Bus Rider

I have lived and worked in the Houston area for the greater part of my life. Over the years I have gone through periods when I rode the bus to work and back. Ages ago the benefits of riding the bus were pretty simple; it was relaxing, reduced wear and tear on my car and I didn't have to remember where I parked (which in any major city can be a pain). Never once in all my years of riding the bus did I consider saving money to be a benefit though.

Houston has always been a city dominated by cars. In the latest data I could find only five percent of Houston drivers use some sort of shared transportation to work, and that includes carpooling. We've got the seventh worst traffic in the country. Call me a tinfoil-hatter, but I've always suspected our shitty traffic is somehow related to oil company greed. Most of the major oil companies in the USA are headquartered here in Houston and these companies certainly didn't lift a finger in the 1980s of 1990s to help Houston improve it's transportation. The city's solution to traffic has always been more lanes, and that's not a strategy that is working.

One would think that if 95% of the city is driving to work every day then there would be a shortage of parking spaces, making them expensive. This isn't the case at all. In 2002, the last time I worked inside the downtown area, I could find all day parking just two blocks from my office for about two bucks a day, not in a parking garage either, on the ground. At that time driving to and from work, with parking, cost me about four bucks a day in my Honda Civic, gas included (at about a buck a gallon). Riding the bus round trip cost me $7.20 a day with the 20% discount on bus passes I got from work, $9.00 full fare.

My sister, who lived in LA at the time, was flabbergasted that driving and parking was cheaper than taking the bus in Houston. The opposite is true in LA where parking costs the earth and the bus is next to nothing. As she said then "It's like they want everyone to drive." Well, they do in Houston; they want everyone to drive big SUVs and to buy as much gas as possible. The city reinforces the idea that you need to have a car with you at all times by steering clear of the type of public spaces where you can take care of things on foot. I know many people in Houston who would love to car pool or commute but fear the thought of not having a car.

It's five years later now and things have changed. The falling dollar coupled with the speculators in the gas market has caused the gas prices to increase by 300%. The commute with parking that used to cost four bucks now costs ten, and the parking price hasn't changed a cent. The price of the bus has also decreased, believe it or not, to seven bucks, full price, for the round trip to town and back, two dollars cheaper than it used to be.

So the bus is cheaper than driving in Houston, finally, and because of this I am riding the bus again and now I have a new list of pros and cons regarding the bus. On the positive side, the bus is just as relaxing as it always has been, I can read or watch movies on my iPhone while someone else drives, there isn't wear and tear on my car from the 70 mile commute which is good because my car is not doing well in traffic these days, and it is cheaper.

Lining up the negatives has to start with the length of time in my commute; a 60-75 minute car ride has turned into a 90-120 minute bus ride with one connection. This puts my work day out to thirteen hours, worst case scenario, and with a child that is just too much time to be away from home. Fortunately I've got support now with Melissa and a job that is flexible so Colin is well taken care of, but the bus would not have been acceptable at my last job. The commuter solution that Houston's Metro offers seems to be geared towards the 1950s family; where Dad goes into work and Mom stays at home.

At Colin’s after school care facility they have a policy that if a child needs to be picked up, say for an illness, then the parent has one hour from the time they are notified to collect their child. If I am called about Colin and have ridden the bus, then it could take me over two hours to get him. That doesn’t make the bus more attractive to a parent.

Things will have to improve. As gas prices get higher, and they will get higher, there are going to be more and more people who live in the suburbs demanding some sort of high-speed transportation into the city. For mass transit to work it needs to compete not only on cost, which Houston's Metro does only because of the high gas prices, but also on time. There has to be a way that transit cuts the amount of time that you spend in traffic.

There's going to be an interesting balancing act on the freeways of Houston soon. I suspect that as the price of gas gets higher the buses will become over crowded (just yesterday I had to watch two full buses on my route pass by my stop) and the freeways will become less crowded. A less crowded freeway means a shorter commute time; for example if I leave the house at 9:30am I can shave about thirty minutes from my commute. I suspect that the freeways will become a give and take as people decide that the longer commute on the bus, coupled with the over crowding, isn’t worth the savings on gas and will return to driving, then a month later when gas costs another five dollars more a tank, they will return the the bus.

For the suburbs to survive gas prices around six bucks a gallon then the needs to the suburbanites will have to be met. The long commute times in Houston both in the car and on a bus take valuable time away from our families. If we do not find a way to get people into the city in a more efficient manner then we are going to see an exodus from the suburbs back into the city (already a trickle in that direction). People should not have to pay a higher cost to use public transportation, in time or in money. Public transportation should be designed to improve the quality of life on many fronts. Houston’s transportation seems only to offer concessions to the people of the city.

This needs to change.

HDR Photography

Over the weekend I bought myself a new SD card for my Canon SD700 IS camera for the expressed purpose of having a little fun with it. For those of you who don't know me, when I use the word ‘fun’ in the context of something electronic, it means that I'm planning to hack it. I have always enjoyed hacking electronic things to make them more useful, like getting my iPhone to work with the t-Mobile network, and the camera is a perfect project.

I've had the Canon SD700 IS for a few years now and while I love it for it's near instant start-up (less than 1.5 seconds from power on to taking a photo) I have always wished that the camera allowed me more control over how it shoots photos. Capabilities like being able to shoot long exposure photos or bracketing for high dynamic range photos really interest me, but cameras that offer these features out of the box are too expensive for my tastes.

The worst thing about these lack of features is that the camera hardware is capable of so much more than the software that it ships with allows. The shutter speed limit imposed by the default software it ships with is 80% slower than what the camera is capable of. I'm sure that you've heard the myth that we only use 20% of our brain; in the case of the Canon PowerShot cameras they only offer us 20% of the capabilities.

What can we do to address these limitations? Enter the open-source Canon CHDK firmware.

The CHDK, or Canon Hacker’s Development Kit, is a new firmware upgrade for the Canon cameras that allow you to do loads more with your PowerShot camera. You can set it up as a motion sensitive capture device, set the exposure to last up to 65 seconds and shoot in RAW mode (which offers far more information from the CCDs in the file format). This is photographic feature gold. It takes a basic point-and-shoot Canon digital camera and turns it into the feature equivalent of a top of the line digital camera.

On Sunday I loaded the software onto the new SD card and played around a bit with it. The first trick was stripping out the 'quarantine' flag that downloaded files get in MacOS X, because it would not run with the flag in place. This was accomplished with a bit of UNIX command line fun, and once the card was re-inserted, the new software loaded up fine.

The first new feature that I explored was creating high dynamic range photos. HDR photos use the tonal details from different exposures and merge them to create a composite photo with a much wider dynamic range than a traditional camera can take. This allows you to bing out the details in shadows and bright areas without over or under-exposing the image. I think it will be best if I show you.

Here are a series of three photos that I took with my Canon SD700 IS using the bracketing on timer mode feature in the CHDK. The first is a normal photo that is taken with the default settings of the camera. The second is -4 EV from the first and the third is +4 EV from the first. You can see even in these small thumbnails that all three photos have areas with a lot of detail and areas with almost no detail. Shots like this make for the most impressive HDR results.

After taking the photos I import them into an application called Photomatix Pro (for both Mac and PC) which processes the images into one file and then lets me adjust the tonal range to bring out the optimum detail. The results for my garage photo look like this:



You can see how much detail is brought out in the final photo. Instead of having the boxes in shadow or the outside blown out in brightness the HDR technique finds the detail in different exposures and maps them into one single image.

On Monday I showed some of these photos that I'd out together to Melissa and she immediately agreed to join me in an HDR photo shoot at Hester Park in Seabrook. You can see the results by clicking on the thumbnails below.

Some of the shots turned out better than others, but that's OK. I'm not looking to make art prints from my photos; instead I just seek satisfaction from trying new things. How boring the world would be if people never tried something new.

Camp Cullen has my son

In the past forty-eight hours I have developed a new Internet addiction. This isn't a normal Internet addiction like posting photos of cats with grammatically incorrect captions or Myspace or porn. This Internet addiction will be short lived yet for the rest of this week I imagine that it will populate my history like no other site I visit. My Internet addiction is to Camp Cullen's online photo gallery page as, for the first time in his life, Colin is away from home at summer camp.

Melissa and I drove Colin up to camp on Sunday. I can't say the trip was easy and uneventful as it was the opposite of that. We had to drop off Melissa's old bed with our friend Brandi, who needed a bed, and return my parent's Tahoe, which we'd borrowed for the move all before we got on the road to Camp Cullen. On top of that, my car's AC was on it's last legs and while it ran fine at sixty miles per hour, it turned into a heater in any serious traffic.

