Monday, January 26, 2004

I almost forgot to mention my extreme happiness that Peter Jackson won for Best Director and that ROTK won for Best Picture - Drama last night.

Other observations that I can remember:

Brittany Murphy (I can’t find a photo) looked the most beautiful of the bunch, imho. Charlize Theron came in a close second.

Nicole Kidman‘s dress was lovely and she in it, but the hair thingy was a poor fashion choice.

I’m at work - I decided to wait until after the normal rush hours to make the trek in. Turns out that wasn’t a bad idea from talking to people who got here earlier and spent a longer time on the roads. By the time I hit the Beltway, it was pretty much clear of snow. I’m told that at normal rush time it was still very snowy.

I’m keeping my eyes open for sleet and freezing rain and I’m planning to leave early enough to not drive home in the dark - I don’t mess around with ice.

In the meantime I’m planning to get as much of the payroll done today while I’m here.

This is a great example of why I love our current President. From his visit to the rib joint in New Mexico:

Remarks by the President to the Press Pool
Nothin’ Fancy Cafe
Roswell, New Mexico

11:25 A.M. MST

THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.

Q Mr. President, how are you?

THE PRESIDENT: I’m hungry and I’m going to order some ribs.

Q What would you like?

THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you think I’d like.

Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you simply haven’t spent enough to keep the country secure.

THE PRESIDENT: My job is to secure the homeland and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. But I’m here to take somebody’s order. That would be you, Stretch—what would you like? Put some of your high-priced money right here to try to help the local economy. You get paid a lot of money, you ought to be buying some food here. It’s part of how the economy grows. You’ve got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat?

Q Right behind you, whatever you order.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m ordering ribs. David, do you need a rib?

Q But Mr. President—

THE PRESIDENT: Stretch, thank you, this is not a press conference. This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady’s business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?

Q Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. What would you like?

Q Ribs.

THE PRESIDENT: Ribs? Good. Let’s order up some ribs.

Q What do you think of the democratic field, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: See, his job is to ask questions, he thinks my job is to answer every question he asks. I’m here to help this restaurant by buying some food. Terry, would you like something?

Q An answer.

Q Can we buy some questions?

THE PRESIDENT: Obviously these people—they make a lot of money and they’re not going to spend much. I’m not saying they’re overpaid, they’re just not spending any money.

Q Do you think it’s all going to come down to national security, sir, this election?

THE PRESIDENT: One of the things David does, he asks a lot of questions, and they’re good, generally.

END 11:29 A.M. MST

Sunday, January 25, 2004

You’ve got to love the spontaneous reboot.

Yes, I virus check.
Yes, I defrag.
Yes, I run my utilities.

And still, on occasion, I’ll be in the middle of something and the screen will go black and the boot up begins. It’s a mystery.

8-10 minutes later I’m back online. Blogging resumes…

BOLD = Marks the states that I have visited.
ITALICS = Marks the state(s) that I have lived in.

1) Alabama
2) Alaska
3) Arizona
4) Arkansas**
5) California
6) Colorado
7) Connecticut
8) Delaware
9) Florida (ed note: I originally put this as bold, forgetting that I lived in Pensacola as a baby)
10) Georgia
11) Hawaii
12) Idaho (added later)
13) Illinois
14) Indiana
15) Iowa
16) Kansas
17) Kentucky
18) Louisiana
19) Maine
20) Maryland
21) Massachusetts
22) Michigan
23) Minnesota
24) Mississippi
25) Missouri
26) Montana (added later)
27) Nebraska
28) Nevada
29) New Hampshire
30) New Jersey
31) New Mexico
32) New York
33) North Carolina
34) North Dakota
35) Ohio
36) Oklahoma
37) Oregon
38) Pennsylvania
39) Rhode Island
40) South Carolina
41) South Dakota
42) Tennessee
43) Texas
44) Utah
45) Vermont
46) Virginia
47) Washington
48) West Virginia
49) Wisconsin (added later
50) Wyoming.

**I may have been in these states as a child - my parents will be able to confirm or deny.

Most of the states were"visited" on one of our numerous cross-country moves.

[via WIT?!?!? and Clarity Amidst Chaos]

UPDATE: Per my father’s confirmation Idaho, Montana, and Wisconsin are now marked as “visited.” Yes, I’m well travelled - and this doesn’t include my visits to Canada or the UK, in addition to the time I lived in the UK.

I wasn’t planning to be online during the Golden Globes Awards tonight. But I think I’ll blog for a while anyway - it depends on how boring the early parts of the show are. I’m really hoping that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King wins some awards tonight - especially Best Picture. The whole trilogy deserves recognition and not to win for this final segment of the story, when they didn’t for the first two, would be awful.

