I watched the opening ceremonies of the 29th Olympic Summer games this morning. It was quite a spectacle with thousands of performers, children and adults, drummers dancers, fire and music. My favourite were the firework footsteps from the forbidden city north to the stadium. Outlines of giant footprints shot into the air with fiery light, each one advancing one step closer to the bird’s nest national stadium.

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We drove through the night on our way to Columbia, Missouri. The rain subsided as night fell. And we reached Sarnia in the darkness. We crossed the border and drove.

I unintendedly ended taking a more westerly route on the I-96 towards past Chicago. Dave switched into driving early in the morning, which was good for me but probably bad for him. Neither of us were well rested when we began the journey.

Through the night we drove down highways through cornfields and fog. As twilight came, I switched back into the driver’s seat.

I drove through more hours of fog that slowly cleared. North of St. Louis we refueled. There was a sign indicating we were on part of historic route 66.

We pulled into a QT in St. Louis and stopped for a bit. The place had a suburb sounding name and a slogan that had “neighbourhood” or “community” in it. Some of the kids were still sleeping.

After another hundred miles west, we got to the campus around 9 or so and registered.

• Off to Mizzou for Leadership Training Workshop 4 Aug 2008

I was at a party recently. Some dude there said he wrote for a local entertainments publication and does some kind of poll. This week he was asking people their five favourite cartoons. When I wrote our my list and he saw it, he said that I matched the top five responses he got.

They were:

• Animaniacs
• Smurfs
• Looney Toons
• Transformers
• Simpsons