Still, we pressed on and tried to keep the needle over the sixty mark. As we approached Huntsville I did a mental checklist to make sure we were not forgetting anything and I realized that Colin's sleeping bag wasn't packed. A quick call to Chelsea confirmed this and left us with very few options on how to replace it. Melissa and I had to stop at Wal-Mart for a sleeping bag. It was my first trip to a Wal-Mart in six or so years and two for Melissa. We both refuse to shop there however when Colin needs a sleeping bag the choice between Wal-Mart and driving thirty miles back to Conroe is pretty easy. Twenty bucks later, we were back on the way.

Colin was nervous and a bit apprehensive about going to camp, but I knew he'd love it. Colin is attending the same summer camp I went to twenty-nine years ago when I was his age. He's in the same cabin I was in the first year and he will be walking the same trails and swimming in the same pool and canoing the same cove of water I did. Camp Cullen had a huge impact on my life and as I drove my son there I felt the same level of excitement that I used to feel as a child going there.

From the summer of 1979 until sometime in the spring of 1990 I found any way I could to get to Camp Cullen. I was a camper there for six years and spent two weeks every summer there. When I was too old to be a camper I was a CIT. When I was too old to be a CIT I was a volunteer and from there I moved up to a paid member of the staff. While I was in college I would drive over to Cullen on the weekends to lead trail rides or work on the ropes course. I looked at my college options with the idea of working at a camp like Cullen as a profession.

Camp Cullen was a magical place for me. It was a place where I felt loved and found it easy to make friends. The camp was filled with counselors who showed us how to be good people, friendly, happy, loving , supportive and overall, decent. I learned how to tie knots, canoe, waster ski, ride horses, shoot arrows and guns and sail a sailing boat. My head was filled with the skits, games and songs that make up the somewhat crazy world of summer camp and to this day I can still recall most of them. As a CIT I can remember my first summer romance at Camp Cullen (she had braces and it didn't last long). I learned how to be a good person at Camp Cullen and for that I am very thankful. My mind is filled with memories of the place and for the most part, they are all good.

Sure there are bad memories mixed in with the good, but looking back on it I learned lessons from the bad memories. When I had a counselor who I didn't like I learned that it was better to make the best of the time I wasn't around him rather than focusing on ways to get back at him. I learned that bragging on yourself was the fastest way to lose respect from your peers. When I was a volunteer I was there for a scholarship week and I learned a lot about what it is to be poor.

We dropped Colin off at Camp at three-thirty. The check in process was so fast that I was disappointed. We checked Colin's name off two checklists, gave a counselor his footlocker and showed him to the table for his cabin. When we left Colin looked a little overwhelmed with the scene. The dining hall was filled with kids and at the front of the room were six counselors leading the group in a crazy camp song. I know within a few days Colin will get used to that; the real trick is not missing it for the other fifty or so weeks of the year.

I wanted to spend more time there. I wanted to show Melissa this place that still has a hold on me. The check-in process was so smooth that within fifteen minutes of arriving we were back in the car and driving off for home. As we walked to the car I felt my eyes water up; not because I was sad that Colin was leaving, as a divorced parent I'm used to that. My eyes watered because I didn't want to leave. I wanted to figure out a way to spend one more summer week of my life at Camp Cullen. I wanted to be a camper again just to experience all those things that I so loved as a child.

I am sure that Colin will love his week at camp. I have no doubt in my mind. The photos on the camp website may not always show him smiling, but it's camp; how can it not be the most awesome week of his summer? I hope Colin learns about himself while he is there. At eight he is more and more his own person with his own struggles and strengths. The lessons he can learn being away from family are so important to him being a good person when he is older. If he comes back a different person then I am sure that the changes will be good for him.

Most of all I hope that Camp Cullen becomes as important a place for him as it did for me all those years ago. I hope that he still sings silly camp songs thirty years later when he is approaching forty and is able to smile at memories of a place on Lake Livingston that for a week or two each summer was the best place in the world.

Eddie Izzard - Stripped

Last night Melissa and I went to see Eddie Izzard with our friends Matt and Julie at Jones Hall here in Houston. We got awesome seats for the show on the fourth row in the center of the stage. Izzard was about twenty feet from us on stage and looked comfortable in blue jeans, a blue shirt and a vintage tux jacket with tails.

I've been a fan of Izzard's stand-up since seeing his Dressed to Kill show years ago. His offbeat, stream-of-consciousness delivery is engaging and exciting to watch, and even more so live. As an amateur stand-up comic myself, I also marvel at the dense material of his shows; Izzard packs a good three hours of material into his ninety minute set. Delivering ten minutes of material on stage is hard enough; this guy is amazing.

The new show, Stripped, is a both lot more political and (ir)religious. Izzard spent the first ten or fifteen minutes talking about how the ROW (rest-of-world) is looking at America these days. His suggestion; electing Barak Obama as President will show the world that the USA is back on track and a 'third melliumn' country. I couldn't agree more; it is because of that message that I support Obama. Forget hope, we need to let the world know that we as a people are through with idiots like Bush.

What I found interesting about his comments on Obama was the chorus of boo's that were mixed in with the loud applauds from the audience. As Izzard put it "There are some interesting sounds coming from this crowd." I don't know if the people booing were republicans, Hillary supporters, racists or all three. In Houston it's hard to tell. In any case, Izzard took time twice in his act to urge support for Barak Obama which Melissa and I enjoyed and agreed with.

Another part of the act that I enjoyed was Izzard's reference of the iPhone throughout the act. The first reference to the iPhone was when he suggested that American's look at the ROW by opening Google Maps and 'flicking to the left' (which he pantomimed). Later he pulled his iPhone out to look up the Wikipedia (which he claimed was started by Mr. and Mrs. Wikipedia with the note 'if you know something, write it down here') page for dyslexia. He needed to access the page to get the names of the people who discovered and named dyslexia (because he was sure they were Nazis).

Later in the act he had us all laughing when he used an act-out to demonstrate how and Indian tiger would figure out where in Africa the giraffes spoke French. Acting like the tiger he mimed zooming in on the iPhone as he muttered about being in India, then Africa then France.

The Apple jokes didn't stop there either. According to Izzard the dividing line between the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age was when Steve came up with flint. "Oh, Steve just introduced flint. You can make it into arrowheads or start fires with it," Izzard attested to the right. To the left he said "Fires? I've never owned a rock that could start fires." Then back to the right "And it's got a GPS." Obviously there was a Steve Jobs back in the Stone Ages.

Izzard had a lot of positive things to say about Apple. He called the Mac vs. PC commercials "documentaries" and assured the audience that you could have sex with any Apple product. He also used the downloading time remaining progress bar, which jumps from three minutes to go to two minutes to five minutes to eight minutes to three minutes to go, to make a joke about confusing Einstein.

The main gist of the act was not all about Apple products. Izzard's main thrust was the absurdity of religion in the face of science. Making fun of religion in Houston is never a good idea, but Izzard found enough people willing to laugh at the God of the Bible to keep the audience in stitches. The creation story, Noah and his Ark and the Exodus were all poked with Izzard's stick of humor.

We left the show in great spirits and made our way over to Chris and Lisa's place (where we parked the spare cars). Lisa was still up and she shared the awesome photos that she and Chris took on their cruise to Cozumel. We stayed for a short while and then piled into to car to return home. If you have a chance to see Izzard's latest show, I highly recommend it. He is a very gifted story-teller with a great eye for the absurd.

Another long delay

Ugh. Another long gap in my blogging. This is not what I wanted to happen at all. Chalk up my absence to the move I suppose. I promise to get back on track with my blog and post a bit more often.

Wherefore art Thou?

Has it really been a week since I last scribed a post on this blog? For shame, for shame. I should have posted earlier in the week, but alas, I had a busy week.

Taking a sweat soaked shirt off for the umpteenth time on Tuesday evening I sighed with relief. The long weekend was over and I looked forward to returning to work in the morning. I tossed the shirt into the pile that I'd been building over the past few days. My shirts piled up in the corner smelling of the sustained effort I put forth this weekend. I looked on them and smiled.

There is a feeling that I get after doing a lot of physical work that is a bit hard to explain. Sure there is the satisfaction that the job has ended, but there is also a romance to using nothing more than your mind and muscles to accomplish a task. Moving is one of those activities that gives me a lot of satisfaction and always has. Moving closes a chapter on one part of your life and opens a chapter on another.

