Weather: Not too bad, clear roads, occasional sun -- about 40 to 50 degrees (F) SNOW in all the mountains, and late fall colors. The larch trees turn golden-yellow and lose their needles at this time of year, so the slopes are BEAUTIFUL!

Following up on the bad news for our local National Guard on Veteran's Day, there may be a ray of hope (fragment from NY Times):
After two days of urgent talks in Washington with the Bush administration's foreign policy team, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq said today he plans to return to Baghdad to consult with the U.S.-appointed Governing Council there about how best to accelerate the hand-over of power to a new Iraqi government.
After discussing various proposals on ways to save Iraq's troubled political transition, Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator L. Paul Bremer said he would return to Iraq to continue "intense" discussions with the council's 24 members on President Bush's ideas for breaking a logjam on arrangements for selecting a panel to write a new Iraqi constitution before a U.N.-imposed Dec. 15 deadline. Bremer declined to give details on Bush's proposals, saying he had to brief the Governing Council first.