Something fun

The last couple of posts have been downers. Need something lighthearted cause my life really is not so doom and gloom right now. So thank Todd for tipping me to this one.

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Drama Nerd You sure do love the spotlight and probably have a very out-going and loud personality. Or not. That's just a stereotype, of course. Participation in the theatre is something to be very proud of. Whether you have a great voice for musicals, or astounding skills for dramas/comedies; keep up the good work. We need more entertainment these days that isn't television and video games (not that these things are bad, necessarily.)
Social Nerd
Literature Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Musician
Anime Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Artistic Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

Yeah, like any of that is a surprise.

House Hunt

Trish and I have been looking to purchase a home over the past couple of weeks. And the process has taught me one very important lesson: house hunting stinks. We have one more night looking at places scheduled for tomorrow, then it is time to make a decision. Thank God.

Corruption and new math

Slate has an interesting chart of scandals at the Bush administration. Unfortunately, to get their premise of Alberto Gonzales is at the center of each major scandal, they had to exclude a whole bunch of scandals like Valerie Plame, Jack Abramoff, Pat Tillman, FEMA, fixing intelligence to go to war, "4th Branch" Cheney, Blackwater, the EPA, the destruction of habeas corpus, Guantanamo Bay, Don Siegleman.... God that is depressing. The good news comes when you look at the current electoral college map and realize we just might be near the end of this mess.

Happy Birthday, Chris Wrenn

July is the month for birthdays... at least for the cool kids. Up today is best friend Chris Wrenn. Chris and I have been so close for so long that before he married Lisa there was rampant speculation that he and I were a couple, including friends who knew us well. (Thanks, Lisa!)

Chris and I met our first year of high school. He was the guy who was so quiet you started to wonder if he took a vow of silence but when he finally spoke you fell over laughing at the sharp observations and Sahara dry wit. (Then of course you would try to tell someone else of the hysterical thing Wrenn said and it would never come off nearly as well.)

Since that freshman year of high school there has been years of adventures involving cops, angry girlfriends, would be girlfriends, drunks on planes, petulant Swiss boyfriends, The Simpsons, secret service impersonations, roommates fornicating in shared spaces, over indulging, The Lord of All, road trips, "Mister Rogers has been arrested", not getting bumped into first class, prostitutes, gambling, Risk/Illuminati arguments, guacamole, "please listen", golfing in heat waves, stealing communion wine, fending off rumors of "the gay", breakdowns, failing at a much higher level, marriage, children, and far, far too many bad vaults. (No, I am not explaining any of that; see above about trying to repeat Chris stuff.)

Cannot think of a better man to have gone through all of that and more with. Happy Birthday, Chris.

Happy Birthday, Jim

Happy Birthday, Jim Catechi. Jim is a friend from the theater years; we met while doing late night shorts for the old AHA! Theatre group. We got off to a rocky start as he made a move on a girl in whom I had one of my patented One-Sided-Love-Affairs-From-Afar, so I was not willing to give him the time of day until I heard it never went anywhere (yeah, well I was young).

Glad it didn't because he has been a good friend for many years. A talented designer, photographer (photographed my wedding in fact) and cook, we have spent many an hour eating good food, drinking good beer, playing mediocre poker and watching baseball that varied between dreadful and inspired. (Jim is the only man I know who had tickets to the two baseball games ever called because of an earthquake - the 1989 World Series and the old Kingdome quake in the 90's when we were sitting in the owner's suite.) We were also known for our joint birthday casino night parties (he is 5 years older than me to the day).

And I wish our history was just that cool, but in full disclosure I have to admit we also spent many, many hours playing Magic: The Gathering as well. To the point where we brought our cards along when we spent a week in Acapulco. Yeah, yeah, yeah. (Hey, now that I am 40 do I get to rewrite history to fit my personal narrative or do I have to wait until I am past 70, like McCain.)

Happy Birthday, James.

Tension

Over the course of the next few months a lot of my life could change. Trish and I are looking to buy our first home; the pitch for Duo is out searching for funding; and of course, we continue to try and conceive a child. It is quite possible that all of those hit within weeks of each other. It makes for a very exciting time.

But the problem with exciting is that it creates tension. I am not talking about stress, but about the tension of possibilities. I feel like we are balancing on the edge of something and I just want it to tip over all ready, damnit. I want something to change, to feel like we are moving forward instead of this seemingly endless place we have been in for the past two years of getting the timing just right to conceive or talking about great ideas for movies yet unable to finance them or whatever. There was even a job possibility that appeared and disappeared within 24 hours, so that is still the same.

It is not that I am unhappy it is just that the waiting is starting to get to me.

Tyranny

I have no idea how to write this without sounding histrionic, but a U.S. Appeals court has just ruled that the President has the power to detain legal residents and U.S. citizens indefinitely, without being charged and without access to the courts. The fact that the Bush administration has "only" imprisoned three men this way is not a mitigation. This is fundamentally un-American - and horrifying.