This weekend Melissa and I, along with Colin, moved into our rent house. We've been moving since last Friday, and it has been a huge amount of work. Not only did we have to clear out Melissa's apartment of all it's content, but we also had to move loads of furniture and the like from my house. Furniture that has remained essentially in the same place for eleven years had to be loaded into trucks and driven the seven miles to the new place. The record breaking heat of May didn't make things easier, but it did make things more satisfying.

The main issue with moving for me is that my dust allergies really take it upon themselves to make the experience one punctuated by sneezes. Cleaning my house out really set them off as I was entering closets and grabbing things of shelves that haven't been disturbed in over a decade. I try not to let the sneezing bother me too much and to focus on getting things done as quick as can be. That way I can get out of the dust sooner. It sure seems to bother other people though as they just can't understand how I can sneeze ten times in a row and not be annoyed.

This move was made easier by the wonderful help that Colin provided. He not only carried a lot of things into the car for me, but he also helped me to navigate some of the larger pieces of furniture into the car including two Cargo beds, a love seat, two dressers and a lot of Legos and other toys. With his help I accomplished a lot more than I thought I would and for his efforts he was rewarded with a trip to Target for some Indiana Jones Legos. We also saw the new Indy film on Saturday, and it was enjoyable; especially with Colin and Melissa at my side.

Chelsea wasn't around for the main part of the weekend. She went off camping with friends and left the three of us to make headway on the move. Her help would have been nice, but the Memorial Day camping trip has been a yearly thing for her for years and we were not about to put the kibosh on it. Even without her help we were still able to accomplish a lot. When she returned on Monday she got to work helping her mother pack the remaining items at their apartment as Colin and I took load after load to the new house.

My parents have flown off for England and my Grandad's funeral. Before they left they came over to view the house and drop off the Tahoe, which has been a great help. While they were visiting we walked to the park in the neighborhood and watched as Colin played. My parents seemed to like the house and the neighborhood. I suspect that they're a little unsure as to what the plan with Wildwood is going to be, but they're in good company on that front.

Things are slowly settling down back to normal for the four of us now. There is still moving related tasks to do, but for the most part we have past the major hurdles and are enjoying the house immensely.

Technology in the Bedroom

Here's the thing, I can do this; I have the skill. Back in the summer of 2005 I spent a good deal of time learning how to operate heavy machinery. Me and the guys would occasionally park our diggers behind the fence near the bus stop and sneak people's hats off or tie their shoe laces together just for practice. Everyone on the crew knew that the real test of skill was undressing a woman.

The problem with a skill like this is that only Italian women seem to appreciate the talent necessary to perform some erotic foreplay with a mechanical shovel. All the American women who I have suggested this too gave me a resolute no, even the girl I met on match.com.

Eventually I ended up posting my mechanical shovel on Craig's List to try to sell it. It was in good as new condition as it had only been used to strip mannequins, and believe it or not I found someone who had been aching to be disrobed by just such a machine; especially as mine was diesel. We began a correspondence via email and and she told me how her former boyfriend, Mike Mulligan, used to strip her with a steam shovel, but that was too hot and noisy so she left him. Since then she had been searching for another person who could satisfy her interest in this activity. We became fast friends and then lovers.

And that, dear reader, is how Melissa and I met.

It's My Move

Tomorrow Melissa and I get the keys for the lease house and the moving starts. I can't decide if I'm excited or nervous, probably a combination of both. Moving into a house together, with our kids, is a big step towards our dream of having a big happy family. It marks a significant change in all four of our lives and a part of me worries that the change will have adverse effects on the relationships within our little clan. A family living together can be tough in the best of circumstances; merging two families together isn't going to be as easy as it was in the Brady Bunch.

Still, I am excited about the place. I think that Colin and Chelsea are going to really enjoy the neighborhood. The house is on a fairly quiet street that ends at the neighborhood park, which is a long thin park connecting two larger community parks with pools and playgrounds. We're all going to be able to take walks to the pool or tennis courts or community events and ride our bikes all over the place. Additionally the neighborhood is filled with a lot more kids both Colin and Chelsea's age. I'm sure that in no time they're going to make friends around the neighborhood and the house will be filled with the sounds of kids being kids. I look forward to this, because it feels like how a childhood should be and I want Colin to have that.

There are also going to have to be concessions made between our two families due to living together. When I stay at Melissa's place I try to be conscious that the apartment is essentially theirs and I am a guest. I don't always act in that way, but we all have our off days. When we move to the new place it will be all of our place and with that we're all going to have things that we want from our new place.

I, for example, don't want the kids using the master bath. When I grew up my parent's bathroom was probably the least frequently visited room in the house by us kids. We hardly every had any need to be in there and that room was for my parent's exclusively. At Melissa's I can't tell you how many times I've come home from work and wanted to sit down only to find the restroom smelly and the seat wet because the dog was drinking out of the toilet. At least that's cleaner than when Colin uses the bathroom. At the new house I want the master bath to be both dog and kid free; we'll see what I get.

Another issue that Melissa and I are going to have to face soon is establishing some parameters for parenting each other's kid. With Colin I'm not too concerned because Melissa already does a great job with Colin, but he's eight and doesn't fuss too much. With Chelsea the situation is totally different. In a few months she's going to be eighteen, but that doesn't change the fact that she's going to be living in our house. The lines of parental authority are already being tested by Chelsea towards her mother; I suspect that any parental authority that I need to assert will not go over well. I may be needlessly worrying though; Chelsea is a really awesome young woman and we get along pretty well. I'm lucky in that Melissa will be there to help me figure things out.

There are going to be a million little things that change when we all move in together. I have confidence that the vast majority of these changes will be welcome changes for all. That tiny percentage that aren't welcome will need our attention and patience to smooth over. I hope that in a few months the gears of family life are all turning effortlessly in Mill Point but if they aren't, I'm committed to doing what needs to be done to fix things.

The last concern that I want to jot down today has to do with my current house. The plan is to rebuild on my property giving Melissa and I our dream house in an area that I have come to love. I've lived in Wildwood, my house, for the past eleven years and the thought of tearing it down and rebuilding gives me a touch of anxiety. The house is old and doesn't meet our needs, but the lot if perfect so rebuilding is the best option, but still there are lingering doubts in my mind that the plan will go smoothly. I worry that the financial markets have already turned against the idea of loaning money for something like this and that Melissa and I will not be able to rebuild. Then what am I to do with Wildwood and more importantly, if the plan falls through how is that going to affect my relationship with Melissa?

There's a lot to worry about I guess. The next chapter in my life starts tomorrow and like all the rest of the chapters I've faced I don't know how this one is going to go. I worry that the future might hold more hardship for me, a pessimistic outlook for sure. I need to find that font of optimism and fill up again. I want the next twelve months to be a fantastic preview of the rest of my life and not a return to troubles past.

Moving and Disc Golf

This past weekend was one of those rare weekends that Melissa and I get to ourselves. While Colin is often at his mother's for a weekend; Melissa has Chelsea all to herself and it is rare that she is gone for the entire weekend. Usually when we have a weekend to ourselves we like to plan it out to make the most of our alone time. This weekend we couldn't plan anything big as we're moving starting on Friday and the house is in need of packing. So, for most of the weekend Melissa and I were either packing or resting and getting over packing.

Packing is something that I am good at up to a certain point. You see, I have an allergy to dust which puts me into a sneezing fit that can last hours if I get any of the damn stuff up in my nose. It's fine when one if just living in a place because the amount of dust kicked up by general living isn't that bad. When one moves though, all the dust goes flying right up my nose and I end up sneezing like the dwarf in Snow White. The sneezing fits are accompanied by a general desire to get the hell out of dodge and then the need to convalesce in an area free of agitated dust.

Needless to say, packing things like bookshelves of books that have hardly been disturbed since they were unpacked last year is exactly the type of thing that is going to kick up dust. By Saturday afternoon the I was disparate to get away from the apartment just to stop sneezing, so we went to lunch. Lunch turned into a trip to the liquor store, ostensibly for boxes, but we got a small bottle of vodka to lift our packing spirits and then back home.

In hindsight, the bottle of vodka was a bad idea. After focusing our energies on packing and sneezing for the better part of the day Melissa and I were in no shape to be drinking anything. The effects of the alcohol quickly put both of us under for the evening. Melissa went to sleep and I ended up watching Casino Royale on the TV until a bit after nine when I went to bed too. When I woke in the morning I found that Melissa had done an additional four hours of packing during the middle of the night; she's crazy.

On Sunday we had our big weekend plans. Our friends Carl, Chris & Lisa all drove out to Jack Brooks Park in Hitchcock Texas for a round of disc golf on the park's excellent course. Melissa needed some encouragement as she was worried that we were way behind schedule with the packing. I was persistent though and a little after eleven we were off to meet the other three.

