New year, new post

Anybody care to wager whether or not I'll get more than 2007's 20 posts in for '08?

Let's go straight to the headlines...

Engaged!
Yep. After 4.5 years, in a top-secret operation that only 3 people knew about until 72 hours prior to H-Hour, I snuck up to Long Island on Christmas Eve, and hand-delivered a ring to her Christmas morning. Shock and awe, man.

It was a somewhat elaborate undertaking (for me, at any rate) that consisted of me belaboring the plan for three-plus months, holding War Councils with myself at frequent intervals, then - as I put it after I'd set all the pieces into motion - kicking the wagon down the hill and seeing where it landed.

After getting the ring in-hand the Friday before Christmas, and faced with the reality of this thing now in my hand, I made last minute reservations at the motel and for the car (this was part of the plan... I didn't want her to see charges that would have given the secret away until after the fact) then waited for Monday to arrive.

I got to the motel around 10:00 Christmas eve, talked with Jenn ("from my mom's house"), made my traditional early Christmas morning visit to the 7-11 on Jamaica Ave right before it turns into the Jericho Turnpike, listened to 1010 WINS and WCBS 880, sat around promising to distract myself with books or whatever other things I'd brought along to while away a few hours, and eventually fell asleep.

I woke a little later than I wanted to Tuesday morning, but still with plenty of time to shower, then don the suit I'd picked out for the occassion. (Coincidentally, those of you who know me can guess correctly that I was mildly uncomfortable with this level of extravagance, but as I reasoned, I was only going to do this once... might as well go for the gusto.) A trip to Starbucks (surprisingly, thankfully open at noon on Christmas day), then off to await the call from my spy on the ground, who was to let me know when everyone had arrived.

Two and a half hours later, I'd listened to old radio adaptations of Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life (Note to WPHT: Your signal gets to Nassau County just fine), read three articles in Foreign Affairs, taken a nap (unrelated to previous item), and eaten the cheese and fruit I'd bought for lunch for myself the night before. At around 2:30, my spy reported that everyone had finally arrived. H-hour.

I walked over there (I'd parked a couple of blocks away), knocked on the door, and her sister MA answered with a gasp. Only two three people in the room knew... the rest were now creating a considerable hubbub. Jenn was overjoyed.

Then I brought out the ring.

The next several days are a bit of a blur. I spent Christmas afternoon up in NY, but I had to get back to DC that night to resume the babysitting of the cats. Since no one knew of my plan, and my "official" Christmas plans were only to visit my mom briefly on Tuesday and would be home the rest of the time, I'd sort of boxed myself into that assignment. So I drove down to Mom's house in Central PA, broke the news to her (and my brother, who happened to be on the phone), visited with her for an hour, then came back home.

And no, we haven't set a date. We're definitely aiming for some time in 2009, and it's almost certainly going to be in the DC area. I wanted to kick-start the blog with this tale because I'd like to think I'm going to capture the Tale of the Planning pretty well between here and other sources at my disposal.

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I want to write about other stuff, especially this election that we've all started, but my cold medicine is wearing off, and I really should go respond to some work emails. But I actually have political observations to make!!! One's that no one else has made!!!!! Srsly.

On NBEs and the BEs that love them

Part I: Preview Screening

So, the one thing I was sure I’d be blogging about several times over the past several months was the new Transformers movie. I do a disservice to the extraordinary amount of mental energy I’ve invested in anticipation by not writing about the movie, about the Transformers in general, and about some of the observations I’ve had about the fandom (of which I am undeniably a part) as the excitement surrounding the movie reached a fever pitch.

First, the mechanics of my experience with the movie.

On June 22, I got in to work and got an email from our Marketing guy. His contact at the Examiner was offering passes to the preview screen. Of Transformers. June 28. Six days before the mass market release.

I’ve never hit the lottery or had anything with a similar level of outrageous awesomeness happen to me. This was the closest to that feeling I’ve ever had. I mean, the Transformers have been a solid obsession with me for the past five years, and I consider it likely that I’m the biggest fan of the franchise among my friends & acquaintances. So when the guy from the Examiner showed up at work with an envelope with my name on it, and in that envelope was a pass for the preview on June 28, it seemed like I’d hit my own special little lottery.

I finally let myself get really psyched for the movie. Those next six days saw me go into a weird state of wanting to immerse myself in all things Transformers, but paying strict heed to my embargo of all things related to the movie – no trailers, no clips, no fora, nothing. For six days, I busied myself as best I could with a sellout show and a new season. I realized that getting to see this movie well before most of the world was a hell of a way to reclaim June 28.

The 28th arrived, and after stopping in Dupont to get Jenn, we headed by cab over to the Loews in Georgetown. We walked in the door at 6:45, went in the direction the folks pointed us, rounded a corner and saw a massive throng of people already in line.

