Musings and Meanderings

Blog notations Ever see those neat little places where you can make comments on a blog? Well I've been messing around between tasks trying to get one of the services to work. No avail. So yea I've spent a stupid amount of time on the blog today, but you don't get to see the results... cause I cannot make it work. Sheesh.

This is very fun Name Statistics - How popular are your first and last names? Michael is the #4 most common male name. 2.629% of men in the US are named Michael. Around 3220525 US men are named Michael! source namestatistics.com

Alex on the Left Coast Had a great talk with Alexander last night. He is having a ball at the beach near Watsonville. He has gone to the Santa Cruz boardwalk and has ridden the largest rollercoaster with Uncle Greg. He has dug a 28in hole trying to get to China. He has become the fast playmate for cousins Sophie and Jeremy. Jeremy apparently has learned the word for attack in French and then he yells it and jumps on Alex. Alex loves it! Today (my) cousin Lee Ann and her two girls are coming down from the Bay Area to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If you have ever been there you know that this rocks for Alex. MW says he has been extreemly sweet and patient. Thats our boy. Now if he would just show those traits at home.... Miss him and can't wait for he and Greg to be here Sunday night. The "Sir Robin" Congress Brave Sir Robin when faced with a foe turned his tail and ran in the Monty Python's Holy Grail. Congress has earned the Sir Rob...

Homophobes Run Away The newest buzz on TV is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy showing on Bravo (where else) on Tuesday nights at 10pm. Five Gay men do live makeovers for a straight man so that they can impress their girlfiriends/fiancee etc. Its funny, not sterotyped and very well written. I have a severe aversion towards "reality shows" but this is just too funny to pass up. So if you can't stomach gay men, then take a pass, but if you are open minded to other lifestyles then I cannot recommend this show enough.

Odds and ends Howard Dean is Blogging Thanks to Vacumkitty for this heads up this am. I have posted the Dean official blog site in my list of links to the right below the pictures. Its great to watch this phenomenon grow, an "insurgency" campaign is always fun. I enjoyed watching McCain last election and should enjoy Dean's even more as I agree with most of what he is saying. In the end though I feel very strongly that fielding Dean against Bush is a mistake, Dean will not play in the parts of America that swing right or left, and this is where the DNC must push the hardest. Every other Monday is Bachelor Night L stays overnight in-territory every other Monday night. Usually this is "boys night in" where A and I usually rent a cool DVD - either a action adventure or top kids movie and we have something perfectly unhealthy for dinner. Weirdness last night is that of course Alex is on the Left Coast this week at the beach with my side of ...

VERY disturbing Back to the Economist which is only for print edition or subscribers. It was entitled Right Young Things: A Youthquake that is helping George Bush. "The College Republicans have tripled their membership in the last three years, increasing their chapters from 409 to 1,1148 and recruiting 22,000 new members alone in 2002" The article cites three trends: 1) "a healthy desire to tweak the noses of people in authority" i.e. America's Academic Community. 2) "surge in patriotism that widened the gap btw students and Vietnam era professors." 3) ".. American conservatives devote a a lot of energy to recruiting the young." So where does that leave the left? Baby Boomers are getting conservative as they age. Their children are now conservative due to the alleged reasons above. The problem with the left today is that we are not organized like the right. Not even close. That gap will continue to grow unless the...

My Saturday in SF Wow what a day! Woke up early enough to do the entry below recounting Friday's trip. Had some amazing expresso from Greg's Krup while I was doing that. Hit the showers and Greg and I went to GG park to earmark the tables for Sebastian's 1st birthday party. Then we went to the Beach Chalet for an amazingly good Eggs Benedict and Bloody Mary's. When Greg found a bit of hair on his plate, the comped us another round of Bloody Mary's. No harm done and a bit of an extra buzz for the day. Went back to his flat for a bit and then headed back the park for the fete. What a great turnout my mother inspired. We literally had people there from age 1 to 96! I'd say a rough count was ... well every family friend and relative that could make it! From my College sweetheart to Grandmother and two Great Aunts down from Sacramento. It was especially nice seeing two of my second cousins who I have rarely seen as they have grown up, one from ...