Disc Golf has quickly become Melissa and I's favorite weekend activity. Initially we started playing because both of us recognize that as we approach middle age (not there yet!) we need to be a bit more active. Disc golf provided us with the type of exercise that suits us (long walks) without costing us lots of money (discs are as little as $4.75 each). We are also lucky to be located near a number of truly excellent courses including 18 baskets at Jack Brooks park, nine baskets in Seabrook and two full eighteen hole courses at Tom Bass park.

The sport, if you've never played it, is just like regular golf except you have to get your disc into a basket. A player carries multiple discs and each disc meets a specific need; driver, mid-range and putter, so instead of using a bunch of clubs to hit one ball, you instead throw different types of discs to get into the basket. Baskets are usually between two and five hundred feet and often incorporate trees and other obstacles to make things more difficult.

Over the past five months Melissa and I have managed to play six different course in the Houston area and one in Port Aurthur, but mainly at Jack Brooks Park. Our skills have improved too. When we started playing our discs would fly off in all sorts of directions but now we're both pretty accurate and our distance is also getting better Neither of us are anywhere near competition quality, but that's fine; neither of us keep score either. We both look at it more as a fun past time than anything coming close to competition, and we have a long way to go before either of us gets anything close to the course par.

The best part of the game is the fun we've had taking family and friends along. Disc Golf isn't something that a lot of people have played, but we're quickly making converts. We've been joined on various occasions by fifteen different people and I think that most of them enjoyed it enough to want to play again.

On Sunday Chris and Lisa joined again for a game and Carl came along for his first attempt at the game in a long time (the promise of no water hazards was required). We had a glorious time on the course, which was pretty deserted when we arrived. The weather was perfect for the game; hardly a cloud in the sky and not too hot. Of course, after some of the long baskets without shade we were ready to rest, but overall no one had any complaints.

Chris's game is improving solidly. He's got a great throw in the works and when he has accuracy and a bit more power he is going to be a real threat. Most of all it is Chris's enthusiasm for the game that makes him so much fun to play with. Lisa had her second game with us and she had a number of really nice throws. I think she would improve with a disc more suited to her throwing style but until then she's neck and neck with Melissa. Carl didn't really get comfortable with throwing the disc until halfway through the game. Along the back nine he had a number of great throws that show a lot of potential.

I felt personally frustrated with my game on Sunday. I had a number of shots get away from me and felt that I picked the wrong type of throw too often. My driving is still my best shot with some really exceptional shots off the tee on nine and ten. My putting was terrible through out though and a good reason why I felt my game was off. Once we get unpacked and the disc golf basket is set up in the new yard I'm going to get my putting under control.

After our game ended we went to Clifton by the Sea and had a great meal on the side of the bay. The sangria was amazing and it was nice to hang out with our friends. When we left I didn't want to leavr. The next two weekends are going to be packed to the gills with moving, so Melissa and I really both needed to have one last day for socializing.

Pants on fire

PWND

Chelsea started using this word after a weekend with her friends for their birthday. John McCain is going to have a lot of trouble in this campaign. He says whatever he things people want to hear, but this time around we don't want to hear comforting phrases that assuage our fears; we want to hear honesty. Honesty won't tell us what we want to hear; honesty will say things are going to be hard, but it won't lie to us. We've been lied to for eight years; now we want the truth.

Neil MacGregor :: 1915 - 2008

Dad called me this morning to let me know that my grandfather, his father, had passed away. This wasn't completely unexpected as Grandad was 93 and we'd been notified that he was failing fast earlier in the week. I didn't expect the end to come so soon though, I really expected that my parents were calling to let me know their month long motorhome jaunt to California was over and that they were home.

Dad told me that Grandad slipped away peacefully surrounded by family including my aunts and cousins. They had spent the past few days going through photo albums and sharing memories with him. Grandad was unable to speak but they could tell by his eyes that he was participating in what was going on. Dad told me that they showed him photos of Colin and William, his two American great-grandchildren.

The news of Grandad's death sunk in as Dad shared other bits of news from the family. He was in an amazingly upbeat mood and I didn't know if it was for my benefit, or maybe a sense of relief that his father was at peace. Grandad's quality of life was certainly not what it once was, and he always claimed that he wanted to die at home in his own bed. Still, I do not think that I would be able to muster such a positive attitude were I passing similar news about my Dad to Colin.

We closed up the phone conversation, I was aware that he had a number of other people to call. I offered to send my brother a text message to call my parents, who don't know how to text yet. Rob, being a teacher, can't really receive calls at work. I hope he was able to get in touch with them.

I got off the phone and a wave of emotion hit me; sadness, grief and regret. It had been nearly fourteen years since I saw him last, on the day of my wedding to my ex. It was the last trip that my Grandad was able to make to the US as his age had caught up with his globe trotting capabilities. We talked on the phone, but it isn't the same. Colin never had the chance to meet his paternal Great-Grandfather, and the guilt of this weighed on me. I never made going back to England, the country of my birth, a priority and now it is too late.

Being a child of a family who emigrated halfway across the globe I have always felt envious of people who are surrounded by family. Other than my parents and my siblings we had no immediate family in Houston. My Grandad would visit us every other year and we'd go back there every three or so years. Because of this I don't have a close bond with my aunts and uncles and cousins. The connection I feel with them is mainly based on their relationship with my parents, but my grandparents were different.

I attribute my sense of humor to my Grandad MacGregor, who was always ready with a good pun or to play a prank. He was a mirthful man with a knack for physical humor. He enjoyed amateur theatrics and would occasionally have roles in local drama productions. He was also a very proper English gentleman who did things the way they were meant to be done. For example, he always wore a suit to the bank and weighed his letter to make sure the postage was always correct.

Grandad was a good card player, a croquette player with a touch of a mean streak (a good streak to have in our cut throat family matches) and a good archer. One day he amazed me by setting up an archery target in the back yard for he and I to use, which we did for hours. Another time he made stilts for all his grandchildren to enjoy.

Grandad enjoyed games and was celebrated with his brother at their sports club for maintaining their weekly squash game together for the better part of forty years; they only stopped when they were both in their eighties, too old to continue. I asked him about the squash games and he told me that when they started they would often try just to maintain the volley, then they got good and competed against each other, but by the time they were in their seventies they were back to just trying to maintain the volley and had come full circle.

Grandad liked to read and had a large collection of books piled onto shelves all over the house, like all the other houses in my family. On the landing of the second floor they had a few of the James Bond novels in hard back, and I remember being excited to read a Bond adventure in it's first printing while there. I don't know if he wrote, but I suspect he did because both my father and I like to.

Memories of visits to England often revolve around my Granny and Grandad's wonderful house Whinmoor; a three story brick house located off the main road just above Stockton-Heath. Visiting Whinmoor as a child was magical; the house had a play room filled with toys my father played with, and the back yard was huge. My sister and I would always make for the back yard as soon as we arrived at Whinmoor to see the garden, check on the pond, swing on the swing, enter the playhouse, follow the trail through the wood at the back and then finally back into the house proper breathless and happy.

They moved from the first Whinmoor into the second about ten years ago, the big house was too much for a pair of octogenarians. In the past few years Grandad had a number of mini-strokes which decreased his ability to speak. His squash playing brother, my Great Uncle Jock, passed away less than a month ago, and was the older of the two. I guess that was why the news this morning took me a bit by surprise. Uncle Jock held on for years after his stroke that left him unable to speak and I thought the hearty MacGregor blood would keep my Grandad going on. Apparently not as the news that he was failing fast turned out to be accurate.

Death has this annoying habit of taking the people you love away from you before you're ready. It has colored this day a shade of gray for me. I can not focus on work and even writing this now has made my eyes moisten again for the umpteenth time. I feel envious of my cousins in England who were able to spend far more time with him and the regret that I didn't take my son across the pond to meet my great grandparents is palpable.

The living have to go on and move forward. Initially it sucks and at any moment grief can flood your mind but over time things get better. Fourteen years is a long time to go without seeing your grandparents; but now I will never see my Grandad again except in my memories and my dreams.

The funeral will be in June and my parents are planning to fly to England for it. Colin and I will not, but that's OK. I have my memories of him.

Here's one for the teachers...