Long story short, the groups who were giving away these passes gave out enough to get 1,000 people in to see this one screening. Problem: The theater where the screening was being held had a capacity of 300. We got in line, and I tried to do a quick count of the crowd that was already there (the line stretched down one side of the 75' corridor we were in, wrapped around and came back about half-way when we got there) and determined that Jenn and I were very close to the bubble. About 10 minutes into our wait, a woman of some official status was counting (out loud, and slowly duh) the number of people in line. Jenn and I were 278 and 279.

The fatal flaw in their counting system was that there was literally no control over folks cutting closer to the front. What would happen was (and I saw this at least four different times, including with the jackass right in front of me) one person would be in line, then at about 7:15 or 7:20 or 7:25, five of this ass’s friends would show up and get in line where he was.

The line starts moving around 7:25 or so, and moves at a slow, steady pace. Around the bend... just 75 feet from the entrance, until we’re in... 50 feet, line still moves... 40 feet, then 30. I start counting people ahead of us... 18, 16, 12, 10.

The line stops dead.

Someone with the theater runs in, presumably to count seats. A few minutes later, he reappears, “We have room for one person.” Jenn encouraged me to go, but there was no way I was going to have dragged her down there, only to not get in. No one else took them up on that offer. Dude goes back into the theater.

At this point, there’s a family of five and a group of three (including two line-jumpers) in front of us.

A few more minutes later, dude comes out again and lets the family of five in. Then they start handing out free passes to a movie called “Hot Rod”. Small consolation.

Jenn and I were the 304th and 305th people in line.

And I can’t remember a time in my life when I have been more disappointed, more crushed, than I was as I was leaving the movie theater that evening. Jenn suggested seeing something else, since we were there already. I wanted, and still want, nothing more to do with Loews Georgetown EVER.

I could go on and on about how intrinsically unfair that pass system was (i.e., if you’re going to admit two per pass, and there are three people in line, you damn well better get two passes from them, before they even get in line), but there’s no point. The end of the story was that after waiting eagerly for three years and standing on line for over an hour, I did not get in.

I made two resolutions that night: Never patronize Loews Theaters (or, at the absolute minimum, never Loews G-town), and never, ever leave the house on another June 28. Two of the past three days named thus have been positively awful experiences.

Part II: The Movie

I bought actual, physical tickets for ourselves after work on Friday the 29th. Guaranteed seats, for the very first performance for which I could get them, Monday 7/2 at 8:00pm. We showed up at the theater at Gallery Place right around 7:00, and lo and behold there was a line there too. I started gritching, but it was not necessary.

The movie started, then ended. And I felt a little empty. Granted, I enjoyed it as only a Transformers partisan can. The designs weren’t one-tenth as bad as everyone had been saying they were (I saw the designs, but thought maybe I was missing something since I didn’t hate them at all, let alone with the visceral, send-Bay-death-threats kind of hatred a lot of people were expressing). It was absolutely thrilling to hear Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime again. The arrival of the Autobots on Earth, beginning with their Protoforms crashing in Tranquility and ending with the scene with the five of them and the kids in the alley, brought a tear to my eye. It was, in my biased opinion, one of the most awesome scenes I have ever seen at the movies. There were more than a handful of moments where I was in awe... the scene with Bumblebee and Barricade, where Barricade’s giving chase, running after Bumblebee, and transforms mid-stride, for instance.

But I felt completely removed from caring about Jazz getting killed. I wished they’d spent just a little more time with the robots, especially the Decepticons (who got no character development). And I wished, above all, that Michael Bay would just learn to tell a fucking story instead of butcherschwammering around with the camera all the damn time.

After the first viewing, I decided I would give it a solid 7 out of 10. As an action film, I had a much better time at Live Free / Die Hard the day before.

Then came the second viewing. Jenn and I went up to visit her cousin and his family in Columbia. Their son (age 11, I think) is a huge TF fan but has (obviously) no recollection of the TFs I grew up with. He kept referring to Bumblebee as “Hot Shot,” a character from the Unicron Trilogy (a series of TF cartoons from 2002-2006) who roughly fits the same mould as the Bumblebee character did back in the day.

Two notes about this viewing: First, it was awesome seeing the film with people who really enjoyed it for what it was... a loud, dumb summer blockbuster. Jenn’s cousin’s wife was sitting next to me and was constantly grabbing my arm at really suspenseful parts. Good times.

Second, and the larger point, is that this actually was a fun film. This time around, Jenn and I both remarked, it was much easier to keep track of the battles, to really just make much better sense of the film all around. It stood up very well to a second viewing. Even the bit with the Autobots hiding in Spike’s Sam’s back yard played better.

The human cast was much stronger than I thought it was going to be. For the next film, they’d do well to keep Sam & his parents, along with Epps and Josh Duhamel’s character. I can do without the Aussie chick and Donut Boy. And since I know they’ve already signed Megan Fox for TF2, I guess there’s no getting around her (I do hope they tone down the make-up a little bit next time around). Since they were going to shutdown S7 at the end of the movie, my guess is Turturro’s not coming back. Good thing, that, since his character, which wanted to be a cross between MiB baddass Tommy Lee Jones and ID4 lunatic Brent Spiner succeeded in getting close to neither.

