Do the Yak

Election detox update: Autumn mania has faded, but a small inner glow remains. Cabinet choices: so far so good. Can't wait for the inauguration. A couple of my coworkers are going so as to experience the history along with thousands of strangers in the cold. I've been meaning to write about the ongoing demise of the newspaper business but there wasn't a recent news peg until yesterday's announcement that the two Detroit papers are cutting back to home delivery only three days a week (with only a pared-down newsstand print version on those days), since the web has for some time been Numero Uno. In weeks previous, there've been articles about the Tribune Co. filing for bankruptcy , professional web-only journalists successfully competing with traditional media in several cities, and apparently at least one paper outsourcing all its editorial functions to India for pennies. Wow. I got into newspapers at what was, in retorpsect, the last gasp of the golden age of th...

Massachusetts and New Jersey, to name just two, have a reputation for political corruption. But nothing, and I mean NOTHING, could top the hinkle-pinkling of Ilinois Gov. Roy Blagojevich as just reported on CNN.com . Trying to auction off Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder? If he doesn't get enough moolah, maybe appoint himself to the seat so he could rake in more graft from the Senate than he could as governor and also rehab his already-crappy image for a 2016 presidential run? Or how about threatenting to withhold state assistance from the Tribune Co. unless they fired their editorial board that had been critical of him? It's so juicy I can hardly stand it. Plus as an added bonus, his photo on CNN.com reveals what I firmly believe is a toupee worthy of Buddy Cianci. No one who is 52 has hair that thick and dark brown, with the possible future exception of George Stephanopoulos. Diane Wilkerson looks like a nun in comparison. Edited to add: A blog post in TIME cla...

I've recently discovered StumbleUpon and have already wasted many happy hours with it. Some great yields: Absolutely Ridiculous Christmas Card Photos (not to be confused with 1970s JC Penney catalog photos ) Australia Gets Drunk, Wakes Up in North Atlantic 2208 A.D. Looks Back on George W. Bush ...and I'm going to recommend Obama Victory plates on StumbleUpon even though it's not intentionally funny, but it's oh so America. (Be sure to have your speakers on to hear the ludicrous voice-over.) Get 'em while supplies last! ...and the most recent Mimi Smartypants , whose young daughter Nora was recently doing some sort of art project: Nora: MOM! Do we have any of those, those, those things that make spinning happen? Me: [Percocet? Stationary bicycles? Colonial Williamsburg?] Sorry, what? Nora: The metal things! With the sides! Me: Can you explain more... Nora: AHHHHHHH! [runs away as I am clearly too dumb to live] [blessed silence punctuated by faint rummaging sounds...

See Dozer. Dozer is a stuffed dog. See Dozer drink. Dozer is having a martini at my father's house. See children. See children smile. The children are my nephew Jack, Sarah and Becky. See children unfazed by boozy dog. Dozer is friendly. "Hit me again, bartender," says Dozer. Yesterday the girls and I attended a show at the local library of Celtic music, storytelling and dancing. Sort of a mini Family Von Trapp -- a jolly bearded fellow, his wisp o' a wife and their kids, an 11-year-old girl who danced beautifully and an 8-year-old boy who played a drum but looked like he wished he was almost anywhere else. I learned a lot, including the difference between Irish and Scots bagpipes (apparently playing the Irish version must be done in a seated position while also doing the chicken dance with one arm) as well as the dances themselves. I never knew the fingers above the heads were meant to symbolize a stag's horns; I always figured they were just trying to look like ...

Some more thoughts on Obama's historic election... Gov. George Wallace's daughter movingly explains how her family has come full circle on race . Colson Whitehead writes in the New York Times that finally we will have a skinny guy as president . Amid the celebration, another reason to mourn the slow death of newspapers . Suppose McCain had won. Would the national reaction and mood (as dictated by those who voted for him) be anything like what were seeing now? Hell no, because let's face it, no one was excited about McCain. Larry King asked Bill Maher , "Did the McCain campaign -- I know you admired him in the past -- did it disappoint you?" Maher's reply: "Terribly. I think it even disappointed the people who were voting for him. I sensed something in conservatives reacting to the election yesterday. Even the ones who voted for McCain, they sort of were relieved. I sensed that. It was like, 'yes, I guess I kind of had to pull the lever for McCain, b...