I’m putting my VCR to good use, taping Cold Case and Alias, both of which are new episodes.

More to come…

UPDATE (8:13): Best Supporting Actress Movie (Drama) - Renee Zellwegger for Cold Mountain. This may sound catty, but why that plain hairdo? Interesting dress that I’m sure looks much different IRL - not as flattering on TV, I think.

UPDATE (8:47): Meryl Streep won for Best Actress in Angels in America. Was that last dig at President Bush necessary? Please.

Sarah Jessica Parker wins again for Sex and the City - a show that should have been removed from television after the 1st season, imho.

UPDATE (9:11): Best Drama, Television - 24. Yay! It is a great show and I’m so glad that The West Wing didn’t win. I like TWW, but it’s not what it was in years past.

(9:22pm): Frodo (Elijah Wood) just introduced ROTK as a Best Pic nominee and Howard Shore won for Best Musical Score. Yay! Really, the music for the whole trilogy is magnificent. And he just won again for Into the West - Best Original Song. Cool, I thought Sting might win.

(9:56pm): My butt is getting numb from my desk chair. It’s not that comfortable. So I’ll be logging off and moving to my softer sofa. More tomorrow, I’m sure.

It’s snowing lightly outside. We’re supposed to get anywhere between 6-10” by morning, depends on who’s giving the forecast. That will be followed by sleet and freezing rain tomorrow afternoon. Can’t wait to get out in that!

Actually, if we have 6+ inches on the ground in the morning and the certainty of ice later, I’m pretty sure the government might close. But you never know. So I’m planning on being at work tomorrow - because I don’t want to take the vacation day and I have a lot of work to do, including payroll. I know I want to get paid next week.

I have to say thanks to my parents for the offer to get snowed in with them tonight and Dad’s offer to drive me to work. I appreciate it, but I’m happy to be at home this time. Love you!

UPDATE (8:51pm): It looks like we have 1/2 to 1 inch of snow already. Peeking out the window I saw several cars with the wipers up. What’s funny is that I learned that trick living in New Hampshire - it keeps the wipers clean, it makes it easier to clean off the windshield, reduces the risk of damaging the wipers in the cleanup process.  Although I do have a snowshade that I use to cover the windshield - it’s a simple matter of releasing the suction cup attached the interior of the window and rolling the shade to the other side of the car, dumping the snow to the ground. Voila! Sparkling clean (and dry) windshield. It works with ice too. But I digress - the wipers in the up position in snow…

I did my normal routine back in December when we had our first snowfall and I noticed that a few other cars followed my lead. This time there are a few more that pulled their wipers up.

I’m watching an interview with Mel Gibson on a random channel I get on my cable in the bedroom (where I don’t have a cable box and the channels are scrambled). The logo on the screen says The World Over, which I take to be the name of the show.

Anyway, he just said something awesome responding to a question about why they held Mass every morning while filming The Passion. I think I got it exactly, but it’s a good paraphrase at the least:

Jim (Caviezel) and I were intent that we wouldn’t go to the set without being “armored up” because Dark Forces didn’t want this movie to be made.

In exciting news, my church is interested in renting a theater to show the movie. I’ve been tasked to research that, which I’m extremely happy to do. Woo!

UPDATE: It’s EWTN - the Catholic network.

So I tuned in as the host was meeting Ron Learned at the airport. Former drummer for Berlin, Learned left the band abruptly as they were recording their second album - no explanation, he just disappeared and the other band members never knew what happened. Ultimately, the band broke up a couple of years later.

Anyway, Learned is told the real reason why he’s been met by a limo at the airport and he’s floored. The host (I can’t remember his name) asked why he left and Learned laughed, clearly uncomfortable. But he explained that he no longer felt that the band was where he was supposed to be because he had become a Christian. So he and his wife went back home to the midwest where they’ve been living a quiet, faith-filled life. His kids have no idea that he was an original member of Berlin.

“Will you sign on for a reunion with your bandmates and one concert?” he was asked. And he signed on - as did the entire original crew.

For me the music was secondary to watching these friends gather together again, some of whom had not been together for 20 years. It was clear that there was a deep caring between them all and I really enjoyed them enjoying the reunion. Turns out they still had it musically. The two songs they showed from their concert were just as I remembered: Metro and No More Words. Good fun to watch.