Part III: Why aren’t fans happy?

Since my first viewing of the film two weeks ago, I caught up on a bunch of the opinions that have been going around about the film (remember, I was on a movie-info embargo until after 7/2). As near as I can tell, there are two main threads to the complaints about the film:

1) The designs of the robots blow chunks, and
2) It’s not G1!!!

For the first gripe, I think that’s ultimately going to fall under the realm of personal preference. I think the designs were hit or miss, but were largely spot on. I do think they could have done a better job with Starscream’s biped mode. But overall I was really impressed with the designs, even if the stills left me a little leery when they were first publicized. I mean, you don’t get much more badass than Barricade.

The second one I present is a generalization of all the other bitching folks have done (aside from complaints about the movie plot or camera work or other mechanics about the movie itself... these two are the more overarching complaints). People complain that Prime wasn’t Prime-like, or other gripes about the characterizations. The problem is that these complaints are based on assumptions people have made based on their knowledge of (and love for) G1. The issue I have with those complaints is this: The movie was intended to be a fresh retelling of the Transformers story. There’s no Ark crashing into a volcano. There are no space bridges, no Iacon, no Teletraan-1. These are not the Welkertron and Optimus Cullen characters from the 80s. Orci et al used the same archetypes for the Autobots, true, but they’re not the same. They weren’t intended to be. To use an analogy from broader popular culture, it would be the same as if people complained (and I’m sure some did) that Burton’s Batman didn’t use the same Pow! and Splat! bubbles as in the original TV series.

All of that said, I think Hasbro’s missing something or skirting around something that is becoming more and more evident: Transformers needs to return to its roots. They need to pick up from the original G1 storyline (pick a spot... between Season 2 and the movie, or after Season 3, or after Rebirth) and spend some quality time invested in fleshing out the original mythos.

Last year, I started trying to map out all the various ways in which the Transformers mythology has twisted and bent from its original roots. It’s too complex a project. I mean, I have something close to a finished product (though with plenty of problems that I might or might not ever resolve) but the very fact that something like this is even necessary is disheartening. I yearn for a central authority to take control of the supporting fiction and make something canonical out of all of it, much the same way as Lucas does for Star Wars.

I want them, once this whole Transformers: Animated thing is out of their system, to go back and look at the core of the mythology and look at what really works (i.e., what elements keep reappearing in line after line, despite the continuity reboots), things like Optimus & Megatron, the Dinobots, the Quintessons, Omega Supreme, Combiners, realistic transformations, the Decepticons as a truly malevolent, dangerous and violent threat (G1 Megatron wouldn’t have ripped Jazz apart even if he could have), frame all those things within the established G1 cartoon universe, get folks like Flint Dille and Bob Budainsky back at the desk, and start doing some quality storytelling. To hell with having 60 characters on screen. We don’t need that. Flesh out a few characters every episode. Give Optimus a small core group to work with. Then do stuff with them. Kill one of them off. Send them on far flung, off-screen missions to give some other characters screen time (and giving Prime and Megatron some new dynamics to work with). Or better yet, have Prime and Megatron as truly awe-inspiring characters who show up every once in a while once one of these core groups muck things up and need a little deus ex machina help. I don’t know. All I know is that Hasbro has been spiraling closer and closer to G1 ever since Robots in Disguise in 2001. They just need to embrace that and get back to what works.

OK, I’m done talking about robots for a while.

Two years on...

At 7:05 EDT exactly two years ago today, I began a completely new phase in my life. After having my last sugared coffee and black-bottom cupcake at Starbucks and some of my last regular soda and whatever else I used to eat before, I started down a path that I've been traveling now for two years.

I don't have a whole lot to congratulate myself for. Not that I haven't rallied to the cause - to the contrary. I simply managed to do what I should have been doing all along, and what everyone should do and is well within everyone's ability to do, which is simply take a moment and think about what they're eating or doing, and start taking the long view.

I'm now aware - painfully aware, perhaps at times even too aware - that what I do, the personal choices I make, are going to have an impact now and twenty or thirty years from now. I have lived with a very intimate knowledge, an intense realization that I am temporary, at least from this physical world's perspective (I'm still working on the rest of it). And I have good days and bad coming to an acceptance of that cold, hard fact.

I feel that in the past two years, I have a much clearer perspective on certain things, and a much lower tolerance for others. I no longer suffer fools very well (a group that has an ever-growing population in my eyes), but I am much more careful to automatically assume the worst in people. Well, at least I try much harder not to make that assumption.

Two years ago I was granted a different perspective. Not an entirely new one, but certainly one I did not have on June 27, 2005. Along with that, I acquired many new demons. I fight them on an almost daily basis these days. I feel the need to constantly and almost without abandon throw myself into whatever it is I'm doing. I feel like I've lost my ability to appreciate the moment, the Now, and perhaps am overcompensating. It's what I do in lieu of letting my mind wander to the scarier realms where I profoundly feel just how small and temporary I am.