Today I feel thankfulness. The country did the right thing and elected Obama as the 44th president. I still can't believe it, hearing phrases like "President-elect Obama" on the radio. Or just seeing it in print: President Barack Obama. "President Obama announced at his first press conference..." Wow. And I'm also thankful in the way you would be if you saw a car narrowly miss hitting a child that I won't have to see or hear the phrase "Vice President Palin," which in some ways would be worse thsn "President McCain." What a crushing blow that would have been. I mean was anyone, even those who voted for him, really excited about McCain? But now we don't have to spend any mroe negative energy deploring those two. At least just for today's it's all positive, and much more so for African-Americans. Funny thing... the media kept speculating on a hidden race factor, the Bradley effect, etc. Well, there was a race factor, but it ...

...at not posting for so long. So very busy... but here I am. Sort of ironic that I went to BlogHer Boston to get all sorts of ideas an motivation for a blog, and since then I've written zilch. Maybe because actually I was more intimidated than inspired. There were a lot of interesting people there, and reasonably interesting panel discussions, but most of these folks were SERIOUS about blogging. Only a few did it close to full-time, but they are heavily into hit-tracking, multiple blogs and sites, networking online with other bloggers, handing out beautifully designed business cards for their sites, etc., etc. The only networking I do is with people who already know me in real life, so... whatever. Actually I'm mulling one or two new writing ideas, but HA! As if, given my copious free time and legendary self-discipline, but I can always dream, can't I? Anyway, just so I can finally throw away the business cards that have been smooshing around the bottom of my backpack, the...

I am a bad blogger. I have been extremely busy with my new job but in a good way. I am going to BlogHer Boston tomorrow morning for a whole day, and my husband and children are pissed. In the meantime, I would like to offer you the following stories that I've liked, most of which are outdated but who cares: The poetry of Sarah Palin Some random blogger whose hilarious Palin debate flow chart appealed to people, to the point where only days later, there are T-shirts and coffee mugs available... More on the Palin ridiculousness ... But perhaps it doesn't really matter because it turns out American capitalism may be history anyway... More on Sunday, hopefully...

What in the world am I going to write about after the election is over? I don't care -- it's so fascinating and maddening that I can't help myself. On Saturday we had Maureen Dowd 's observation about the financial bailout mess: It was quite a memorable moment in history for the M.B.A. president and the nominee of the party of business. Who would have dreamed that when socialism finally came to the U.S.A. it would be brought not by Bolsheviks in blue jeans but Wall Street bankers in Gucci loafers? The first debate held no surprises; the real action is in the careening McCain campaign and its redoubtable VP, whose paltry intellectual pantry was stripped bare by the two-fisted Katie Couric last week. This was part 2 of the interview in which Palin claimed foreign-policy know-how because Russia is sorta next to Alaska and you can practically see it 'n' stuff. Yeah, and I can see the moon from my house, but that doesn't make me a fucking astrophysicist. My Go...

What with the financial meltdown and an increasingly obvious airhead as his VP (read this absolutely hilarious piece in the New Yorker), it's starting to look -- God, I hope -- that McCain is going down. Here's a Globe op-ed making the case. More interesting is the writer's suggestion that we Google "Top 10 McCain meltdowns." Now, I don't mind so much that the guy has a temper -- it's a common problem among power-hungry political/military types and not his biggest fault by any means -- but the list I found is pretty entertaining, especially Meltdown #1 against his own wife in 2000. I just have to quote it in case the link breaks: Cindy McCain playfully ran her fingers through the Senator's hair and teased, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain reddened and fired back, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." Well. I can't wait until Kim Jong Il pisses off President McCain and he s...

