One week… sounds like a song.
Enjoy this collection of photos from Rolling Stone
President Bush, Thanks for the Memories
Thanks to Ken for sharing!
UPDATE: My blogging daughter noted that her most recent posting was her 100th, so I decided to check the count on my blog, and as it turns out, this is my 500th blog post! Congrats to us!
A nice find courtesy of AmericaBlog,
David Letterman’s Top Ten Moments from the Bush Years:
Eight more days…
OK, it may look like 9 and a half fingers, but it’s meant to be just ‘nine’, as in the number of days left until Bush is gone. The hands in the photo are mine, from a blog post I wrote more than four years ago about the nine trick. Then it was about math, today I’m just plain counting down.
We can do it now on two hands… count down the days until the end of an error. It’s been a long, terrible, painful wait… and now at last, the end is in sight.
Let’s count it down…. 10!!
Try and imagine any former President bodysurfing. You can’t can you, the images just don’t mesh. Now watch this video. You can’t help but feel good knowing our next President can do this. Who will be the lucky Secret Service body surfing detail? Nice wave Mr. President!
thanks to Neal for sharing!
On New Year’s Day, it feels appropriate to look back and take some stock of the year that has just passed, and look forward to the year ahead. No major deep thoughts here, just a checklist and a draft ‘to-do’ list.
Looking Back at 2008
– lost 25 pounds
– ran a Half-Marathon, Marathon, and a 5k
– got a new dog
– worked very hard locally to help elect our new President
– first time visits to Austin, TX and Denver, CO (loved them both)
Looking Forward to 2009
– organize and enjoy a local inaugural ball
– run a Half-Marathon and a Triathalon
– paint the kitchen
– take a trip home to Huntington Beach, CA this summer
– send my oldest child off to college
At last! We can count the remaining days of the Bush Presidency on our fingers and toes!
Take a look at this goodbye from Tom Tomorrow (it’s worth jumping through Salon’s advertising hoop to reach the comic)…
I often wonder if I might suffer from some degree of OCD. The latest evidence of which is today’s project, sorting and cataloging my t-shirts. I have too many t-shirts, and it would not be an unreasonable chore to look through them for ones that I might throw out. But I couldn’t just do that. T-shirts are one of my primary pieces of clothing. I have acquired those that I have over many years, and most of them have some sort of personal or historical significance, at least to me. Before any purge, there must first be a census!
So what did I find? Here’s some results from my T-shirt Census:
Total Count: 54
Type Breakdown:
Political: 14
I acquired a few in this last year, my favorite of which was this Obama/Biden shirt purchased at the Democratic Convention in Denver. I attribute Obama’s historic win in Virginia to my wearing of this shirt while running in my Northern Virginia burb. But I also love this bush-basher.
Sports Related: 17 (5 Chicago Cubs)
Music/Band: 1 (wow, this is a change. In my younger days, just about all of my shirts were concert tees).
Blank: 3 (two orange, why?, and one single plain white tee).
Top Colors:
White & Grey: (combined total of 21 shirts)
Tie-Dye: 2
Top Brand:
Hanes & Gilden: 7 each
Age:
There are two that date to the 80s. One of which, I’m embarrased to say is a black tee that reads ‘Hustler Muff Dive’, which I think I acquired in high school and I hope I’ve never worn, but just never through out either. The other says, “Miru Mir”, Russian for “Peace on Earth” from the foreign language house I lived in off campus at UCSB.
My favorite in the batch is one of the oldest. It’s a black t-shirt from the Internet World Conference I attended in 1995. The shirt has held together enough to wear, but the fabric has achieved a unique softness that feels nothing like the heavy cotton it once was.
What other insights did I gain? Probably just that I need to do a better job prioritizing my tasks. Feel free to browse my list of tee shirts here, and see what insight you can learn about me from it.
In the classic 1989 movie, Christmas Vacation, there is a touching scene where Clark Griswold spends an afternoon locked in his attic. He bundles up in some old clothes, discovers some old hidden Christmas presents, and get misty with nostalgia watching old holiday movies.
I’ve recently moved my online abode from one web host to another. The task involved taking some time to backup and transfer files from one to the other, and that brought about some fun discoveries in a digital analogy to Clark’s experience in his attic.
Way back in the year 2000, we took our annual family Christmas letter digital. No longer would we stuff, lick, label and stamp envelopes as we had for years. In the new millennium, our holiday wishes could travel the digital tubes of the net (Yes, there are some offliners to whom we will always have to send a hard copy letter, but they miss out on all the fun links).
Typically, in addition to sending our Christmas letter by email, I also post it to the web for easy sharing with afterthoughts or others who missed out on the email. For that first letter in 2000, we produced the below video (and made it available in high and low bandwidth versions in Quicktime AND RealPlayer!). And for any who care to dig deep into the Casey Family digital Christmas Letter archive, I say, “Get a life, and enjoy!” Here they are: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Stay tuned for this year’s letter coming soon!
Anyone who follows politics can’t have missed the current uproar over the announcement that Pastor Rick Warren will deliver the Invocation at President Elect’s Inauguration next month.
Rick Warren is some kind of mega-pastor with whom I was unfamiliar until the point of the campaign that he was able to command McCain and Obama to come and kiss his butt at a campaign forum hosted by Warren. I was embarrassed for both of them for having to do so.
I’ve read arguments both for and against Warren’s selection to deliver the invocation. GLBT advocates are understandably upset that such an advocate of the hateful Prop. 8 anti gay marriage bill in California should be invited to speak at the inauguration of the President for whom expectations of tolerance is so high. While the Obama folks say they are demonstrating that they can be civil to those with whom they disagree.
My personal feelings favor those who oppose his involvement. Obama’s supporters deserve better than this, and certainly a better message would be sent through the participation of a more tolerant individual to give the invocation.
But there is a better solution. Don’t include an invocation in the inaugural ceremonies at all. Let’s keep religion, any and all of them, out of our civic lives. I’d be very glad to hear our new President begin his term by telling all American’s what his plans are for addressing our many problems, and there’s no need to first listen to some doofus call out to the invisible man for help.
And for that matter, leave the bible out of it too. Put your hand on a copy of The Constitution while you vow to preserve, protect and defend it.
I’m A Lefty And I Like Obama’s Pick Of Rick Warren
NPR.org, December 18, 2008
Obama’s Inaugural Mistake
The Washington Post, December 19, 2008
