I can't really focus. I have some personal things to work though, and I certainly have plenty to do at work. But I keep coming back to the situation in Iraq. This morning I got up all ready to come into work, then instead of going to get ready I turned on the news. I got completely sucked in and an hour and a half went by before I knew it. Now I'm in at work and I have to restrain myself from going out and reading all about it. This is one of those times when the information age feels like it's working against me. I'm not saying I'd like to give up 24 hour news networks and the massive amount of current news on the internet, but they are certainly detracting from my daily duties today (and I suspect this will continue for at least the rest of this week.)

This leads me to something I was tossing around this morning. I took a different bus in today and ended up walking though most of Belltown (a vibrant yuppie area of Seattle.) It felt weird that outside of a few "No Iraq War" signs in store windows you couldn't tell that our country is on the eve of war. This is the first war of my adult life and I'm having some issues with it (totally outside of whether we should be there, since it's pretty obvious it's going to happen at this point.) My brain knows that we should continue with our day to day lives. I still have to go to work, along with millions of other people, or the real cost of this thing will make the current $100 Billion estimate look like pocket change. But then I feel like I'm trivializing the war. I take war incredibly seriously and I view it as an innate failure of the human race. So us being at war really messes with my head, especially a preemptive war that doesn't seem to have the support of the rest of the world.

I said before that I don't fully support this war and I still feel that way. The key is that for me to fully support a war (given my opinions on war expressed above), I have to be absolutely sure that it's the right thing to do. I'm very far from that stance today. But I recognize that it could be the right thing to do, and since we're doing it I hope that turns out to be the case. If it isn't the consequences could be truly disasterous.

To give you an idea of how hard it is for me to focus, I watched Igby Goes Down over the last two nights. I can tell you it was entertaining, but the only really interesting thing I can find to say about it is it was cool watching a teenage kid get to nail both Amanda Peet and Claire Danes. Out of the scope of normalcy, yes, but that's where the whole movie exists.

We're now less then five hours from the deadline. I still think they will wait until nightfall in Iraq before the full onslaught happens, but the sense I've gotten (admittedly, all filtered through news sources) is that they're itching to go. Either way, we'll be at war within 24 hours. When I figure out how to deal with that I'll let you know.

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