It's fall again and we're off to the races... new schedules, a new job for me, logistics of Thursday afternoon Hebrew School transportation to consider... but also a new era without Ben's aunt Priscilla, who died Sept. 12. I've been a tad busy since then at the funeral and getting back on track here, hence the silence. We left that afternoon with a rented minivan after I couldn't rustle up one to borrow from family or friends (everyone was away). In true Murphy's Law fashion, I had to get Ben to come to the rental place in Harvard Square because it turned out my driver's license had expired. Which I knew about months ago and sent in for a renewal to the DMV , which fucked up and sent me a duplicate instead with an expiration date about a week after it arrived in the mail of course . Stupid fuckwits . So we left late and hit traffic. We picked up G. and handled her repeated questions about where we were going, where the funeral would be, etc. It started t...

Ben returned about 10:30 last night from a very difficult weekend in Delaware visiting his dying aunt and extended family (see last post). For Ben, the secondary drama was dealing with his mother G., whose Alzheimer's disease and being away from her familiar surroundings under such circumstances made her understandably confused and upset. This was just as hard to take in some ways as his aunt's illness. An example: G. asked Priscilla's nephew, who is a doctor, whether there was any chance Priscilla could recover. When he gently told her no, G. burst into tears and wept for a few minutes before calming down. And then asking the same question again. And getting the same answer, and experiencing the shock and pain of that information for the first time -- again. Ben did a wise thing, which was to have G. write down what she wanted to say in the way of a good-bye to her sister. Ben also made a short video using his cellphone of the two of them in the hospital room. It was shock...

Here I am at home on a Saturday morning with the girls... but no Ben. This is because he took a train with his mother yesterday afternoon to Delaware, where G's sister Priscilla is dying of cancer. A couple of weeks ago, Priscilla was feeling tired and vaguely ill, so she went to the doctor, who did some routine blood work and found that something was wrong with her liver, so he sent her to the hospital for more tests... which revealed cancer throughout her liver. The doctors suspected that it has spread from another site in her abdomen, so they did an endoscopy and found a large mass in her stomach. The cancer was deemed inoperable, and she was also too weak or too far along to benefit from chemotherapy. Now we're up to Tuesday (four days ago). The prognosis was three to four weeks and hospice was called in. So now Ben had to decide what to tell his mother (who's close to her sister) and when. The staff at her Alzherimer's place were in two camps. One guy thought G. sh...

Great piece by Judith Warner on Sarah Palin, putting my impressions of her nomination into words better than I could. I love her point about how the public feels that they need to be able to "relate" to a rpesidential candidate -- so he or she can't be too educated or "elitist," since the majority of Americans don't see themselves this way. As Warner says... In the past, it was possible to fill that need through empathetic connection. Few Depression-era voters could “relate” to Franklin Roosevelt’s patrician background, notes historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. “It was his ability to connect to them that made them feel they could connect to him,” she told me in a phone interview. I mean, wouldn't you WANT the president obe a little smarter and more worldly than you are? Since when do you have to be a voter's BFF material to qualify for his or her vote? My minimum qualification for president even before political stance is basic intelligence and a reaso...

Welcome back to reality... it's the first day of school for Sarah and Becky, I'm back at work after a week's vacation at home, Hurricane Gustav just finished with Louisiana and there are three more storms lined up in the Atlantic, McCain named Sarah Palin as his VP and now we learn that her 17-year-old daughter is preggers... The week at home was nice, though of course I had a long list of Things to Get Done and only a few of them actually reached fruition. Also, for two of the days, Ben's car was getting fixed and he had to use mine to get to work (he took off only Thursday and Friday), so we didn't have a lot of outing options except walking to Valley Pond, but that was pretty much OK because the weather was good and we enjoyed swimming and learning to operate a canoe. However, the girls got major thrills from two of our trips, one to the Children's Museum -- where the most excitement came from riding the Red Line and squishing pennies in an inconspicuous hand...

Full disclosure: I started this post back in February and forgot about it until trolling my "draft" list. So... old news, but related to the Elliot Spitzer scandal, see this hilarious " script " by Greg Howard, a.k.a. Geese Aplenty, on legalizing prostitution. Also, the American Film Institute issued (quite a while ago now) its annual list of the Top 100 Movies of All Time, as determined by an AFI jury of 1,500 film artists, critics and historians. Here's the original press release in PDF. I reprint the list here with color coding. Warning: if you're reading this, you are morally and legally obligarted to comment on this post with your reactions and opinions, citing your own movie viewing history as well as at least three academic sources. OK, none is fine as well. Green = Movies I've see and really love — I totally agree with the AFI on these. Black = Movies I've seen but that wouldn't make my personal top-100 list. Red = Movies I haven't...

