In preparation to write a diary for Daily Kos (cue scary music), I need to drain my brain first.
Happy 4th of July!! Whatever you are doing, be safe, wear sunscreen, and have fun!
*********************************************************************************************************
SportsBoy has now been in Sweden for over two weeks. He was in a very small village outside of Gothenburg with his grandma and great grandma until yesterday which made it harder to talk to him, but he now he is in Stockholm with his grandpa and able to call. He’s having a wonderful time as usual. Weather has been very good for him – actually rather hot! Starting a daily workout routine to prepare for football practice which kicks in the day after he gets back. Can you believe I just said that? First day of practice is Aug 1 which is now less than one month away! How nuts is that?
**********************************************************************************************************
So what have I been doing? Well, working of course. Fiscal year end at work was June 30th so our year end craziness has begun and wont end until the auditors complete their work in early September. I’ve been really getting into working out! Either with the circuit training class which I go to twice a week or else doing my best to duplicate a lot of those exercises at home each night. Of course even with SB gone, there are still the boards I sit on to fill up my time. I’ve given my notice to the baseball group that I want out as of July 31. I mean – I need to get out from under these things! There’s been no break just because he is out of town. His messy bedroom? Still not touched! My over grown yard? Still a jungle! But I’ve had fun too – couple of days at the county fair (I think everyone has heard me rave about the heavenly taste of deep fried oreos!) a night out or two. Heck, I even read two books! Woo hoo!
Like many though, the news of the day has been dominant either online or as background noise on the tv. I wanted to post this final video of Michael Jackson that I guess everyone has seen at this point, but I want you to watch through to the end…and listen. Listen to the director say “hold for applause, hold for applause, and…fade to black.” And remember that is exactly what he did. It’s eerie:
and one more for you amusement and flash back to the past. Since I was off today I was home when the news was breaking about Sarah Palin resigning as governor of Alaska. And while the speech was not even done and many of my very snarky politically savvy friends were tweeting some truly hysterical comments, all I had in my mind was this song from 1982 by one of the ABBA women, Frida, during her solo career. Cheesy and so very typically 80s:
I think another shoe is going to drop with this one and no, it isn’t just touring the country to raise money for other GOP politicians or hosting a tv show or being a tv talking head or writing her book, or running for President. We’ll see in the coming days if my newly honed political instincts are right or not 
Categories: All about me · Current Events · DS2 · Michael Jackson · Sarah Palin
…. that I have green eyes.
Some people say…….
……. that the Loch Ness Monster is real.
Some people say……..
……. that they saw Elvis just last week (for real!)
and some people say……..
……. that Fox News is Fair and Balanced.
No matter which news station you watch, or listen to, or which news source you read in newspaper, magazine or electronic form – watch for that key phrase:
Some people say
It’s a cop out. It let’s the person saying it/writing it introduce their own spin on whatever the topic might be. There is no real source, no basis in scientific fact – just this very vague “You know, SOME people say….”
And yes, I threw in that Fox News reference above because they are the Kings of unsourced innuendo beginning with “Some people say…” but quite frankly I lookse respect for ANY so-called news source using that phrase.
Meanwhile – here’s a refreshing paragraph from Steve Coll of New Yorker magazine writing about finally getting corroboration on an old tidbit about Osama Bin Laden purportedly spending two weeks in the US when he was much younger (dispelling some theories that he had no real sense of Western culture) :
In that story, I also reported Batarfi’s on-the-record but unconfirmed account of Osama’s visit to America; Batarfi believed the travel had occurred not long before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in 1979. U.S. customs and immigration records from the relevant period had been routinely destroyed—and so the question of whether Osama had personal experience of America, and what that experience might have been, remained elusive. (Bin Laden has never referred to any trip to this country in his writings or statements.) While I found Batarfi to be credible, a single-source account, based on hearsay, could hardly be regarded as satisfactory (emphasis mine).
How refreshing! A reporter who still relies on the old standby of at least TWO solid references/sources of information before believing it’s credible! I think this guy needs to conduct a little refresher course for just about EVERYONE ELSE right now!!
Categories: Media
Birthday boy at 6
With Aug96 cyber sibling at Legoland
First day of 1st grade
Aug moms in Florida Oct 2002
Categories: August Moms · DS2 · People Pics
So within an hour of the news that Billy Mays had died, I was just moseying over to my blog stats page and noticed this huge spike. The hits were all going to a post I wrote earlier in the year about the products one could buy on TV and it included a picture of Billy Mays since he was the quintessential pitch man. The day ended with over 1500 hits!!! WTF? So I tested it out this morning and apparently when you do a google image search on Billy, the first version of this picture is the one that I used:
I shows up on the first page of serach results. Now, I had noticed that in the last month this post had been getting an increased number of hits so somehow my site must have been moving up in the google rankings and the combination of that and his untimely passing (attributed to heart disease, NOT the bump on his head from the plane) created a perfect storm of blog hits! Really interesting how that works!!
Categories: Blogging · Current Events
I remember a fine June breeze swishing its way up Christopher Street from the river and the sweet aroma from the joint in my hand as I sat on a stoop up the block with some friends, the night New York’s finest raided the Stonewall Inn (”Stonewall bar riot was clarion call for change,” Monday). The Stonewall had been there for years. A pub, it is said, built before the American Revolution of the granite blocks from which it took its name. In my time it had been the best speakeasy dance bar in the West Village. By that June night in 1969, its faddish heyday had passed and it had become the party bar for drag and its fans. It was run, as were all the queer bars in New York City at that time, by the mob and its minions.
