December 25, 2009

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Let 'em eat cake

Merry Christmas!
I understand my hometown of Oklahoma City is all snowed in with the biggest snowstorm there ever. I’m sorry I missed all the misery, but I’m in Tucson, AZ, with the grandkids, who were a real joy this morning ripping off wrapping for a boatload of presents. RebL and Hubster are blessed with the bestest kids evah.
Saw DaynaD yesterday while I was out here and she’s doing very well in the desert, which she loves. There are mountains in all directions and mild weather this time of year. We had a great catch up on each other talk.
Tomorrow, I head for Los Angeles, where I’ll spend New Year’s Eve with Rush Riddle. Can’t wait. I think I’ll also get to see MB, who is visiting her grandkids out there (odd that she lives in NW Ark and I live in OKC and I”ll see her on the West Coast, but that’s America for you). Since we didn’t plan any of this out with the other in mind, whether we see each other depends on her sons and my host, Rush, and whether we can put things together by phone on the fly, but we’ll see.
Heard from my New Orleans son this a.m. and he was having a merry Wii xmas.
Mom’s snowed in and so my big worry is that Sinatra will have to make do with dry food for a couple of days until she can get to him.
Gotta call from the Debster this a.m. Unfortunately, AT&T doesn’t seem to have coverage where I am in Tucson. I can’t get a signal at all. Not even the shortest of bars. I do have wifi, so I get half of my emails but not the Microsoft ones.
I took Christmas morning photos of the grandkids opening presents so if I ever get back home, I’ll try and post the best of the best of that.
Stay safe and warm, OKC, and try to thaw out before I get back, if you don’t mind. I could get used to this 60 degree afternoons as bundle-up cold the way Tucson is treating it.
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December 22, 2009 updated!

A very warm holiday wish to my friends and loved ones. I’m happy to get out of town to have Christmas with my grandchildren and I look forward to seeing old friends and having fun in Los Angeles for New Year’s Eve, but I’ll certainly miss those I leave behind.
For the first year in several years, there will be no Christmas Eve Santa at my house. I’m very sorry. I wish my friends had taken up the slack and kept up the tradition and maybe they will yet, but it doesn’t look like it.
I’ll be missing OuiMarcy’s Blue Moon New Year party and that’s a tough hit to take. She sets out the very best spread of food for a party of anyone in town and the company is always so very pleasant.
I’ve been reading John X’s adventures in Vienna and he seems to be having a great time. I am very jealous. So jealous, I intend to take my own time in Europe in 2010.
Sister Mary’s adventures in S.C. seem like fun and MCARP is throwing out the old to make way for the new, cleaner spaces in his house.
As far as I can tell, God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.
Even in the United States Senate.
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December 13, 2009

From Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, comes a thought I believe especially cogent for my friend MCARP:

Technically, you’re already a cyborg. If you keep your cell phone with you most of the time, especially if the earpiece is in place, I think we can call that arrangement an exobrain. Don’t protest that your cellphone isn’t part of your body just because you can leave it in your other pants. If a cyborg can remove its digital eye and leave it on a shelf as a surveillance device, and I think we all agree that it can, then your cellphone qualifies as part of your body. In fact, one of the benefits of being a cyborg is that you can remove and upgrade parts easily. So don’t give me that “It’s not attached to me” argument. You’re already a cyborg. Deal with it.

December 12, 2009

I’ve had this cold and it’s kept me inside for several days. Yesterday, I had no choice but to leave the house briefly to make a deposit for a client as promised. I bravely went forth, bundled up and feeling good about my break from cabin fever after a couple of days indoors.

Bad move.

I didn’t have a choice, but I wasn’t as well as I thought. I got home and imploded.

Meanwhile, on the national politics front, that do-nothing Obama; what can I say? In one week, all he was able to accomplish was a Nobel Prize acceptance speech hailed by both right and left, passage by the House of Wall Street regulatory reform and passage by both houses of Congress of a $1.2 Trillion budget, all while the health care reform bill is being filibustered by the same Republicans that passed the biggest government intrusion into the health care field since Medicare on the back of a $1.2 Trillion unfunded deficit spending Part D Medicare drug program. Tea bag my ass.