Materially, my life is much better than it has been in a long time. Jenn and I are in as good a place as we have been since we've been dating. That's not to say we're in a great place in the grand scheme of things, but at least they're better. Two years ago today, I was a failed freelance lighting designer. Now I run the box office for one of the most energetic theater companies in the country. I have a position in my chosen profession, the one I spent all of my time in higher ed preparing for, earning recognition and respect for my ability within an industry I love. The last two years have been about rebuilding, and rebuilding correctly.

There's really no point to this except to check in, thank the scant few who check in here, and maybe relay some sense of where my scattered thoughts are at right now, in the midst of preparing for a new season, selling out the final show of the current season, and just living life in the midst of another summer in Washington (now my 8th).

Oh, and to let y'all know that I'm seeing the Transformers movie tonight. Yep, 5 days before everyone else gets a crack at it.

What I've been up to

So, I don't know precisely why I haven't written or whatever... frankly, I'm not that terribly interested in jotting down the minutiae of my life. So, here are the broad strokes as I'm thinking about them right now, since the change of the calendar.

January: Two weeks after Jenn and I started moving massive amounts of data onto our brand spankin' new networked hard drive, the thing crashed. Like, no power was getting to the thing. The bulk of Jenn's digital music collection is on there, as are the entirety of our digital photos from the day she got the new digital camera, as is the entirety of TF episodes that I'd amassed over the past few years, along with a bunch of other stuff that we'd started to archive to (what we thought was) a safer, more reliable medium.

I opened a help ticket with the manufacturer, with the net result being them telling us to send it back and they'd fix it, but we'd lose all the data thereon. This was an unsatisfying answer, as we had no other backup for the photos. Pretty much everything else could have been replaced. Not those, however.

I then talked with a data recovery firm, who said they'd take a look at it, and could guarantee that they'd get the data off, but the price would probably be in the $2700 neighborhood. For a drive that cost just over $200 to start with, this was an unsatisfying answer.

The next step is getting the manufacturer to allow me to open the case without voiding the warranty. Then I can (at least, theoretically) take the drive out and slave it to my system. I'm not entirely sure I understand that process in the least, but at least it's an option.

Current status: I'm a little nervous that the manufacturer won't allow that sort of thing (even though I've heard of a few similar cases to mine, and they've always granted the permission), so I'm still waiting on myself to get in touch with them. On hold.

January: Spent an appreciable amount of time working for Brookings again, as my replacement ended up leaving for a higher-paying job in December. Found myself hating the place even more this time around. My last day there ever was in mid-February. Current status: Good riddance.

February: While I was over at Brookings one day, my boss at the theater sends me this message:

We’re going to have a Talk tomorrow. You’re not in trouble, in fact, far from it. But we’re probably going to have a talk tomorrow.

There was a Development position opening up, and I knew she was up for it.

Within two weeks, I was running the Box Office at Woolly Mammoth. Which made sense, you know, because 16 months previous I'd never worked in a box office in my entire life.

Current status: Still feeling a little overwhelmed, but loving it.

Since then, I haven't had much time for anything... Jenn, this blog (or, really, staying current with the news - though I'm trying). It's a damn shame. Moreso the Jenn thing, really.

Things have finally calmed down enough in the past couple of weeks that we were able to take stock of our situation and we realized that there's really nothing holding us back at this point from getting a house together in DC except ourselves. So we've provisionally decided to do just that. (Provisional, because we want just the right place, at just the right price. Not that our standards or expectations are too high, but we really just kind of want to do it right and find something that we can stay at for several years.) Come August (or, possibly, November), we'll have a new mailing address. I'll be sure to get that to you this time, Hanson.

So, if I were to make a list (because that's the only sort of indication that I've been alive, from a 'net standpoint, for the past four months) of the highlights from the past four months, maybe chapter titles in the big book of my life, they would be:

1. Brookings retrax
2. All Talk, More Work (the Dull Boy remix)
3. My patriotic duty as a mass-consumer, wherein I discuss eBay shopping sprees and new glucometers
4. Morrowind, or That Game That Sucks Me In Every Time I Even Think About It.

Looking forward...

May: I get to take an extended break from work (potentially up to 5 days... still waiting for word on that fifth day request) beginning on the 12th. Kinda want to go up and visit the blood. Plus, Rollver!

June: DMCP, and the new season prep.

July: Fringe. (Mostly just a lot of hours... not a whole lot for us to do otherwise. At least that I can see at this moment.)

August: Gearing up for the season, then it hits and Jenn and I skip town for this place.

Maybe I'll feel like going into greater detail about all or some of this. Maybe not. But if you are still reading, thank you. I owe you a dollar.

Twenty Oh Six

This isn't going to take long.

Last year was somewhat unremarkable, I think. At least, as I'm sitting here trying to figure out what to say about it, there isn't a whole lot springing to mind to write.