The world is going to hell in a hand basket isn't it? It seems like every week there is a story about some teacher in some school getting busted for having sex with a student. What is strange is that more and more often the teacher is a young attractive woman and the student a teenage boy. This phenomenon raises a lot of questions in my mind; for example, which of my high school teachers wanted to take me into the teacher's lounge and have their way with me? I am pretty sure that this is the reaction that most men have at some point our another when hearing a story like this; second only to wondering if there are any lesbian teacher trysts to investigate (and there are)

Well, if you're a guy and you've built up enough outrage to act as a cover for your more base fantasies, here's a website that neatly organizes all the teacher/student sexual relationships that have been in the news; Jailbeta.com. Jailbeta features a blog listing all the articles covering this topic and an ability to vote for your favorite 'hot teacher'.

More of Golfgate from the WaPo

The Washington Post has followed up on Bush's Golfgate troubles with an article pointing out three occasions that Bush played golf after the date that he claimed to stop. The article is another one of the WaPo's typical fluffer pieces, and by fluffer piece I emphasize the term fluffer. There is no commentary on how often and easily Bush uses lies like this to deceive the American public. There was no comment on the knee injury that Bush suffered and how his claimed date that he stopped golfing coinsided with the injury.

Why is the author of this piece pleased to only note the factual errors in what Bush said and not dig deeper? It's probably because he wants to offset the negative on Bush by reminding everyone of Hillary's 'sniper fire' story. Bush is just 'old' and 'forgetful' he reminds us. When the Washington Post comes out with an endorsement for McCain remember that excuse.

The paper has been complicit in the deceits fostered on the American people by the Bush administration since January of 2001. I have to wonder what will happen to the news sources who were so glad to play propaganda mouthpiece when their public trust is finally gone.

Looks like you got a bad lie.

Did you see the interview Bush did with online news source Politico and Yahoo News on Tuesday? (video here and here's a transcript if you're like me and feel physical revulsion when hearing George W. Bush's voice.) I sure hope not, because if you did then you're liable to be pretty pissed off (of course, if you're not outrage then you're not paying attention) because Bush used the interview as yet another mouthpiece for his lies and deceptions. it is just disgusting to not only read Bush's answers to submitted questions, but to find no critical response from the journalists, and I use that term loosely, in the face of the lies.

Just what the hell is it with journalists these day anyhow? From where I'm sitting many of them seem to be such willing sycophants to people in power that they will not hold them accountable for what they say. The interviewer allowed Bush to get away with a host of easily disproved claims and wild accusations that smack of such egregious hypocrisy that I was almost moved to breaking my MacBook Pro. Have you no decency Politico hack Michael whatever-your-last-name-is? Did you land your job interviewing for a second-rate HuffingtonPost rip-off news site by demonstrating a lack of spine, or are you, like so many others working in journalism, more in love with yourself being on the news than actually reporting it? You're an ass kisser and not a serious reporter you immense douche bag.

In an effort to keep me from apoplexy I will not go through the interview question by question here, instead I'm going to point you to some media coverage of the interview. Take a look at Keith Olbermann's comments on Bush's interview. How impressive is his barley restrained outrage at Bush? How refreshing to see someone in the media as angry and frustrated with this inept, delusional President we have been blighted with. This is good reason to be angry.

The coup de grâce of Olbermann's commentary is when he takes Bush to task for promoting the idea that he no longer plays' golf because he wants to show solidarity to the families who lost a loved on in Iraq. Not only does Olbermann point out the sheer lack of sympathy that skipping golf shows; he then goes on to show photos of Bush golfing two months after he said he stopped.

Bush is a liar. He has no respect for Americans and this light-weight fluff interview that seems more like a desperation blow-job than anything approaching journalism certainly shows that.

A few years ago I was talking with my father about the state of the world. He told me that when he was a young man he felt that there was a great hope that all the problems of the world like war and famine would be solved in his lifetime. Democracy and science seemed like the unbeatable team as we raced for the moon and fought for civil rights. My father is now in his mid sixties and after the events of the last few years he has reaccessed his youthful optimism. He may not live to see the damage done to the world by Bush's actions fixed, even if he lives a further sixty years.

In the past seven years we have taken so many steps backward in our country. The President has mislead the country under cover of brash ignorance, covering a manipulative agenda that benefits the few and dismantles our beloved Constitution. The hope I feel in the coming election is tempered by the knowledge that we have so much to do to repair our country and restore the Constitution that has been under attack from the Bush administration.

What's it Gonna Be?

This video and song has been keeping Melissa and I tickled for the past few weeks. I've been playing it on my iPhone, my computer and even on the Wii and each time we're cracking up laughing and singing along.

The video features Mike O'Connell and Dr. Ken Jeong who shine their spotlight and lyrical wit on that certain breed of barfly who thinks that he is a gift to women. You may recognize Dr. Ken from the movie Knocked Up where he plays the OB however in this video his gloriously fabulous back-up singer performance almost steals the show.

In many ways the lead character reminds me of guys I've known. One friend in particular bears more than a passing resemblance to Mike and after going to bars with the guy, I wouldn't be surprised to find that his approach to meeting women didn't come close to what we're seeing in this video. I'm not about to let on which friend that is, but I will drop the hint that it's an old friend who Melissa has never met.

The lyrics are certainly not safe for work, but don't miss this. It's hysterical.

We Won't Stop Until Somebody Calls the Cops

When I was originally contemplating restarting my blogging interests one of the topics that I wanted to cover was protest music. In this period of our history where the means of mass communication are owned by those who have vested interest in their own agenda it is rare to turn on the radio and hear a protest song. Clear Channel, owner of over 1,100 radio stations in the US, made decisions about what we Americans could hear on the radio in the aftermath of September 11th, banning such songs as the Beatles "Ticket to Ride" (because, you know, the terrorists bought tickets) and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Tuesday's Gone" (because, you know, September 11th was a Tuesday) and haven't relinquished that power yet. Many artists who release protest songs about the war in Iraq or George W. Bush's policies will not receive commercial air play, at all.

As a fan of protest music from the moment I heard “Joy to the world, the school burned down” in second grade, I think it is a terrible shame that we are not exposed to the dialog of democracy through our music. In the sixties and early seventies the protest song was an important part of the civil rights movement and the efforts to end the Vietnam War. Even today most of us know song's like Edwin Starr's “War” and Bob Dylan's “The Times They Are A-Changin'” but who reading this has heard songs like “Sweet Neo Con” or “Dear Mr President?” And those two songs are by big name acts; The Rolling Stones and Pink respectively. You won't hear them on mainstream radio and that is tragic, because we need to hear dissenting voices because this is a democracy.

Sometimes I think that I get myself a little worked up about the state of things in the world. I tend to go on rants about politics and democracy in a way that I think that a good citizen should. Often people look at me with a touch of concern or possibly fear for expressing views that go against the grain, and sharing them so vocally and forthright. I mean, how many people do you know who walk into a kicker bar on karaoke night and sing Edwin Starr's “War” followed up by Willie Nelson's “Cowboy's are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other?” I wonder if I am pushing this free speech thing a little far sometimes, but then other times I know I don't go far enough.

So, for my second protest song post I wanted to highlight the song “Loose Lips” by Kimya Dawson because I like the expression of anger and frustration with the way things are that builds in the song. Couple that with the promise of a community, better than the one being offered, and you've got a protest song.

This song came to my attention from the Juno soundtrack which is also interesting as the movie stirred up a bit of controversy too. Juno, for anyone who has lived under a rock this past year, is the story of a sixteen year-old girl who gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. Many conservative commentators slammed the film for promoting promiscuity, which I think is ironic because the film is all about conservative values; no abortions, a strong family supportive of their daughter and a theme of personal responsibility. Instead the film became the darling of the liberal set for the exact same reasons; no abortions, a strong family supportive of their daughter and a theme of personal responsibility.

Take a moment to listen to the song if you'd like before I comment on some lyrics that I think stand out. OK, ready? Excellent...

Kimya Dawson's anti-folk songwriting style really suits the message of this song. The single acoustic guitar combined with the occasional out-of-sync background vocals give the feeling of something created outside of the mainstream media outlets. We don't expect to hear something sounding like this on a Clear Channel station and because of the unique, very close and personal, style of this song we perk up our ears and let her message of love and respect into our thoughts.

Listen here as she sums up the issues of the day and then lets you know firmly that you are not alone; we're all in this together:

and we'll pray, all damn day, every day,
that all this shit our president has got us in will go away
while we strive to figure out a way we can survive
these trying times without losing our minds

so if you wanna burn yourself remember that I LOVE YOU
and if you wanna cut yourself remember that I LOVE YOU
and if you wanna kill yourself remember that I LOVE YOU
call me up before you're dead, we can make some plans instead
send me an IM, i'll be your friend

Dawson expresses something that worries many people in today's world; the idea that we don't know how to fix the mess we're in. All we have is prayer, and praying all damn day isn't helping. Still she doesn't let you thing that the bleak outlook is reason to give up because in the next stanza she uses the chorus to remind you that no matter how bad things look there are people out there who love you and will be there to help.