Saturday reunion in Golden Gate Park Photo Credit Greg Aston Photography Greg, Kay, Mike, Andrew

Goooooooooooood Morning Saaaan Francisco! So here I am in the most beautiful city in the Country.. more probably the world. We are having a MAJOR family fete today in Golden Gate Park. Mark Twain did NOT say the coldest winter he spent was a summer in San Francisco but as I sit here in Greg's Office at 7:30am PST it is cold and foggy out. I LOVE IT! For those of you who are not in the know I used to live less than a 1/4 mile from this very spot on the other side of Golden Gate Park from Greg's place. So Alex and I warped out of Albany at 3pm yesterday after spending the am at my office. I got a quick haircut from my stylist Dee and did the bank deposit. We got through checkin and security with no problem and ended up in the very front of the "A" line for getting on the plane. (If you have flown SouthWest you know what I mean by this.) Landed safely in Las Vegas at 8pm est and then sat almost 3 hrs for our late connection to Oakland. Were in the ver...

Harry Turtledove the Author Del Ray books has a great corner on Alternative History . (Click on the Alternative History link) With both Harry Harrison and Harry Turtledove in their fold. I wish to wax eloquently about Harry Turtledove. Here is an unofficial "official" website . (I use those alternating terms because frankly if it isn't www.someonesname.com I don't think it's official). I started by reading his World War series which is pretty "hard" SF. The setup here is that in the early part of WWII a race of fairly aggressive reptile aliens arrives at good old Sol to take the place over. Apparently however, they underestimate the creative abilities of the Human Race. Seven books later its well into the mid to late 20th Century. What I discovered was that this Author has the ability to tell a very large epic story by simply creating a large handful of separate and distinct characters and telling their stories. These Characters may s...

More Odds and Ends Mental Update I am freaking tired. This summer has been rough for some reason on the sleeper. (Father the sleeper has awoken!) (10 points for crediting that quote by movie or book.) I wake up a minimum of once a night. Usually more like 2 or 3. Enough to look at my watch. I don't really get it. I know I am a light sleeper but its beyond me just what is waking me up. One thing we did not do this year is put the window AC unit in the bedroom yet. Partly because we got beat up pretty badly over the winter with heating costs. Partly because although it is humid.. It really has not been that hot at night. I am sure the general life situation affects my sleep as well. The company I have been with for 5+ years, whose demise I must say has been predicted inaccurately many times, will probably not last the year. At the same time I'm looking to refinance the house and deal with some minor tax issues before this all happens. But every morning...

Odds and Ends Patriot Act.. Or as I call it Alien and Sedition Act part II Well now here is a Surprise! An internal Justice Department audit cites various civil rights violations from enforcement of the Patriot Act. This is reported in the NYTimes and Yahoo this am. Gosh Mr. Ashcroft I wasn't using my civil rights anyway.. No really you can have them. I don't really need them do I? Sure I trust you... Reimportation of medicines I heard on NPR (Click here and scroll down to the "Drug Reimportation" piece today only) this am that as part of the Medicaid bill they will be including a rider allowing US medicine made for overseas to be reimported to the US to save money. Seems like a good idea. But the pharmaceutical industry says they have a safety issue with this. Let me get this straight, we are exporting unsafe medicines overseas? This is the logical extension of their "concern". Of course its all BS, they are just trying to...

This coming weekend Alex is off to his week to 10 days with Emmy on Friday. Three weeks ago my mom calls to tell me that SW Airlines will not let a 10 yr old fly unaccompanied. The orginal plans were for the big guy to fly from Here to Las Vegas where my mom or brother would meet him and finish the journey. Same thing back 10 days later. OK new plan. So I am flying off on Friday to the Left Coast for a whirlwind 3 day fete. Primarily will be my Godson Sebastian's 1st birthday. In movies of my first birthday I barfed on a spinning top. Hopefully Sebastian will be more photogenic as any big get together with my family is less a reunion than a Photo Op... Btw Myself. MW. Greg Aston and others there are usually more cameras clicking and whirling than not. I fly out on Friday, return on Sunday. Thats the whrilwind. The worst thing about this whole weekend (and there is VERY little to complain about here by the way) is that my original "intel" was as bad...

And awaaay we go I'm inspired by a very good friend who blogs and his consistency at doing so. I am going to try one more time to run this blog. If I want to know how he is doing I just simply go to his blog and I'm up to date. That was the idea of this journal but like all things Michael it has been inconsistent at best.... At worst.. Just useless... If I fail again I'm deleting it and moving on to other things lol. Alex and I saw League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on Sunday and we both dug it completely. It was the Xmen of the turn of the Century. Other than Connery there were no "major" actors but I recognized most of the faces regardless. If you are not familiar this was derived from a Graphic Novel and (maybe) a comic book series. What a great idea to put some of the last century's great Characters from literature together in one group: Allan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, The Invisible Man, A Von Helsing (Dracula) associate, Dr Jekyl / ...