i was still asleep when my mother called me, "they got hussein!" i jumped out of bed and turned on the television.

i'm surprised he was found in a hole in the ground. i was imagining him to in be some military bunker with all sorts of fancy equipment manned by a team of loyals, calling out strikes and coordinating the resistance. watching the footage of him being examined by a military doctor, he seems so frail with that beard, like an old man (or - gasp - santa claus!). you wonder, "was this who we were so afraid of?" i think the US was lucky to get him alive, now he can't be a martyr. you got to admire his will to survive though: his two sons dead, having a bunker buster bomb dropped right on top of him, and the country he used to rule now crawling with soldiers looking for him. what's going to happen to the people who were hiding him though? that guy who said, "no, i haven't seen saddam," but was secretly helping saddam, is he going to be in trouble now? i also imagine george w. bush calling his father early this morning: "mom? hey, put dad on the phone! dad, we got him!" and although this would probably never happen, imagine the bushes going down to the jail cell to meet saddam hussein, face to face, these two families tied together in this kind of blood feud.

after getting my fill of saddam mania on the news, i got dressed and went to the dollar store on the somerville side of the train tracks, via the secret underground passageway (littered with trash, graffiti on the wall, i always look both ways before go through this shortcut), still looking for diorama accessories. i found a set of miniature tea set for $1, and also got a bottle of generic elmer's glue for 50 cents. you can find a lot of cheap stuff in that dollar store, if you don't mind walking through cluttered aisles that look like the place has been looted. i also like the fact that there's a measuring tape along the side of the exit; i can only imagine it's to facilitate police identification on the security tape when a shoplifter runs out of the store. i came back to the house, then immediately went back out again, this time taking the 77 bus down mass ave to arlington center, to a crafts store katrinka recommended called play time. there i found some green fur fabric, which will look good as the seaweed floor of the diorama.

once i got back to porter square, i went to nomad on mass ave to look for christmas presents. i got a set of 3 small blue chinese themed purses for my sister and a keychain for myself (i'd been carrying my house keys loose, i got a mexican pulp cinema keychain with its lurid depiction of depravity seen through the eyes of our southern neighbors). i got back home just in time to watch the second half of the patriots game against the jacksonville jaguars. guess what? patriots won again! it also started to snow, first in foxboro, then later here in cambridge as well.

my father came to pick me up in the evening, for dinner in belmont. the drive was treacherous, near white out conditions on the road. surprisingly, there were a few unwary pedestrians walking out on the roads instead of the sidewalks, and we nearly hit a few of them. i had some yiou yeuh gen mixed with rice noodles. i got a ride back to cambridge, along with some dry-cleansed sweaters that had been at my parents' place. i went out and shoveled the sidewalk and the steps, knowing full well that by tomorrow morning snow will have covered everything again.