Under Fire, part 41

Day 29: Will this ever end? I'm exhausted from the on-going level of stress, and there is no end in sight. Sirens start a bit after noon; it is hard to complete the simplest task. There is one barrage that hits before a warning siren, and another lone rocket that I hear fizzing past over a minute after a siren stops. It is obvious to me that I will accomplish nothing today. I can't even make the bed, as Nadine has burrowed under the sheet and refuses to move. I realize that any small sense of comfort she can find is more important than a tidy house, so I leave her there, a large croissant-shaped blob that purrs slightly when I pat it.

My head hurts, my neck hurts, my back hurts, as if my whole body simply craves peace and quiet.


Size does matter: Today, Hezbullah tries more of their larger, long-range weapons, including Syrian-made 302 mm Khaibar-1, a nasty missile that carries a payload of 80 to 90 kilos of explosives. The rocket that destroyed the houses in Haifa the other night was "only" 220 mm, with a 16 kilo payload, and look what that did. It is scary to contemplate what these larger missiles can do. This one, probably heading for Zichron Yaacov or Hadera, starts to disintegrate in air, and lands in Haifa without causing major damage.

Meanwhile, one of our local barrages lands in a populated area of the city, and a few people are injured.

It is not so surprising that the rockets and missiles are doing more damage and killing more people as the war progresses. Yediot Achronot (one of Israel's largest daily papers) reports: "A senior terror leader told WorldNetDaily that Hizbullah monitors Israeli and international television news footage of scenes from rocket landings inside Israel and has used the broadcasts in the past few weeks to more accurately target installations in the Jewish state."

No dead air! It is sometimes hard to remember that there are people all over the world reading this, and that any down-time on my part leads to reader anxiety! Larry, our general manager, gets an email this morning from a client in Spain who has not seen a post from me today, and worries that something has happened. I'm here! I'm OK! Tired, cranky, stressed-out, and fairly non-productive at the moment, but I'm here. Thanks again to all of you who have let us know that you are thinking of us.