Following this Dawson really launches into the point of the song:

shysters live from scheme to scheme and my 4th quarter pipe dreams
are seeming more and more worth fighting for
so i'll curate some situations, make my job a big vacation
and i'll say FUCK BUSH AND FUCK THIS WAR
my war paint is sharpie ink and i'll show you how much my shit stinks
and ask you what you think because your thoughts and words are powerful

There is a lot to hear in these six lines and Dawson uses a lot of metaphors to express what is and is not important. First off, your dreams are worth fighting for so don't let people scheme them away with empty promises. If you want a more democratic country then fight for it; if you want to impeach Bush and Cheney then fight for it. Nothing is going to happen without a champion in the corner fighting for it.

The second message in the above lines is that no matter how many times people dismiss your ideas, don't give up on them. Your thoughts and words are powerful so write them down and share them with others. Write a protest song, or start a blog to share your ideas; the point is that you have to do something. Dawson lets you know in no uncertain terms as she spits out “FUCK BUSH AND FUCK THIS WAR” how she feels. How do the people around you know how you feel if you're not going to sing it out loud or take sharpie to poster in protest?

The chorus of the song is the perfect mantra for today's protester:

we won't stop until somebody calls the cops
and even then we'll start again and just pretend that
nothing ever happened

What have we learned from George W. Bush and his war? Well, it's all right there in the chorus. Just like George W. Bush we can not stop trying to achieve our agenda and if somebody calls the cops we have to do what Bush does; pretend that nothing ever happened and get right back into it.

So start again.

Fear with Child

Last week I touched on the topic of the paranoid parental fear that seems to be gripping the country. As a parent of a young child I am constantly being told by friends, family and even people I hardly know that the world is a very dangerous place for my child and that only through constant vigilance will I assure my child will reach adulthood without being kidnapped, molested, murdered or bludgeoned. Even the TV news gets in on the stoking of parental fear
by making any case of a missing child or worse the lead story of the night's broadcast (they even have a quaint name for this).

To all this I say poppycock, which is a old fashioned way of calling bullshit on the culture of parental fear. I've read books on the subject of the exploitation of fear (The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner) and one of the things that I have learned is that reality is not as dangerous a place as we are lead to believe. The crimes that most parents spend countless hours worrying about are at historic lows and statistically, our children are safer now than they have ever been in the history of our country.

Kidnappings are at a historic low. Sexual abuse of children by adults have been declining also. It is a fact that children today are less likely to be molested, kidnapped or killed than their parents were thirty years ago, and the odds of these things happening have continued to decrease generation after generation. And yet we, as a society, think that letting our kids go to the park or take the subway by themselves is akin to neglect and abuse. Again, poppycock. This is what kids need.

What we are doing is raising a generation of children unable to take charge of their own lives because they are so accustomed to having their safety managed by an adult. If a child doesn't have the chance to get into scrapes and little bits of trouble when they are young then they will have no capability to deal with scrapes and trouble when they are older. This is what childhood is for; it is a relatively consequence free period of life where you learn the cost of mistakes and how to deal with them productively. A child who doesn't get into little scrapes as a child will get into bigger scrapes as an adult.

Pitting the facts and logic against this culture of fear is getting harder and harder to do. As a father who has custody of my bi-racial son I read articles about how this fear gripping our society is affecting men and I worry. I worry about a father in Boston who is investigated by police for telling his daughter to 'please be quiet' while on the subway because I have told my son the same thing many many times in public. He and I don't share the same skin color and in the back of my mind I do often wonder if other people look at me and my child and let their fear run away with them. Do I set off the ‘stranger danger’ alerts in parents?

This fear of being labeled a threat to children actually makes our children less safe. I firmly agree with Hillary Clinton's premise that it takes a community to raise a child. We all have to look out for children to protect them, but what happens when one lives in a community overrun with illogical fear? Do we create men like Clive Peachy who did not stop to help little Abigail Rae because he was worried that people would think he was an abductor? Is that where we are going with this fear? Would you, put into Mr. Peachy's place, have stopped to help Abigail?

Now, there are things for parent's to fear in our communities. This Venn diagram that I came across last night is a good illustration about how we are directing our fears towards the wrong things. Statistically our children are less likely to encounter a molester at school, but far more likely to encounter a man who will actively stalk them, lie to them and once trusted by our children, send them off to a strange country where their lives will be in danger. Why do we fear the long shot and allow a greater threat to our children unlimited access?

People tell me that it is a dangerous world and that kids these days are growing up faster than before. All this attention and protection aren't helping. As Tim Gill, author of the parenting book No Fear, puts it, “our fear of [stranger danger] is magnified so dramatically, we deny our children the basic freedoms and experiences they need to grow up.” We are raising children in a protective shell who will be ill-prepared for the harshness of life.

The experiences we offer our children in childhood set their expectations in life. If a child grows to adulthood without experiencing the wrong side of a swindle, then they will grow to be an easy mark. If a child grows without criticism then they will not be able to handle it as an adult. As a parent we have to give our children the space they need to inoculate their character against the hardships of life, or they will remain a child forever.

Colin complains about the troubles in his life on occasion. He will voice his frustration by telling me “it isn't fair Daddy.” He is right, life isn't fair. Life is hard, and for long periods everyone will suffer through hardship and loss, money will be tight, expectations will not be met, and then there's high school. I try to instill in my son the tools he will need to make the best of life, hardships and all. Part of my job is to let him learn a lot of these things in little ways, now that he is a child.

I do not want my son to grow up miserable and unhappy. I want him to have the skills he will need to make the most of life and find happiness in the face of all the uncertainty and unfairness of the world. I want his expectations of life to match the realities and if that means bucking against the culture of fear then that is what I will do.

Houston Weekend Activities

Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States with a little over 2.1 million people calling the city home. If you don't know two million people, it is a pretty staggering number. If Houston were not just a city but instead a state then it would be the thirty-sixth most populace in the United States, between Nevada and New Mexico. If Houston were a its own country then it would be the 141st largest country in the world. If you included all 5.6 million people in the greater Houston area then our city has about the same population as Nicaragua.

With 5.6 million people you are going to find a lot of different walks of life; not just oil men and cowboys thanks very much. Houston has a vibrant and diverse population with a thriving and diverse museum community (including local oddities like the National Museum of Funeral History) and a theater community that is second only the New York City in terms of artistic scope and number of seats. People outside our city may think that we're all George W. Bush loving Christian conservatives, but once you experience the many unique attractions of the city, you'll see how misinformed that opinion is.

Take for example the weekend that Melissa and I enjoyed just these past few days. It was a weekend of cultural oddities ranging from a lowbrow dinner on the side of Galveston Bay to the relatively highbrow attendance of the Houston Ballet's performance of Madam Butterfly and what happened in the middle is certainly unique to Houston. What happened? Well, let's start with Friday night...

On Friday afternoon I left work and high-tailed it to Galveston Island to meet Melissa for her office happy hour. The drive to Galveston late on a Friday was nice and quick and I didn't encounter any traffic to speak of. I've been listening to the biography of Ian Fleming in the car for the past week and the tale of this fascinating man, who was born one hundred years ago this month, kept my attention. I made it to Melissa's office a little after her quitting time and waited around for a bit, but we were still in good time for the happy hour.

I wish I could say that happy hour on Galveston was worth the drive, but it was not. Instead of being a lot of fun with karaoke and lots of new people to talk to, the happy hour ended up being a small handful of people standing around in a muggy bar talking about interoffice politics that I had no insight nor opinion on. I honestly tried to strike up conversations with Melissa's co-workers but I quickly got the impression that they were not receptive to outsiders and I ended up playing a game on my iPhone while nursing a beer in the one cool corner of the bar.

You might think that driving away four gallons of precious fuel would put me in a bad mood, but it didn't really. I brushed off the disappointment and talked Melissa into leaving the island and going north towards home for dinner. Thirty minutes later we were pulling up into the parking lot of Clifton by the Sea in Baclif, Texas. We were seated on the wood deck with a grand view of Galveston bay to our left and a small stage featuring an acoustic cover band to our right. Our dinner there was superb. We started with a creamy, thick cup of crab bisque, served hot enough to require a slow eating pace. That was followed by an assortment of fish and crab tacos, the crab being the better tasting of the two, and the potato boats, which were scooped out baked potatoes baked with cheese, chives, bacon bits and sour cream. All of this was washed down with an absurdly heavy pitcher of fresh sangria.

