I’m sitting here right now, looking out the window behind me at the panoramic view of the Southwest Florida skyline, watching President Bush fly over our building. No shit. A “motorcade” of a half dozen aircraft just flew overhead, carrying George W. Bush to his appearance today in Naples’ Rookery Bay. The president flew into Southwest Florida International Airport and was brought down to Naples via helicopter. The choppers were pretty far away and hard to see, but it looked like there were RAH-66 Comanches—attack choppers—among them. Hard to say.

In the meantime, what else has been going on? Star Trek: Enterprise returned to the air this past Wednesday after a 6-week hiatus of reruns, and of course I was anxious to see the new episode. The last new episode was a blockbuster, easily the best hour of Enterprise ever made. The heat was turned up a notch with Wednesday’s episode, “Damage,” in which all of the nay-sayers who were expecting a “plot reset button” were soundly disappointed. In most Star Trek lore, when the ship basically gets smashed beyond belief it tends to suddenly appear all back-to-normal by the conclusion of the show. Not in last Wednesday’s Enterprise. It’s clear that the set crew at Paramount really spent a lot of time wrecking the entire studio up—everything is damaged beyond belief, and it looks realistic, too. Not just a few sparks flying and smoke filling the air. The destruction was done very convincingly, and it hasn’t been undone yet.

In fact, the whole plot of Wednesday’s episode involved Archer coming to the realization that because the ship’s warp coil has been completely fried, they’ll never make it to the base of the Xindi weapon in time to stop it from being deployed against Earth. So Archer opts to forcefully board an innocent alien ship and steal their warp coil for his own use. It’s really cool to see such issues of ethics juxtaposed with duty and necessity on this show. For once they’re taking on more than just some fluff topic.

The only part of the show I thought was cheesy was the revelation that T’Pol is basically a drug addict! For the last three months, she’s literally been shooting up this Trellium-D stuff because it’s basically psychotropic and gives her access to emotions which Vulcans don’t normally experience. Now she finds she starts to go insane if she doesn’t have regular intake of this stuff, and surprise—when the ship takes a pounding, there’s so much damage that no one can get to the cargo bay where the Trellium stuff is stored. After nearly getting killed in a covert attempt to go down there and get it, T’Pol has this touchy-feely “confession session” in sickbay with Dr. Phlox, and for a moment I thought I was watching a reality show about the hardships of heroin addicts. It was very strange.

Other than that, though, I was extremely impressed with the continued advancing of the main plot, and look forward to the next five weeks’ worth of new episodes. By the way, the teaser at the end of “Damage” gave us a small taste of the season finale, and it looks like they’re pulling a page from the TNG book—there’s gonna be some kind of mega temporal crossing-over and two Enterprises will be fighting at once. It’s always fun when they do that, even though it’s been done before…a lot.

Oh yes, there was one other subject I started to mention in the title, wasn’t there? Roaches. What. The. FUCK. Is with roaches. After not seeing a roach in months, yesterday morning I was preparing to leave for work and picked up my wristwatch to put it on. As I was reaching to tighten the band, I saw this frigging COCKROACH trapped between the watch band and my wrist. Flinging it down, I went to grab some paper towels and nab the critter, but it scurried away under the dishwasher before I could get it. Of course, then I noticed there was this sticky roach crap on my arm…NASTIFIED. Now thoroughly disgusted, I washed my arm (and the watch) before finally leaving for work. Stupid shit. The pest control guys were just here, and I think when they spray the whole house, some bugs become visible for a few days because the places they’ve been living in are now toxic. So I’m not worried, but I was annoyed…that’s for sure.

Well, today’s Friday, which is always welcome, and tomorrow is the day we make our trip to the Vero Beach area to pick up the KITT parts motherlode. I’m going to do a bit of research today to see whether I want a Ford or a Chevy van; the Enterprise place says they have a lot of each, and they’re all brand new 2004s. Speaking of that, I was lucky that I called the place to confirm my reservation, because I learned over the phone that they have an unlimited mileage option for just six bucks more per day. So I pay a total of $12 more for that option, instead of the $50-$60 I was gonna have to pay in overmileage charges. That certainly makes me happy.

As for tonight, it’ll be “hanging out, watching TiVo and playing games” night, or something like that. I had the fight of my life yesterday in Sacred, but I finally got out of the desert, away from the zombies and the raptors and into the more familiar land of Silver Creek, on my way to the next goal. Last night I was sure glad I had that huge stockpile of healing potions, because I sure needed it. I also let my horse get slaughtered and then walked away without it; I am officially no longer in need of equestrian transportation, since my character can now outrun any horse she’d be able to ride.

That’s it for now, dudes! I’ll post back tomorrow night (or Sunday) with info and photos of the KITT stash.