sign disappeared from the front yard. Suspects include:

1. The neighbors - Republican to the core, they each sport at least one W-related sticker on their BMWs, Volvos and Lexuses, usually balanced by one of those black-and-white oval status stickers - MV (Martha's Vineyard), OBX (Outer Banks) or ACK (Nantucket - I guess they're still peeved about being the rhyme in so many dirty limericks). Strange, but I never see one for ODB (Old Dirty Bastard) or BOW (Bitch on Wheels).

2. The daughters - tired of their mother's (visible) eccentricities, they may have disposed of the sign themselves.

3. Tom DeLay - with everything else that he's (allegedly) done, this would appear to be just mean-spirited enough to reflect his core values.

4. The new pope - if he can threaten to take communion away from Kerry, I wouldn't put it past the long arm of the Vatican to swoop down in the dead of night and pluck the sign from my yard. Or maybe I've just been reading too much Dan Brown.

Not on the suspect list:

1. The lawn mowing service. They couldn't possibly have gotten tired of weed-whacking around the spindly metal legs of the sign, could they?

On the flight from Chicago to San Antonio today the guy across the aisle was knitting. Apparently secure enough in his masculinity, he wasn't afraid to pop out the knitting needles and some blue yarn and knit, knit, knit. I never really got the hang of knitting - getting the tension even was absurdly hard for me and sort of negated the whole zen-like rhythm of it.

Now that lighters aren't allowed on planes any longer, there is a big bin of them at each security station. I guess the potential of stabbing a knitting needle into someone's carotid artery is just not considered a big terrorist threat.