After dinner we retreated to the house and kept things low key for the rest of the night. Low key for Melissa and I can be as simple as a bottle of wine, some music and a trash-talk filled game of Wii Sports, usually golf. The visions of karaoke will have to wait for another night, and besides, Saturday was going to be a big long day so an early retreat to bed was a good idea.

On Saturday we woke up slowly and got ready for the grand day out. Melissa, Chelsea, her boyfriend and his sister and I were off to watch Houston's Art Car Parade as it ambled down Allen Parkway. The Art Car Parade is something of a tradition for my family; usually we meet my mother and father with wines and cheeses to celebrate Mother's Day. This year my parents are still off motor homing across America so instead of meeting my family we met Melissa's sister and her Bulgarian friends. Toward the end of the parade my friend Carl met up with us too.

The Houston Art Car Parade is the longest running celebration of art cars in the United States. Art cars encompass a wide range of styles and tastes. One of my favorites is a Honda Accord that has been completely covered in mirror shards; another is a dragon car that is well over a hundred feet long. Some of the cars are little more than decorated vehicles with colorful paint, other vehicles are hardly recognized as once being cars, but they move. The majority of the cars look they way they do all year round and are houses in Houston's Art Car Museum; the 'decorated cars' (cars that can be returned to their normal appearance after the parade) are in the minority. Healthy amounts of scorn are heaped on any vehicle that is more advertising than art; for example the Ronald McDonald shoe car is usually booed when it passes for not being art.

The parade started in 1988 with forty decorated cars and has grown to what it is now; the best parade in the northern hemisphere. This year there were over two hundred cars and spectators number around a quarter million people. Anyone thinking that the city of Houston is lock step behind Bush would have been surprised to find a number of art cars specifically used as platforms to call for his impeachment (including the Code Pink M-Peach-mobile).

The Art Car parade is first and foremost a people's parade. It is a locally organized event started by volunteers and entry into the parade is open to anyone with a imaginatively festooned vehicle that can make it up and down the short parade route. Prior to the parade you can walk up and down Allen Parkway and talk to the owners of the assorted cars and during the parade the lines between spectator and participant are often blurred.

Our Bulgarian frineds, Iskra and Itzo, were enthralled with the spectacle of the parade. I can't imagine what someone from the former Soviet Block Bulgaria would think about a parade featuring all these decorated cars. I wonder if they thought Houstonian's crazy for celebrating those who forsake resale value in an effort to make the world a more unique place. Knowing Europeans I imagine they would see the parade as I do; that there is hope for our crassly commercial society after all. I think that the parade helped to show them that Houston is a far more complex city than our reputation leads one to believe.

After the parade ended we slowly gathered up our chairs and coolers and walked to our respective cars. The next stop of the day was to go to Star Pizza for the best pizza in Houston. I've been dining at Star Pizzas for almost twenty years and I have never once had a meal there that was less than stellar. Melissa and I have been there a number of times but our Bulgarian friends and Chelsea's boyfriend and his sister had never been, so they were in for a real treat.

We ordered three large pizzas and settled in for the always-worth-it wait by discussing the NBA finals with Itzo and the cultural difference between Bulgaria and Texas with Iskra. I always enjoy hearing the opinions of others about the state and city I've adopted as my own and their impressions of Houston as being the friendliest and most economical city in America was certainly interesting to hear. As Iskra said, in Houston one can always find work and a place to live.

The final event of an already event filled day was to go to the Miller Outdoor Theater for a showing of Madam Butterfly. The Bulgarians and Carl opted out of this part of the day, but the rest of us could think of nothing better than sitting on the lawn at the MOT and listening to the opera. But it wasn't an opera; Melissa had made a mistake. Instead of an opera we were treated to the ballet version of the story. This made no difference to our group. We had cheeses, crackers, olives and some left over sangria to enjoy so we settled in for a great show.

I have to say that I was impressed with the ballet. I am not a big fan of the more traditional arts; preferring the DIY nature of an art car to the somewhat stuffy formality of a ballet, but this was an interesting story and the performances were expressive enough to tell the story. The free aspect of the MOT also helped me to enjoy it. Most of all I enjoyed it because I got to spend the day doing things I enjoy doing with the people I love to be around. The only thing that could have improved the day in any way at all was to have had Colin along. He missed the entire adventure because it was his mother's weekend. Maybe next year the Art Car parade will move away from Mother's Day weekend and I'll be able to take him to the parade again.

By the time we got home on Saturday, around eleven in the evening, everyone was worn out. We said good bye to Chelsea's friends and retired to sleep feeling stuffed with good food and filled with good memories.

I am stuffed.

This weekend we went to the art car parade with cheeses and crackers, then to Star Pizza and finally to watch the ballet perform Madam Butterfly at the Miller Outdoor theater with cherries, cheeses and crackers and wasabi ( わさび ) almonds. I'll tell you about it in more detail tomorrow. This video above is pretty much how I felt this morning after breakfast when I decided to put an end to this festival of gastric delights and go back to avoiding foods I don't like anyway.

Melissa and I are now going to check on the dewberries at the park down the road.

Bearing Good News

Friday has arrived and you find me in a good mood. My day has been close to perfection so far from the moment that consciousness wrestled me from sleep. I''m telling you, it's been that good.

In no particular order, let's review the events leading up to this perfectly wonderful end of the week.

1. The rent house is ours!
   After five days of worry and trepidation Melissa and I got word yesterday that the house we wanted to rent will be our home away from home for the next twelve months as we tear down and then build our dream home Wildwood. The rent house is amazing; even the hopelessly amateurish photos the realtor took can not fail to make this house look good. On top of that we've worked out a deal where we will be reimbursed for any plants we buy for the garden, which is currently a blank canvas, and we're getting a new range on the island in the kitchen. I can not wait to have guests over to the house for gatherings.
   
   
2. Barak Obama has taken the super delegate lead!
   With the defection of a former Hillary super delegate and a new endorsement Obama takes the lead in super delegates by two. Now my main man Barry has the popular vote lead, the pledged delegate lead and the super delegate lead. Of course, these three metrics will still probably not be enough to get Hillary to drop out of the race. She seems to judge the race by a criteria that consists of moving the goalposts every time that Barry takes on another win. In addition to all this, the final numbers in Indiana show that Hillary won the state by less than an percentage point and many are pointing to right-wing sycophant Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos as responsible for seven percent of Hillary's support. Does it feel nice to win because of the actions of Rush Limbaugh Hillary?
   
   
3. Happy hour tonight!
   Tonight after work I am heading south to Galveston Island to join Melissa at her office happy hour. We're going to a bar that I used to do stand-up in, but it looks like it is under new ownership now (which I feel will be a good thing). The happy hour theme will be karaoke and I love me some karaoke. Tomorrow morning I'll probably be hoarse from belting out such ditty's as 'Old Time Rock-n-Roll' by Bob Seger and 'Proud Mary' by CCR.
   
   
4. Art car parade tomorrow!
   The best parade in the entire northern hemisphere is happening tomorrow. Melissa and I are joining a contingent of Bulgarians, friends and family to enjoy the parade. The tradition of mocking corporate art cars like the McDonald's shoe car and it's ilk will be continued. Usually this is my Mother's choice for the family Mother's Day gathering, but this year my parent's are trekking back from California and will not be able to make it. Melissa and I will do our best to maintain the gourmet levels of cheese and wine at the event and Chelsea will be attending with her boyfriend. Last year I got to meet George Clinton at the parade too!
   
   
   
   
   
5. This Blog is a week old!
   I should probably start telling people about it. For the past week I've been dropping hints to Melissa that I'm blogging. I've helped her to add AdSense ads to her site and her Google Reader shared items too, but none of this has spurred her to ask how I've become so familiar with the new features of Blogger. Heck, I even told her the name of this blog again, but no bites on these hints.
   
   The main reason that I haven't told her about this until now is that I wanted to have some entries for her to read, so Melissa, when you get to this point in this post, surprise!
   
   
6. I had a wonderful morning!
   Seriously folks, there's nothing better than waking up next to the person you love. A close second, which I discovered this morning, is having a fresh Desert Gallery oatmeal raisin cookie before you shower.
   

How to win at primaries

When Keith Olbermann used to be a sportscaster on ESPN I enjoyed his humor and light touch. Now that he's on MSNBC covering national news I find him to be one of the most refreshing and honest news men on cable news. In this special commentary Olbermann he lists all the excuses that Hillary has hoisted to keep her campaign going. It is wonderful.