A very nice weekend with family, centering on the baby-naming for Z's new daughter. On our end, we had gobs of people over -- Ben's father and stepmother, brother and sister-in-law, nephew plus wife and kids, and for Sunday brunch, also his niece, her hubby and four kids. Lots of grilling and recreational beverages. I really like hanging out with these warm-hearted, humorous and opinionated people, letting the talk (prominently featuring family gossip, of course) ricochet noisily, abetted by small children running around. As a kid, I saw one set of cousins two or three times a year and the other set almost never, so I get a kick out of watching Sarah and Becky play with their own cousins, sitting with babies on their lap and pretending to lose races with two-year-olds. They used to be the babies, of course (*sniff*), but now there's something even more poignant in seeing them interact so sweetly with younger kids. Some random web trollings: These animals are big. Really bi...

...in my new office with an honst-to-God window. Fourth floor, overlooking a plaza with lots of people, buildings and even a colorful maple tree. Before, I had to get up from my cubiel in the middle of the room and sneak into someone's perimeter office with a window to see if there was a thunderstorm (AGAIN) this summer. Don't get me started on the weather this summer -- the first full summer in our house, where I planned all spring for plants on our roof deck, knowing I always forget to water them, so I invested in self-watering planters with reservoirs on the bototm and no drain holes. And they all tuned into mucky swamps because WE'VE HAD SO MUCH GODDAMN RAIN. Though I think we may actually have some tomatoes if they manage to turn red before the first frost, which feels like it could come any day now. So yeah, the new job. I will certainly be busier than I was, which is all good. Also a lot more human contact so I can actually care about what I wear every day. I could h...

How interesting are elevators? Not so much, you think? Just read this article in the New Yorker -- fascinating stuff. And like any good informational piece, it's centered on a human story, and an amazing one: a guy was trapped in a New York elevator in 1999 for 41 hours . * * * Unbelievable story of child neglect . Though I have to think she was born with some organic problem as well (autism and/ore retardation). It shows yet again the importance of early childhood experiences in shaping a person for life. * * * Nantucket was amazing. I can't wait to go back with the kids, maybe in the fall when it's not so crowded. We zoomed all over the island on scooters, which were a blast but not so good on sandy tracks in the interior, but that's when you just have to push with your feet. The highlights: Madaket, Siasconset, Pocomo Point. The restaurants were expensive but unbelievably good -- I had no idea so much gourmet fare was to be had. We went to the Boarding House , The S...

Not that there are many, of course, but this one I just enjoy, both the music and the images. Note that this is the "extended play" version, a minute long rather than the 30 seconds you see on TV. I also loved this list of passive-aggressive appetizers from The New Yorker. We're off to Nantucket for a few days of R&R without the kids (it's our 10th anniversary). They were very sad this evening and I felt sad as well. This is only the second time we've both been away from them overnight, the other time being our 5th anniversary, but I know they'll have a great time at my father and stepmother's, and Ben and I will have a great time just talking and getting to know each other again. It really takes effort to carve out "couples time." Days go by with scarcely a conversation, not because there's any so of problem but just because were both so busy and then tired at night. Oh well. I'm sure we'll spend most of the time talking about t...

So now it can be told: I gave notice at my job last week. My last day is August 8. This is not a great leap into the unknown, however -- far from it. Three days later I'll be starting a new job in the same general organization, doing the same general thing, but in a different department -- the medical department. This is a lot more in line with my interests both long-term and short-term (the longer-term possibility being a second career in nursing ). I was very happy to get my current job after a year in exile in the Deep South and it was a very humane sort of interlude, but it's definitely time for a new challenge. The only minor downside thus far is that despite lobbying by me and my soon-to-be-boss, they're not gonna give me a Mac. Bleh. Oh well, at least I have my laptop at home. The nursing thing is moving along slowly as expected. Earlier I was hoping to get into the night program at Bunker Hill Community College, but after I examined the curriculum more closely, I re...