The highlights:

• Rehoboth: Who'd have thought I'd like to be at the beach? I guess, technically speaking, I'm still not quite sure about the actual beach itself, unless it's at night and it's not really freakin' hot. Jenn's constantly bemused remembering my complaints standing on the beach on our second day there: "There's too much sand and too much water and too many people." But I liked having five days of nothing to do, listening to weather radio (I finally bought myself one of them things), and sleeping pretty much whenever the urge struck. The best part, though, was being around Jenn's family without the stress of a holiday attached. While I love seeing her family, Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter and all the rest are attended by a host of stress inducers that detract from enjoying the thing fully. But yeah... Rehoboth was cool.
• Charlottesville & DMB: Two different trips to see Dave this year, one to Virginia Beach (where it was ungodly hot) and one to Charlottesville. I always love going to Charlottesville, and every time I go I will always make time to go to Monticello. Every time I go, and every time I go on my Jefferson benders immediately before and after the trip, my oft-waning faith in America is restored a little.
• Selinsgrove: Spent the night up there for the first time since 1997. Jenn and I stayed at Phillips Motel, which has come a long way since I first stayed there in 1995. It's really a beatiful place. After two full days of hanging out on campus, two complete meals at Perkins (which, no matter how much it changes, will always have the best coffee on the planet), and running into a bunch of people I haven't seen in a decade, I readily remembered why I loved it so much there. There's a quiet, seductive charm to that part of the state, and being back there reminded me of a time in my life when I felt completely at ease with myself and the moment in which I lived. I've tried to bring some of that peace back with me. Some days I'm more successful than others.
• Work: April arrived, and I got back into the swing of things, pulling a couple of 60-hour weeks (something I'm nearly doing again right now) between Woolly and Brookings. At the theater, I've been progressing toward that ever-elusive goal of completely supporting myself with a job in my degree. The thought of giving that up - something I was forced to consider earlier in the year - rubs me the wrong way. I set a goal for myself back in 1994, and the fact that despite all the derailments and all the bullshit and all the life that has intervened, it's still a goal well within reach.
• Home: I simply cannot wait until there's some sort of Matrix-style, downloadable program for "tidiness." Because man, I need it.
• Jenn: I think the worst thing I did this year was, for a brief moment, realized that I'd sort of taken her presence for granted. This was, in many ways, a very tough year for us. We're so close to making an actual life for ourselves, and we have so many plans once that finally happens. It's just really frustrating. We weathered that, and are still weathering that, none the worse for wear, I think. As I keep telling her, it takes time to turn the Titanic around. (And yes, I'm well aware that that is a piss-poor metaphor, but you know what I mean.)
• Politics: I payed progressively less and less attention to what the folks down the street were doing (to us) through the course of the year. I spent a good part of 2004 & 2005 making my rationales. In 2006, I tested them against reality and found them to be true. I know where I stand, and I know what I believe, and I know to always & humbly ask "Am I wrong?" I was just hoping everyone else was going to come around. They did.

I was really busy just kinda living my life this year, so I don't have a lot in the way of book, movie or music recommendations to make. I spent an awful lot of time thinking about those damn robots, and I anticipate doing much of the same this year, what with that celluloid thing coming out in about 7 months.

I got progressively grumpier as 2006 wore on, and that trend has continued into this year. I can't quite pinpoint the source, but I suspect I just need to get shit done and start feeling better about myself.

To anyone out there who's still reading... first, how's the new look strike you? Second, I'm really sorry about the not-writing thing. I've just been uninterested in sharing my uninteresting life with folks. I can't promise it's gonna get better in the near future. The trend doesn't look good (my blog stats for 2006).

I'm really hoping for a breakout year this year. I feel like I'm due. In one way or another, the past four years have all sucked in major, fundamental ways. I'm hoping 2007 breaks that chain.

Health Matters: a followup visit

So I just realized that I left you all on pins and syringes with my update last time and the ongoing saga of Sasquatch (see here if you've forgotten already, it's in Part 2).

Well, truth to tell, it wasn't much of a cliffhanger. In the world of cliffhangers, it was unfulfilling. It would be like if we'd just seen Best of Both Worlds, Part 1, with Cmdr. Riker having just ordered the Enterprise to fire on a Borged-out Locutus-of-RSC, then we had to wait four months for the second part.

Then, finally, we get to see Part 2, and just after Riker says "Fire!", Picard takes off his Borg headgear and goes, "Ha ha! Just kidding Number One, gotcha! Happy Birthday!" and then the rest of the episode is about Worf's son Alexander's witless quest to befriend one of the animals in the ship zoo. Or whatever.

This latest incarnation of the Sasquatch phenomenon was exactly like that. Exactly.

Health Matters

Some have called January 23 the "saddest day of the year," what with the psychological effects of shortened days and all that. Indeed, last year on this date we lost Johnny Carson. However, the 1/23's of my life over the past five years have been anywhere from neutral to excellent days (it was 1/23/01 when Ian first asked me to be the SM for Poona). This year's 1/23 falls nearer to the latter category. In short:

6.1

That number, my friends, is my current A1c level. A1c will mean nothing to most of you. It is, however, one of the most important numbers in my life. Basically, the A1c is a measurement of blood glucose levels over a roughly three-month period. The goal that type 2 diabetics are told to strive toward is getting that number under 7.

