Do the Yak

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,...