In between my heavy day of mapquesting my way through New Jersey (retirement home to funeral home to, well, [my friend] Steph's home), I give you today's seen/heard news:

This looks like an absorbing sort of book; Pittsburgh kicks Albuquerque's ass in the artsy sense; love the idea of Senator Franken (boy, bet you didn't expect I'd say such a thing, did you?); college Dem already booted from White House internship (scroll down for the story in the middle column) in an uncharacteritic act of partisanship from the Bush admin, ha ha; notorious asshole, Rick Santorum, thought to be kind of an asshole (putting him in such excellent company as dickhead Tom Coburn and jackass James Inhofe -- man, that list is fascinating!); torture enthusiast, Donald Rumsfeld, thinks the U.S. may have a bit of an image problem, ahem; Laurel linked recently to this Pittsburgh-based knitting weblog and I have been meaning to mention it; poor Queens, I love you even if no one else does!

There sure were a lot of parenthesis in this post!