To give you some perspective, my A1c level the day I was admitted to the hospital last year was over 15, more than twice what non-diabetic levels are. A1c tests don't even work above values of 18. The A1c of 15 means that for the three months leading up to my stroke, I had an average blood glucose (BG) level of between 270 and 300. Non-diabetics seldomly get above 130, and are normally between 80 and 105. (Some more perspective: when I was admitted, my very first BG reading was 460.) My current A1c level corresponds to a 90-day BG average of about 120.

My doctor, who was somewhat astounded to hear of my experience at Veselka back in November (chronicled here) was thrilled with the A1c result. I was ecstatic, to the point of pumping my fist in the air in celebration.

This is not the end of the story. It's just the beginning. I can't write the rest. The rest of the story comes in the next decades, as I continue to find that balance of loving food (which I do) and enjoying the right kinds of food (which I'm doing).

Part 2 of this entry comes as yet another confirmation of several things I've come to accept as true over the past six months:
1) My family doctor, who I valued so much for 20 years, has fallen into incompetency or, at the very least, a dangerous complacency.
2) My old GP actually was a quack.
3) I continue to receive the best health care of my life in my socialized-medicine environment.

The reason I went to see the doc today was because the problem I've had with my left arm four times over the past two years (two of which are chronicled here and here) started recurring last Thursday. The lifespan of this thing has become predictable: Three days of increasing amounts of pain, followed by four to six days of unbearable pain, sleeplessness, inability to move and a humongous dose of crankiness. So, when I realized that the cycle was starting up again, I made the doctor's appointment.

When I went in to see her last December, I let her know that we were in the Season of Sasquatch (what I've come to call this affliction, for lack of a better term), and she indicated that should it reoccur to get to her quickly and we'd set up surgery consults and get the core of the infection removed.

It was progressing over the weekend more or less as expected. However, last night I was somewhat surprised that I still had some mobility in my arm (usually by Day 4, that's not the case). This morning when I woke up (Sleeping through the night on Day 5? How odd.) it didn't feel any worse than it did the night before.

Goldie gave me a prescription of antibiotics, which she told me not to fill unless and until it got worse. She gave me a referral to the surgeon, whom she said not to see if it didn't get worse. She is of the very firm opinion that this Sasquatch thing has been a complication relating to my DM (physician shorthand for type 2 diabetes), and now that it is under control for the moment, the severity of this complication is likely to become lower or possibly disappear entirely.

For the moment, I still have some pain, especially when I try to move my arm too much. The next 48 hours are going to be very telling, and are something of a cliffhanger for me: Will Sasquatch Return?
More later....

The fact that I'm not in excruciating pain when I fully expected to be, and the 6.1 thing both have made this particular 1/23 one of the better ones. Hey, you take the good news when you can, right?

How I roll: Sunday edition

Piping hot coffee. Check.
English muffin smothered with cheese. Check.
Sunday's Post. Check.
Dave Brubeck. Check.

I honestly can't think of any better way to start a week.

Rarrrgghh!

I should really learn to write when I'm less irritated. That said, here's my laundry list of all the little things that have converged to piss me off in the past four hours.

After a perfectly enjoyable (if a tad boring) day at work, I go up to Chinatown to wait for the 80 to take me home. Bus timetable sez that on Sundays the northbound 80 arrives there at 6:23. My watch sez 6:08. Cool. Even allowing for the 5 minute margin of error that this town thrives on, I'm still golden.

Tick... tick... tick...

6:23. No bus.

6:28. No bus. They've now passed the margin of error.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

Damn it's cold out here.

If one more smelly, hairy person gets up in my stuff and badgers me for money, I'm going to go ape shit.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

6:43.

Call the girl. Maybe she knows where this X2 bus goes. You know, the route that has a bus every freakin' minute. Girl sez I should just take a cab, but that seems silly to me. Cabs in DC cost too much.

Alas, she doesn't know the X2's route.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

6:48.

A mental list of the buses I've seen go through or near this intersection, in no specific order: 70 (4 of 'em), P6 (2), Circulator (3), X2 (4), 42 (3).

Maybe I should go back down to Olsson's to warm up. Or over to the sbux across the street. No, wait, they just closed. Damn.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

6:53.

Call the girl again. Maybe she can see me on the traffic camera. Hi girl. I like talking to the girl. I'm just annoyed. And now, the one fun thing I've devised to keep myself entertained over the past 45 minutes I have to stop because, oh look, there's my fucking bus.

So, as it turns out, either the 6:23 bus never showed up and this was the regular next bus, or this dude was really late. I'm learning, however, not to take my frustrations out on other people. But the other people waiting for the 80 have not even attempted learning this.

6:54-7:01: Wow. These people just will not shut up about waiting for an hour. That seems to be an awful lot of time to waste on a dude whose fault it may or may not be and who doesn't really care anyway.

I get home exactly one hour after getting to the stop in Chinatown. Note to all: bus service on Sundays in DC blows.