Saturday, January 24, 2004

It’s the first small group meeting of 2004. I’m looking forward to some good time with the gals - it’s been quite a while since we’ve gathered together. We’ll be looking at the story of Noah. And I’m making two kinds of breakfast pizza - one with eggs and sausage and another with fruit (for the vegetarian). The egg one is more of a casserole, but the recipe looks good. If they both turn out well, I’ll post the recipes.

We were supposed to get snow overnight, but there was nothing when I walked Annie. Although it was dusting a bit - very faint, very wispy snow was flurrying. Peeking out of my window, I can see a light coating on the cars. The bigger snow event is coming for tomorrow night into Monday. That’ll be nice for the Monday morning commute.

Later this afternoon I’m going to go see Along Came Polly with KR from the courthouse. Now that LW is in Texas, KR and I will be hanging out more, I think. She used to be at LW’s house every weekend.

Band practice went well last night. We have a guy who’s a fantastic guitar player. He also plays the mandolin and bass - he’s super talented. Anyway, he had taken a lot of time off from the band in the fall, but he was back last night and I was reminded how much he adds to the band. He’s back on a regular rotation now, but he won’t be playing every week. Actually now that we have two services on Sunday mornings, none of us will be in the band every week. It’s gruelling to have to be there at 7:00am until about 12:30pm every week - not that I’m complaining - we all love being in the band, helping to bring our church body into a time of worshipping God through music. It’s just a long morning and to do that every weekend would be tiring.

Anyway, I have a somewhat busy Saturday. Better get to it…

UPDATE (2:25pm): Only one girl showed up. It was snowing a little harder at meeting time so I’m wondering if the others thought we were cancelled. Who knows. I was glad to catch up with the one.

After she left, I dozed through Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I liked it. Did anyone else catch that there were some similar things to the Lord of the Rings movies? Aside from Dobby resembling Gollum, sort of. There were other things, but I can’t remember specifics at the moment.

And now I’m playing phone tag with KR so the movie today may not happen. I’d be fine with that, I’m not feeling inclined to go out.

Friday, January 23, 2004

So far 9 people have taken the quiz about me - there are results for 12 people, my mother took it twice and my sister took it as well. Sadly, neither of them scored the perfect 100%. How is it possible for a mother and sister not to score 100%?

Tony wins the prize for the highest score. All those times IMing helped, huh?

The answers to the questions are in the MORE section…

I can’t remember who posed the question about the importance of the spouse in a Presidential campaign - in particular someone asked about Howard Dean’s wife, Dr. Judy Steinberg, whom up to now we hadn’t seen on the campaign trail with her husband. But I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now and I admit that I’ve waffled a bit in my position (and I pose my questions on the assumption that Dean is the nominee and eventual winner of the election):

Important - because the First Lady has responsibilities of her own, and so the American people need the chance to see if this partner is viable in her own right. We need to see how she interacts with her husband, what kind of partnership is it? What kind of influence does she have with her husband?

Not Important - because the First Lady won’t be setting policy. She’s not the one running for office, she’s not the elected official. She is merely the spouse. In the case of Dr. Steinberg, she’s a working mother, so her focus will be on her medical practice and her kids.

But this takes me back to the important side, because I don’t believe that’s so. The First Lady does have a full time job of her own while her husband is the President. She has obligations within the White House, state dinners, state visits, etc. And so I do believe that it’s important for the American people to get to know Mrs. Dean. And the Drs. Dean need to understand that while she isn’t the one running for office, she will have a prominent role as the First Lady. Her ability to keep her life as it was before he became governor of Vermont will not translate to the Presidency. The US is a lot larger than Vermont.

LATER: Trackbacked for the OTB Beltway Traffic Jam.

From Fox News:

QUECHEE, Vt.  — Bob Keeshan (search), who entertained and educated generations of children as television’s walrus-mustachioed Captain Kangaroo, died Friday at 76.

On a separate note, Quechee, Vermont is beautiful. The Quechee Gorge is amazing to see, especially in the spring when the winter melting raises the water levels on the river. I have dear friends that live in the village in a classic New England saltbox house.

If you’ve been reading here long enough, then you know that I lived in Manchester, New Hampshire for over 5 years. New Hampshire gets a lot of press every four years with the advent of their Presidential primary. I happened to be in Manchester in 2000 for the Republican primary. Being a Repubican made it fun to be there at that time. And more than a little crazy. So I thought I’d share a bit of what I experienced as a New Hampshire voter.

What you need to know is that in primaries past, the candidates HQ’d in either Concord (the state capitol) or Nashua (as I understand it). But in 2000 they all chose to HQ in Manchester, given that it’s the largest city in the state and the TV station for the ABC affiliate was in town as well.  All candidate offices were on Elm Street, the main street in the center of the city. The GOP folks were on the southern end, Al Gore was in the hoity-toity northern end. My office was also located in Manchester city - just off of Elm Street.