Remember, in those days, it was almost illegal to be queer, to congregate, to drink together, much less dance. We paid the mob in our private clubs and they paid the cops so we would be left alone. And that’s why that night, as I sat with my friends blowing a joint up the block, the cops raided the Stonewall. They raided it over a “bump in the pad,” an increase in their bribe. The Stonewall wouldn’t pay, so it got raided. (One of New York’s dirty little secrets.)
Go read the rest of this brilliantly written letter to the editor sent to commemorate this anniversary. Open it in a new tab while you listen to Judy singing the song he refers to in the letter to set the mood.
Categories: Current Events · Gay Marriage
Every time someone in the public eye dies and the media saturates their shows with coverage, a huge debate busts out on DailyKos over when it is OK to cover the negative aspects of that person’s life. So naturally, with such a controversial figure as Michael Jackson passing away this week, there have been some very heated discussions going on there. At issue in particular was that MSNBC and NBC put Maureen Orth on the TV within hours of Jackson’s death knowing full well she was going to go 100% negative. Here is a quick link synopsis of what she was saying right away. I have to admit that while a part of me believes what she is saying 100% true – a larger part of me cringed to hear it so quickly. Perhaps there was the irony of WHO was saying these things? After all, she is the widow of Tim Russert who also died quite suddenly of heart failure. While he was not nearly as world wide popular or controversial, he still had his critics and you be damn sure if she and her son had heard ANY of those things within even a few days – let alone HOURS – of Tim’s death that they would have been even more devastated.
And there in lies the rub I think. Because no matter how heainous someone may have been while living, they were still someones loved one. Someone’s child, sibling, parent, grandparent, left long friend etc. And I think the issue is one of respect for THEIR feelings and grief over the loss vs trying to protect the reupatation of the recently deceased. After all, the deceased is..well…dead! Nothing you say is going to hurt THEM anymore.
So clearly I fall on the side of zipping lips for a short period of time. But for how long? And what’s the scale of how bad the deceased has to be before you don’t even bother with respecting their family? Ted Bundy bad?
What do you think?
Categories: Current Events
Tagged: Etiquette
This weekend a dear friend from DailyKos sent me an email letting me know he had enjoyed my post on the hike that SportsBoy and I took. Of course he enjoyed it – I took him on the same hike when he was out here to visit last year! More than that though, Eddie C loves pictures and happy stories. He’s been the most recent host of a long running series on the blog called Got a Happy Story? Started on Friday nights back in 2005 the hosting duties have changed hands over the years and it’s also switched to Monday nights but the theme is the same – let’s spread some cheer. Give that the blog is largely rather deeply political – and back in 2005 was mired in the depression of another 4 years of Bush – we needed a place to go to exchange stories of a brighter nature Well, Eddie is (quite thankfully) inundated with work this summer and in need to guest hosts and he very sweetly asked me to host one week. So, before I could scare myself out of it, I said yes. Then I promptly freaked out to one of my other Kos friends since I’ve written a grand total of 3 diaries in 4 years there!! Aaaaaaacccckkkk!!!
Still, in the spirit of adventure that try to embrace during the summer weeks while the boy is gone, this is a fun assignment. So I wisely chose the Monday after the 4th of July weekend to give me time to come up with something good. Eddie had loved the photos from the hike and suggested something about the Torrey Pines trails and flaura and fauna and bird life. I’m still pondering the gist of the diary, though I think I will highlight a particular day on the trail that was rather spectacular. Of course, I have no pictures from that day, but, I decided to dig around to find a series of pictures showing SB on the trails. Growing up on them specifically. Looking for prior photos tonight, I remembered the stack of photo CD’s from the pre-digital camera days.
JACKPOT!
So I shall share with you some flashbacks. Just a sneak peak tonight as I just finished downloading the first 5 discs. There’s about 9 more and my whole body is stiff from last night’s work out so I want to lie down, but check out these cutie pies:
Music Man and Sports Boy Jan 2002
Sweet Prince and Sports Boy Oct 2003
August Moms Baltimore - Oct 2003
There’s your tease – back with more over the coming days!
Categories: August Moms · DS1 · DS2 · DailyKos · People Pics
done
Our favorite ride as you will hear me explaining in the background
Check out this stomach tumbling nonsense. They went on this ride a couple of times.
Oh yeah, and check out that dangling shoe lace on my kid. Yeah, he’s almost 13 and stil cannot get a grip on his laces!
And yes I know these shots of gorgeous blue skies belie my nearly daily whining on Twitter about Mother Nature holding back on us with the summer weather – BUT – seriously it is still quite cold even with the sun making occasional appearances last week. The breeze from the ocean is either still bitingly cold, or else the sun is just not cutting through enough to make it clear cut shorts and tank top weather yet.
And yeah, sometime in August or September when I am bitching about it being too hot – go ahead and give me the “remember June?!” smack down.
Categories: DS2
The best post Rolling Stone interview with Adam. Great questions that really allow his personality to shine.
Categories: Adam Lambert