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Today amalah posted the breathlessly awaited part II of the Battle of the Deodorants ("The Aluminator Strikes Back"). Classic. Funny coincidence because I was speaking to a total stranger just yesterday about deodorants and aluminum (warning: possible TMI alert). I was getting a routine mammogram and since we're in the digital age, the tech could bring up the images on screen instantly. After one shot she asked if I had used dordorant (which the instructions had said to avoid on the day of the exam) and I said I had by mistake. She showed me the pictrure -- lots of tiny white flecks from the aluminum in the deodorant at the edge of the picture near the armpit, and we woudln't want the radiologist to think they were tumors, of course, so it was a quick pit bath for yours truly and a reshoot. On the political front, Jeff Jacoby, a Globe columnist I normally dislike because of his conservative views, made a cogent argument today as to why we should keep our crazy elec...

Frank Rich writes in today's New York Times about a new book called "The Dark Side" by Jane Mayer about the paranoia, torture and general Constitution-trampling that characterizes the administration's war on terror. Her compares it to "The Final Days," the account of Nixon's end game with its "cauldron of lies, paranoia and illegal surveillance" except that the current version is scarier "because these final days aren’t over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president’s narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer’s portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure" and the ruthless Cheney et al are calling the shots, motivated by paranoia about terrorists. The implicit justification is that yes, torture is sort of bad, but it's necessary to keep America safe from another 9/11. The most interesting point, I think, is the not...

I'm savoring the relative calm of summer (aside from the usual busy-ness of grocery shopping after work, changing a wet bed in the middle of the night, etc.). We spent a relaxing weekend in New Jersey at Ben's brother's house with an average of 10 adults and six kids splashing around at any one time. I love just playing in the pool with the kids. We had a really nice time -- and no traffic! The other kids are cousins of Sarah and Becky, or we call them that; actually they're the children of cousins but who cares. Cousin #6 on this side of the family is due in less than a month and they live quite close to us, so soon there will be another baby with tiny toes to marvel at. I found out about "dancing Matt" from this article in the New York Times today. Apparently the YouTube video has had over 4 million hits -- amazing. It's really very beautiful, especially since for the first time I was offered the option in YouTube to view it in high quality, so the co...

A few items gleaned from Electoral-Vote.com... the first two not surprising but infuriating all the same: A couple of douchebags at Fox "News" displayed some photographs that were so obviously altered in Photoshop as to be pathetic. The non-news that McCain is now a clone of Bush and not a "maverick" despite any formerly semi-plausible claims to the contrary. There's a new category of " equinox voters " (the spring-forwards and fall-backs) -- white-collar, more educated, information-economy types vs. blue-collar, less educated, manufacturing-economy types. This is interesting because these are demographics who once would have voted Republican and Democrat respectively, but are now tilting in exactly the opposite way. After the July 4 parade in town tomorrow morning, we're off to New Jersey for some extended-family eating, children-mingling and poolside chatting. Speaking of children, after much nagging, we took the girls to see "Kung Fu Pand...

Not news to anybody, but jeez, these gas prices, these home foreclosures, this land of unrestrained consumer spending and gas guzzlers, this damn war we started... you can read all these to mean (and I do) that it's more than just a momentary blip and that America is in some sort of real and probably permanent decline economically and politically. That clever guy at the New York Times, Thomas Friedman , says it better than I can, which is why he is a big-shot NYT columnist and I'm not. Microsoft is a apt symbol for where the whole country is at. As Time explains, Bill Gates and a few nerdy friends took some original ideas, became wildly successful and made Microsoft into a world-domination behemoth, but then the company got too big. It got complacent and arrogant and was ruthless to its competition (illegally so), which didn't lose it much money but lost it some respect among the little people. And then because it was so big, it was too slow to react to the Next New Thing,...