What I remember most about that time was that parking in the city was greatly impacted by the presence of the media. Because the city had mostly parallel parking on Elm Street, the arrival of the TV trucks was quite frustrating for those of us who worked in the city. Those trucks would each take up 3-4 parking spaces on the street. I was fortunate to have a lot where I parked, but running office errands was a pain in the rear when the TV people came to town.

My amusement each night was watching the network news casts, trying to pinpoint the exact location of the reporters on the street. A lot chose the waterfront area, where these old renovated warehouses sit along the Amoskeag River. It’s a lovely area. Another favorite was the Bedford Village Inn in nearby Bedford (my church was in Bedford). And, they often spoke to the political science professors at St. Anselm College, one of whom was a friend from church.

I have to admit that George W. Bush was my candidate from the git-go, but I was open to hearing what the others had to say. I liked John McCain and Liddy Dole a lot too. So I paid attention to all of the debates leading up primary voting day in January 2000. And while there were things I still liked after the debates about McCain and Dole, Bush was still the one I was most excited about and the one that I was convinced could beat Vice-President Gore in November.

I had a friend at the local copy shop that was a McCainiac. She went to all of his rallies and constantly tried to convince me to make the switch. We had good discussions and agreed to support whomever was the GOP nominee - we didn’t want Al Gore to be our next President.

One day, Scot (my boss) and I were eating lunch at the diner next to our office building - Red Arrow Diner (which is one of the top rated diners in the US, btw). It was a crowded day in there, so we ate quickly and because it was a small space, I stepped outside while Scot paid the bill. While I was standing out there this van pulled up to the curb and out tumbled what seemed like a couple dozen suited men. All had “Forbes for President” campaign buttons on their lapels, so I figured they were locals working on his campaign stopping in for lunch and didn’t think much of it, beyond my amusement that they managed to pack that many large men in that minivan.

A minute later Scot walked out, “Did you talk to Steve Forbes?”

“Huh?” Yes, that was my initial response and then my brain kicked in. “Wait! You mean Forbes was in that group of men?” I pointed back at the door to the diner.

“Yeah, we should go in so you can meet him.”

So we went back into the now super-crowded diner and immediately bumped into Forbes’ back. He turned around and quickly introduced himself to us. He makes good eye contact, had a firm handshake, and is good at asking questions. And he’s shorter than I expected, not short though. But that meeting didn’t get him my vote. And he was the only candidate that I saw in person.

Anyway, primary day arrived and I went with much anticipation to vote for my guy. Upon arrival at my polling place, I quickly learned that I needed to register as a Republican in order to vote in the GOP primary. I was registered Independent. For a second I was disappointed, thinking that I wasn’t able to do that and vote, but you can in NH. So I changed my registration, voted, and am proud to say that I participated in a NH Primary.

Does white African-American sound like an oxymoron to you? Who thinks that Africa is composed of 100% black people? Apparently, officials at a Nebraska school do.

OMAHA, Neb. — Officials disciplined students who papered their nearly all-white high school with posters advocating a white student from South Africa for the school’s “Distinguished African American Student Award.”

Peggy Rupprecht, spokeswoman for the Westside Community Schools (search) district, said administrators at Westside High School (search) discovered more than a hundred of the posters throughout the school first thing Monday — Martin Luther King Jr. Day (search).

“The content of the posters, they believed, was inappropriate and insensitive to some members of our school community,” Rupprecht said.

[...]

the mother of the boy pictured on the posters said he was suspended for two days.

The award has been given the last eight years to an outstanding black student as part of the school’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, she said.

The poster pictured junior Trevor Richards, 16, smiling and making a thumbs-up sign. A message at the top encouraged votes for him for next year’s award.

Karen Richards said her son and his friends were not trying to hurt anyone.

“My son is not a racist,” she told the Omaha World-Herald. “He has black friends, friends from Bangladesh and Egypt. Color has never been an issue in our home.”

“It was a very innocent thing,” she said.

Two of her son’s friends were disciplined along with him, she said. A fourth student was punished for circulating a petition Tuesday criticizing the practice of recognizing only black student achievement with the award, she said.

Tylena Martin, a junior, said the poster had been on the door to her homeroom class where she is the only black student. She said she felt hurt by the posters and the backlash that ensued.

According to 2002-2003 state statistics, 56 Of Westside’s 1,632 students are black.

[via Maripat]