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December 10, 2009

I have a nasty cold. I tried hard not to catch it last weekend, and put it off until this week it seems but it finally caught up with me. I really do just want to have my body thrown onto the plague cart; “Bring out your dead!” I’m way too arrogant and self centered to believe I’ve got anything like a “common” cold. It has to be something special, you know?
Anyways, I’m using every scientific nostrum I can lay hands on. Chicken soup, check. Zinc cough lozenges, check. Heavy doses of Vitamin C, check. Blow nose, wipe nose, cough, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. I’ve reached that place where I no longer can wipe my nose, I have to blot since I’ve rubbed my upper lip raw.

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YUK! I took a shower but kept my hair dry, and never put on clothes Wednesday, just bummed around the house in my PJs and robe. Like many American men, I’m a real crybaby about being sick. I had to stop writing this post here to heat up some Theraflu powder, which I used to slug down another 1500 mg of Vitamin C. Oh, how yummy. ::snark::
***
I want to say a word here about the politics of the health care debate in Congress.
Yes, I know all the papers and blogs and Fox talking heads can’t quit bringing you the latest breathless commentary. It’s bull. I mean it’s bull if it is coming from Hannity on the right or Jane Hamshire at FireDogLake on the left.
Here’s why: Continue reading →

December 8, 2009

I was the 477th voter at St. Luke’s today for the Maps 3 election. As of this post, I don’t know the outcome and the polls are not yet closed. I think I’m starting to get a cold and I’m still going to go to my Tuesday night meeting, but I have a hunch I may not be doing much as the week wears forth. Had some chowder at Rococo’s for lunch and it was simply mah-vah-lous! Enough rambling.
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December 7, 2009

“A day that shall live in infamy,” according to FDR. “Bad Day”, for which Pearl Harbor certainly qualifies, by Daniel Powter, has been named by Billboard as the One Hit Wonder of the decade. I have no opinion as to that since I’m unqualified to utter a sensible one on the topic, but I can assure all and sundry that I quickly found it to be the most annoying song of the decade that became more and more cloying each of the 5 weeks it led the charts. I just thought I’d share some of those “good times”:

December 6, 2009

The sun makes the infinity symbol in its travels through a year

The sun makes the infinity symbol in its travels through a year

This may be the most complicated photo taken EVAH. The method of getting the sun to demonstrate its flight overhead over the course of a year wasn’t easy and is described HERE. Hat tip to the traveling John Heinous.

My daughter has posted the most incredible film starring my grand-daughter on her blog, Mom-A-Tron, and I beg you go see and hear the smartest 7-year-old on Planet Earth.

My sister writes on her blog, MindOverMary, that she wants to go on a genealogical detective hunt for my adopted father’s biological roots and needs a brother to go with her. I have some mixed feelings, but my curiosity presently dominates.

There were lots of things to do this weekend. A few of the things on my list were: IAO opening, Baubles show at Red Cup, the opening of Oh! studios by the lovely Juliet and her partners, First Friday gallery walk on Paseo and the opening of Picaso’s, the much anticipated successor to the beloved Galileo’s. The teapots at JRB Art Gallery were interesting, but there was one teapot with “bullet” teacups that looked remarkably like, well, male genitalia. Joy Reed Belt also showed some really wonderful and bright works in the main room that I wished I could afford.

Being a tea-totaller, I passed on something that sounded like soooo much fun: the Snuggie Pub Crawl initiated by The Lost Ogle. The pub crawl focused on the Classen Circle clubs (Edna’s, Drunkenfry, HiLo and Speakeasy on 51st) and the star of the event was JD Merryweather’s Coop Ale Works beers. JD is a well known and wonderful photographer who lives and works in my Paseo “bubble”; he’s also a helluva great guy.

Love you guys and there’s nothing you can do about it.

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