Sometimes I go a few days between blog posts, because I simply can't think of anything interesting to write about. Not that my life is dull or anything, but it's just that I don't often go into my bathroom and encounter duelling deodorants . The demonization of Obama by the Republicans has predictably begun. It's early yet, but fortunately they seem to be not very good at it so far. I'm with Maureen Dowd -- I'd rather have Obama's flaws than W's any day. The girls are finishing up a week of YMCA camp and loving it. On Monday they start six weeks of camp in town, where hopefully there will also be several of their friends from school. I had some apprehension before this week about putting them somewhere where they didn't know anyone -- worried that they would feel scared or homesick, but once again I was projecting myself at that age onto the girls, who thankfully are much less shy and fearful than I once was. Tonight they're being watched at ho...

...though of course the religious right is trying their best to turn it into something as hateful as they are themselves. I refer to the legalization of gay marriage in California; the New York Times has some really heart-warming wedding photos here , including Star Trek's Sulu (George Takei) in #9. Just seeing the people in these photos -- their love for each other, the relief and quiet vindication -- how can anyone say this is bad? When there is genuine commitment and caring and happiness between two consenting adults, how can this be bad? What happens in the bedroom is just a side issue, mere mechanics. Plenty of heterosexual couples have emotionally or physically unhealthy relationships, do not have sex, have sex in ways the religious right would find objectionable, choose not to procreate, or abuse and neglect the children they do produce, but if it's between a man and a woman, none of this matters, apparently. Religion is for the birds. I'm comfortable raising my ki...

Yet another reason to having daughters rather than sons, at least in the years when you have to accompany them to public rest rooms . I had no idea men's rooms were so icky. It's bad enough with the girls in reasonably clean women's rooms when you have to guard against the Terror of Automatically Flushing Toilets by holding your hand over the sensor. Update on Ben's little talk with his mother yesterday: as planned, she was told that she's staying indefinitely at her Alzheimer's residence, and the staff henceforth will reinforce this message. I was afraid she would react with anger, grief, etc., but actually she did not -- because those reactions would have implied some level of acceptance. All she did was argue around and around (forgetting the rebuttals and facts from the previous go-round) and make some references to taking Ben to court, since he has power of attorney. She would never be able to do that, owing her state of forgetfulness and lack of follow-thr...

Ben meets every three months with the team of caregivers at the Alzheimer's facility where his mother G. has been living for the past year (the saga began here ). Like many of the residents, she believed when she arrived that she was just just "trying the place out" and would be going home soon. Somewhat less typically, she persists in this belief after a full year, along with her refusal to acknowledge that anything serious is wrong with her memory or that she cannot live alone safely. The care team didn't try to dismantle this fantasy at first, but now they've said it's time to make her face reality because her belief that she's going home soon is interfering with their attempts to help her. So... Ben is on his way there now to have a meeting with G., the care team and even G.'s former therapist from New Jersey, to tell her unequivocally that she is not going home and that her house is being sold. Ben has been dreading this for months because she has...

Yesterday I drove down to Connecticut for a simple memorial service for an old friend I'll call Ann. I worked with her and P. at a small newspaper; the two of them eventually fell in love and married, we all moved on to new jobs and states, but I remember that period very fondly, as do many of us who were there around the same time. P. said a few words and invited us to scatter some of her ashes below a tree around which he he had planted some impatiens and scattered pink rose petals. Since he is a writer and a good one, his eulogy was spare but brilliantly evocative of what kind of person Ann was -- irreverent, funny, tough, incredibly stylish, warm. She was not a journalist (she was in the advertising department at the paper) but certainly had the wit and attitude to be one. She also had the best and most original taste I've ever encountered. It's not so hard to have good taste if you have money to afford the best materials and fabrics, the best designers, the best shops ...

I watched part of McCain's speech he gave to a few dozen old white folks in Louisiana over the weekend, and all I can say is, maybe there's hope. The difference in speech-making skill between him and Obama is gargantuan. I mean, the guy can't even read a Teleprompter, and every time he smiled I just cringed, because those smiles were obviously a general coaching tip from someone ("Smile, John, goddamit!") but were inappropriate in context and so forced as to be embarrassing. The speech -- both delivery and content -- made him look like a frighteningly old and clueless fool. He looked like he's never been happy or excited a bout anything in his entire life. Of course this speech will go the way of all YouTube content in a few days, but we can only hope this is the type of performance that will be repeated throughout the campaign.