---

There's been other stuff today this weekend that has annoyed the hell out of me, but I'm not gonna bother with it. All I have to say is that if there isn't at least 4" of snow on the ground Tuesday morning, there's gonna be hell to pay.

SCOTUS thinking

I'm too frazzled at the moment to explore this thought with any detail, but I wanted to get it out there in case I should come back to it.

Roberts and Miers have both said, in more or less the same language, that they are for judicial restraint. That's the phrase that's been bandied about and promoted by the talking-points propogators for the last few weeks. My question is, what precisely does that mean?

It could go one of two ways, and Roberts never indicated in his confirmation hearing which way it meant for him.

It could mean that as a justice, he would exercise judicial restraint and prevent himself from upholding or rejecting laws purely from an ideological stance, and that he truly would weigh the Constitution as the chief arbiter in any decision he made.

It could also mean the exact opposite. It could mean that he will legislate from the bench in an effort to promote an ideology to bring American law in line with some predetermined goal. This sense of "judicial restraint" could mean that he would overturn or uphold solely to return the law to achieve this goal.

The latter is likely what most conservatives would prefer, assuming that their agenda was the "predetermined goal". The latter definition, however, suffers from a logical inconsistency. It depends on a jurist becoming an activist for a cause to bolster that agenda. This, from a cause that detests, derides and decries judicial activism.

So, logically, if Roberts starts voting based on some ideological end-point that could be labelled as "conservative," conservatives should still have to detest, deride and decry. If they're against the concept of judicial activism.

The reality, I think, is far from that, and that they'd be alright with a judicial activist if he (and potentially, she) started tearing down the things the conservative movement disagrees with.

Speaking of voting, go vote in the poll to your right (my left). Tell me if you think this blog should change its name or not, and what that new name should be. (I know that I don't have a very large audience, but from my stats I do know there's more than 5 of you who come back on a daily basis, so get ta votin'.)

Fifteen minutes with Rush and Sean.

While putzing around earlier today, I decided to check in on Rush Limbaugh, who I used to listen to quite a bit in the late 90's trying to understand the conservative frame of mind. Know thy enemy, or something. Anyway, I was subjected to three grievous assaults on reality within 15 minutes. Here's how that went, and the research I've done in the past 20 minutes to refute them:

Circa 2:55 pm EDT: Rush declares only ten people died in the gulf hurricanes.

Truth: Giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was only referring to Rita, the actual death toll stands over 300% above what he instructed his listeners to believe. The death toll from Katrina stands at 2,140, or 21000% over his estimate.

In the same sentence, we learn there were no murders or rapes at the New Orleans Convention Center.

There is some question about whether or not there were any rapes. No victims have come forward, according to authorities. The same is also being said of murder victims, although it appears that at least one major US news source has an account of a murder victim at the Convention Center.

Circa 3:10 pm EDT: Hannity was refuting the claims that global warming is influencing the climate and producing stronger hurricanes. To that end, he cited the 1900 Galveston hurricane, which was the most deadly natural disaster in American history, which occurred before - as Hannity stated - America was using fossil fuels.

Truth: Two major points where Hannity is intellectually dishonest or outright wrong. First, the 1900 Galveston storm does not even show up in the most intense storms to hit land from the last 150 years. However, four of the top five most intense storms - Alan (1980), Gilbert (1988), and Katrina and Rita - have occurred in the last quarter of a century.

The second point, and the obvious one, is Hannity's rewriting of history. The claim that America wasn't using fossil fuels in 1900 is laughable. The first coal mine incorporated in the US did so in 1820, and the first oil well appeared (quite famously) in 1856. The two sources had been used by other civilizations previous to that for thousands of years.

Unlike some Republicans (Hannity among them), I do not view conservatism as a mental illness. I am baffled, however, by the continued willingness of Republicans to tolerate the kind of foolishness displayed by Rush and Hannity today (and presumably on other occasions). And it's not like they're crackpot, tin-foil-hat conspiracy theorists. These are two commentators in the mainstream of the Republican party who have massive news organs and multi-million dollar fact-checking machines at their disposal (Rush and Hannity are both on ABC Radio, and Sean has the added benefit of the Fox News network to utilize). Yet for some reason, they weren't able to conduct the same sort of vetting of information I was using nothing but my internet connection and some Google and Wikipedia searching. It's almost as if they don't want to hear the truth, or disseminate the truth to their trusting listeners.

Anyway, after Hannity declared the absence of fossil fuels in America previous to the 20th century, I turned it off. I advise you to do the same.

A bunch of random stuff

I) My favorite moment in a video game? When you had to figure out a base-25 counting system in Riven.

II) I tape Breaking News. It's a weakness. I have hundreds upon hundreds of hours of news on VHS from the past 15 years. (My first news-taping event? The first Gulf War.) One day, one halcyon, gold-encrusted day, I will have it all converted to digital for posterity. But you know what's missing from my collection? The first eight hours of 9/11 coverage on CNN. I was trapped in DC and far away from my VCR in Alexandria (where I was living at the time). I wasn't able to get home until 5:15 that afternoon, and didn't get the VCR rolling until a few minutes after that, as Judy Woodruff was saying

...and Aaron, this may be another point. We want to say God bless the souls of those who have lost their lives today or are dying or are dying as we speak in hospitals and in places where they cannot be reached.