It's Over

Do you remember the story of the emperor with no clothes? As I recall it the emperor was duped into wearing an outfit made of thread that would be invisible to anyone not fit to be emperor. in fact, the outfit wasn't anything at all, just a swindle to take advantage of his vanity. It wasn't until a child pointed out the obvious truth, that the emperor had no clothes, that the people saw through the charade and the emperor was mocked.

Well Hillary, look at that video. You have no clothes.

Hillary's Political Baggage > Hillary's Political Capital

Yesterday's post about Hillary's refusal to accept defeat got me thinking about the reasons that I'm not supporting her in this election. One of the most important reasons that I'm not throwing my hat in to Hillary is because she is a Clinton.

I voted for Bill twice and hell, I even invited him to my wedding many years ago. Bill Clinton was the first person I voted for in my life, having only become a citizen before the 1992 election. I thought he was a great President, mainly because of his efforts to expand opportunity to more people and his work to establish peace in many conflict regions around the world. I even listened to his entire autobiography, all fifty plus hours of it, during my commute a few years back.

For a long time Hillary Clinton was on my 'List of Five' (see the Friend's episode - and yes, the list was laminated). Along side Madonna, Sharleen Spiteri, the Spice Girls (all of them, at once), and Angalina Jolie, Hillary was one of those people who I wouldn't mind sharing a hot tub with. This was eight years ago folks, when she was on her way out of the White House as First Lady. I felt that Hillary needed a good night's company in the arms of yours truly to buck up her spirits after Bill's misdeeds. So, you can't say that I don't like the Clinton's.

Not everyone likes the Clinton's, most people in my part of Texas (Tom DeLay's old district) have this feeling that Hillary is the evil Sith lord behind Bill. They despise her to the point that that when I revealed Hillary on my list of five, they would go into apoplectic fits, red faced and incredulous. As a topic in conversation in Texas I have heard that Hillary and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright were secret lovers, that Hillary was selling secrets to the Chinese and that Hillary had Vincent Foster killed. All of which are egregious lies of course.

These same people, who when not damning Hillary for causing male pattern baldness, would often talk with earnestly about God and Jesus to me mistaking my distance from religion as a lack of experience with churches and not the opposite. How hypocritical they were then when they tut-tutted about the Monica Lewinski scandal and then damned Hillary again for sticking with Bill through the ordeal; which I considered to be a very Christian thing of her to do.

Years later Hillary's candidacy is driving these people nuts. They wonder how people can even think to vote for her. Their hatred of Hillary is so string that the GOP could nominate an Arab homosexual who wants to solve the world food crisis by letting people eat aborted fetuses over her. I speak with no hyperbole here, in my part of Texas this is how things are.

It is this hatred for the Clinton's, and absurdly for Hillary, that would prevent Hillary from doing the single most important task of the next President; holding George W. Bush and his administration accountable for all the laws that they have disregarded and their abuses of power. The rule of law has to be upheld. We can not let Bush's crimes and trampling of the Constitution go without punishment if we hope to prevent his kind of Presidency from ever happening again, and we do want that.

Hillary doesn't have the political capital necessary to go after Bush because she is a Clinton. The media will find a willing audience for the accusations that Hillary is only interested in taking a pound of flesh from the party that was responsible for the attacks on Bill and her during Bill's years in the White House. Any accusation of the GOP's corruption or the illegal actions of the Bush administration, no matter how solid the facts, from a second President Clinton won't have the traction needed to move them through the legal system. The pundits will claim her a failure for not being able to let the past go and that will be the story of her Presidency.

I believe Barak Obama has the communication skills necessary to muster even the most cynical GOP devotee behind a call for accountability for Bush's crimes. Hell, even John McCain would have more luck prosecuting George W. Bush and his administration than Hillary would, but I'm still not going to vote for him.

My misgivings about her refusal to suspend her campaign aside, were Hillary Clinton not a Clinton then she'd make a wonderful President. Were she not immediately following the criminal presidency of George W. Bush, she's make an excellent President. Now is not the right time for her.

We need someone who can hold Bush accountable and be a strong leader. Only Barak Obama has the political capital and the leadership skills necessary to heal our country.

###

More on this subject from the press:

• Would Obama Hold Bush Accountable?
• Fitzgerald, Bush, and the Public Trust

I put my pants on one leg at a time

It's like parkour for your pants.

The Last Person to Know

A few years back my ex-wife announced that she was going to move out of the house we'd lived in for eight years leaving me at home with Colin to get a hang of being a single parent. Our marriage had been having troubles with both of us finding ourselves unhappy with the way things were going. I'm not going to go into all the details about how my marriage fell apart. Millions of people divorce every year and each marriage breaking down has it's own tales of heart ache and anger. I like to think that things like that are in my past now, even though I have to deal with repercussions from the divorce all the time.

During the months between her announcement and her moving out things were difficult to say the least. I was little more than a vessel for my grief, overwhelmed by the changes in my life. I went to work and spent most of the days in my office emotionally dealing with the crisis. I clung to the memories of happier times and told myself that I would fight to make things better between us.

My friends were another story. While I was busy living in the past and trying to figure out how to get back there, they could see all the signs of what was really going on. My ex's late nights at bars with her co-worker was obviously more than just a friendship. The lies and accusations that she hurled at me in arguments were given to justify her actions to her self. Even her claim to need “time to think” wasn't believed by the support group that had come to my aid in the times of trouble. They all told me that she was cheating on me and any time I brought up the matter with my ex she assured me that she wasn't cheating on me and that she had no interest in her co-worker, to whom she is now married.

Inside my head I clung to the hope that my ex really just needed time and that everyone's suspicions were groundless. I was happy to ignore all the evidence that pointed to the fact that there was an affair and it was the reason for her moving out. When I came across a note from her to this guy I steadfastly refused to read between the lines. I was so far in denial that I was the last person defending her against the accusations of her affair. My friends felt pity for me, hanging on like I did.

It wasn't until I saw the two of them leaving her new apartment one morning that I gave up hope that things were going to end well. On that morning, after seeing them leave her place with him locking the door with his key, I made the decision that I had to get ready for a divorce and I stopped turning a blind eye to her activities.

Looking back at my actions now I wonder to myself why I didn't act sooner about the affair. I think it is because the affair was completely opposite from what I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe that she just needed time to think and I wanted to believe that we were going to get through the separation and come back together stronger and happier. No matter what the harsh reality of the situation was showing, I was in a fantasy world where my desire to get things back to where I wanted clouded my judgment.

I think about how I acted and thought as my marriage fell apart and find myself seeing similarities with Hillary Clinton's campaign. After last night's results were posted in North Carolina and Indiana the writing on the wall for Hillary's aspirations to be the 2008 Democratic candidate is even clearer. There is no chance for her to win the nomination and we've known this since March. Her campaign is over and now she is a figure that more and more people are feeling pity for. When will she see that her campaign is as futile as my attempts to gloss over and defend my ex's actions? Reality is reality and we all have to deal with bad news eventually.

After I dealt with the realities of my ex's infidelity I set on a course of action to make sure that I came out of the divorce with what I wanted; primary custody of my son and my house. The path was a difficult one and it tore me up to go to my lawyers office and deal with the hard realities of a divorce. Eventually the divorce was over and I ended up getting what I wanted. I made the most of a bad situation and turned the loss of my marriage into a divorce on my terms.

Hillary has to understand that the longer that she remains in a futile race the more damage she is doing to herself and the legacy of her husband as President. There is still a chance that Hillary will look at the cold facts of reality and make the decisions that she has to make, but taking that path means admitting that she was wrong, and it doesn't look like she can do that.

For the past eight years we've lived with a President who makes decisions based on what he wants to be true, and not reality. Our current President also has difficult time admitting that he was wrong, and as a nation we have suffered tremendously under this type of leadership. Hillary's decision to continue a failed campaign shows me, more clearly than anything else that she has said or done on the campaign trail, that she is not the right person to be our next President. She is too much like George W. Bush in her refusal to accept the facts about her campaign and make a good decision on the right course of action.

Barak Obama may not be your ideal cup of tea for a President but you can not argue that the man doesn't admit when he is wrong. When facing difficult decisions as President I want someone who will make a decision based on the facts and not based on what they want to be true. Sometimes that takes maturity to admit that you were wrong and to change direction and that takes courage. I hope that Hillary can show her courage to admit defeat and then become an Obama supporter. If she does that then when she runs for the President again, and I'm sure that she will, then I'll be more inclined to vote for her. Otherwise I will continue to view her as being a dangerous person to hold the presidency, another person who can not see the facts for what they are; the truth.