Hillary gave a great concession speech Saturday. Electoral-Vote.com has a pretty good post mortem on her campaign, as well as a link to an interesting proposal afoot for changing the way we elect presidents , which sounds sensible to me at first glance. After weeks of chilly weather, most recently accompanied with persistent drizzle, summer broke out in a hurry this weekend -- sunny and into the 90s both days. Saturday was devoted to errands but yesterday we mowed the lawn -- a lengthy and sweaty undertaking, as this was the first time this year we'd done it, our yard has a hill and it was in the 80s before noon -- and then hiked over the hill to the pond. It's really a perfect place. The kids have a blast just playing in the water four hours, and Ben and I join them for a lot of that time, but there are lifeguards and a rope keeping them from deep water so we can relax when we're not swimming with them. There are tadpoles to catch, docks to jump off, sand to lie on and di...

Ben and I got tickets through his college to the Red Sox game the other night. The seats weren't great (the foul pole was in our line of sight to home plate), nor was the weather (drizzly and cool), but it's always nice to have that group Fenway experience. Chatting with the complete stranger behind you, drinking overpriced beer and eating a squishy hot dog, doing the wave, singing "Sweet Caroline," chanting "Let's go Red Sox!" (clap, clap, clapclapclap), hitting the beach ball as it comes by, watching the guys in the center field bleachers add red "K" signs to the series of letters forming Josh Beckett's name -- BECKKKKETT after four strikeouts, though some of the K's are backwards, indicating th batter struck out looking rather than swinging... it's all good. Too bad we'd have to take out a second mortgage to go as a family, even if we could obtain four decent seats to any game ever. Of course we could pay double the face valu...

The primaries are finally over and Obama has wrapped up the nomination. The big question remaining is what Hillary's role will be. There's talk of Obama picking her as his VP but I just can't see it. She and Bill won't be able to help drawing attention away from Obama, and that will diminish him in the eyes of voters, making him seem more like the junior member of the team. Lots of road-trip fun the last two weekends. The first was a trip to this swell resort in the Berkshires, courtesy of an old colleague of Ben's. He had his wedding at another hotel nearby and threw a 10th-anniversary bash at this place (fortunately we go a discount on the room, and the food and drink were free -- and excellent). A bunch of the people were guys who started this company that ultimately got bought out; the guys are super nice, and most of them had their wives and kids along, so that made out kids happy (that and the indoor pool; add that to the mix and a slow trip through hell woul...

A confluence of old friends in new situations... last weekend we went to a resort in the Berkshires where there was a reunion of some of Ben's old friends (more on that below). In the past two weeks, I've gotten pinged via LinkedIn by several old friends from grad school and my days as a reporter/editor for a twice-weekly paper in Connecticut (still the most fun and stimulating job I've ever had). One of them was still in the newspaper industry until quite recently, when he quit for reasons I'm unclear on, but general disgust with the job and industry had to have played a part. So I was thinking of trying to engineer a reunion of some of these old friends and was about to call C., whose house has always been a natural gathering point, when she called me first -- not to plan a reunion per se, but to tell me that the wife of another of these old friends (not one of the people who got in touch with me) had just died of cancer. He too is planning to quit his long-time job ...

It appears that Obama has the nomination pretty much sewed up, but of course the big question is whether he can beat McCain -- and Hillary's sole remaining scrap of argument for remaining in the race is that she can and Obama can't. Interestingly enough, data compiled by the conservative Karl Rove and the liberal Electoral-vote.com agree on this point. Electoral-vote.com has maps (updated daily from the latest polls) that show the general election delegate tallies for Clinton-vs.-McCain and Obama-vs.-McCain. As of today, the results would be Clinton with 310 delegates and McCain with 211, where as Obama would get 242 compared to McCain's 285 (270 needed to win the presidency). If you scroll down almost to the bottom of today's Electoral-vote.com post , there are tables showing new polling data from several states showing that Clinton would do significantly better than Obama in the key state of Florida and would also do better than Obama in North Carolina and Missouri....