I mention this only as a bookmark that's sort of embedded in my head - because that's where my first 9/11 tape starts - rather than any sort of notation of the poetry of the moment (that whole day was a horrible, eloquent poem).

Point being this: Does anyone know where I can fish up those missing 8.5 - 9 hours from CNN that I missed? It has been a gnawing thing at the back of my head off and on for the past four years, but I never have the $500 I'd need to get the official video from CNN (yes, $500... I've checked many times). I hate that I'm a completist about this, but I am, c'est la vie. I have about 100 hours of the 1991 Gulf War (I taped it myself) to offer in trade, if you're interested or know someone who might be.

Just more evidence...

That Bush and his Presidency is the biggest disgrace to the spirit of this wonderful country since James Buchanan:

This item, from Brian Williams. This is not spin, this is not analysis. This is Brian Williams reporting the raw fact that the power came back on in the area around the location of Bush's motorcade before he passed through, and gave hope to the folks there that things might be nearing a return to normal. Then, after the President's departure, the lights again went out. Power had still not been restored to the residents more than 12 hours after it went out last night.

I really want to hear an ardent Bush apologist make a case for this one. I mean, really. How in the name of God is this defensible? How does this say anything except that Bush used New Orleans last night as a backdrop for a speech they'll play on continuous loop at the Bush library? What does this say about the Presidential power structure in charge in NOLA that allows so much of their resources to go toward providing America with the veneer of normality when the actual truth is still far, far away from that? Is this President so sheltered from reality that he doesn't know they turned the power back on just for him? Does our President now not know that the normality he saw last night in New Orleans was a fraud?

And at what point do Americans say enough is enough? At what point do we take Bush at his word, and force him to actually take responsibility. You know what... it's Open Letter Time:

Dear Mr. President:

Taking responsibility for something isn't just the words you say, Mr. President. It's being held accountable for that which you are claiming responsibility. So, by your own admission, Mr. President, you are responsible for this fraud. You, Mr. President, have committed just another in a long and historic string of frauds on the American people. You have demonstrated your incompetence. You have demonstrated your inability to deal with a problem far less severe than massive WMD attack on our country (something you told us years ago the country was ready for because of all the money thrown to your old business partners in the name of National Security and fighting the terrorist threat). You have demonstrated the failure of your plan to provide for the people of New Orleans, and any other poor sap of an American who happens to find themselves in dire straits because of a disaster, natural or otherwise.

Mr. President, your behavior is inexcusable, your failures are inexcusable, your "solutions" are inadequate, your ignorance is appalling, and you no longer seem to care about America and her inhabitants. Since you have indicated you are responsible for this debacle, this disgrace, I would be honored to accept your resignation. You serve at the pleasure of the people, and the people are no longer pleased. So for the good of your country, Mr. President, please, resign.

Colorado - Day 6, Part 3a: DMB

[I'm not going to try to maintain any order to the retelling of the vacation tales. You're just going to have to deal with it, or cut and paste them, whate'er you wish. I've made some sense of the numbering scheme of how the trip happened, in case you actually want to do that once they're all written.]

At the Monday DMB show, I finally got to hear one of the two songs I want to hear live, and by far the one I'd thought I'd have much less of a chance of hearing: Old Dirt Hill.

This is going to alienate me from most DMB fans out there, but I absolutely love that track, and I absolutely love that it looks like it's going to be the next single from the album in spite of your hatred for the song, and I absolutely love that they played it twice at Red Rocks, in spite of y'all.

I loved the song the first time I heard it, and I love it every time I listen to it now, and I was just ecstatic when they started into it on Monday, and I sort of perversely enjoy that Jenn and I were the only two people within 30 rows who even game a rat's ass that they were even playing the song.

Take a deep whiff

I spent the first quarter century of my life growing among the shit-covered farm fields of Lancaster County. My schools were surrounded by them, and in the spring the smell wafting in on what would normally have been a fragrant spring breeze was enough to make even us sturdy locals gag.

The stank coming from 1600 Pennsylvania NW and the truth-twisting support network it has is far, far worse.

Most odious of everything that's going on (and there's a lot of odious stuff going on) is this claim being fronted by the heads of FEMA, DHS, and every right-wing blogger out there that the federal government had to play second fiddle to the local governments in Katrina relief operations. Had to. You know, states rights and all that.

I call bullshit.

In June 1963, then again in September that same year, President Kennedy nationalized the National Guard troops to effect the integration of Alabama schools after Governor Wallace literally stood in the doorway of state schools preventing black students from entering.

So, it could be fair to say that in a time of great national need, the President would have the authority to nationalize the Guard.

It would also be fair to say the President fiddled while Rome burned.

It would also be fair to say that the heads of DHS and FEMA are incompetent.