Lost in Long Island

Allow me to set the stage. Yesterday, 1pm, our team troops downstairs to hop our ride to our offsite in Long Island. The bus... has a stripper pole. And a disco ball. And strobe lights. I'm not sure we were their typical crowd.

As we get off the LIE, or whichever of the ubiquitous highways brought us to our destination, I remark how every location in Long Island looks exactly the same. Within a couple of minutes, we pull into Cablevision's corporate offices. Which I was at in June. En route to the hotel, I make the same observation. No joke - this place all looks the same. We pull into the hotel, which of course looks familiar, though I chalk it up to the Long Island Effect. It's not until we all go up the stairs to The Pub that I realize without a doubt that we are at the same hotel we stayed at for a friend's engagement party two or three years ago.

So I guess it's not that all of Long Island looks the same. It's apparently that I visit a very limited number of locations here.

Courtesy 101, post script

At Ali's suggestion, I sent Courtesy 101 to Passive Aggressive Notes. It was finally posted, and has gotten over a hundred comments. Check it out here. Though if you're squeamish, skip the comments.

Rocketship Run

I've mentioned before that the Bug loves to dance, and the reigning queen of baby-time dance parties is Laurie Berkner. Note to cool mommies, daddies, or those in need of hip baby gifts: Her last disc, Under A Shady Tree, is fantastic. We recently got the new disc, Rocketship Run, which is also a blast. My fave track is "Mr. Bassman (and Piano Girl)"... but trust me, they're all good.

For a good time, feel free to dance along to "I'm Gonna Catch You" here:

A funny, snarky idea

You may have already heard about this little suggestion traveling around the internet, but I thought I'd post it in case you hadn't.

Given the dangerously anti-choice position of the McCain/Palin ticket, please consider making a donation to Planned Parenthood (or local/national NARAL). In Sarah Palin's name. She'll get a notification card telling her the donation has made in her honor, and you'll have the satisfaction of helping to get elect a pro-choice president.

Here's how: Visit the Planned Parenthood website at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/. Under the "donate" tab, select "honorary or memorial donations". You'll need to fill in the address to let Planned Parenthood know where to send the "in Sarah Palin's honor" card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters:

Sarah Palin
c/o John McCain 2008
PO Box 16118
Arlington, VA 22215

Let me know how it goes!

Pro-choice and in concert

First off, did anyone know that the Indigo Girls are still around? Well, they are, and they're on tour. They invited two organizations they support to table at their shows, and I volunteered to help NARAL Pro-Choice America with the Stamford show. Check out my thoughts here.

In case you were wondering, all of the Indigo Girls' songs still sound exactly the same.

Ready to see the world

Joker, the Bug, my parents and I are all heading to Mexico this November for a friend's wedding. We're really getting excited - we haven't been diving in a couple of years, and none of us have seen Chichen Itza before! Plus, we are all ready for a vacation.

I hadn't realized that all US citizens, regardless of age, need a passport when traveling by air to Mexico. So yesterday we took the Bug to get her passport photos taken. Saturday morning we go to the local passport office to apply. Note to other mommies and daddies: you can't do this by mail; you both need to take your child in person to get the passport, or one parent must appear with a notarized signature of the other. The Bug's passport will be valid for five years, and we intend to get some good use out of it!

Ubiquitous Todd

The private lives of candidates are frankly not of much interest to me. I don't really care where they grew up, or whether they had a dog, or if they played high school sports. I'm very pleased that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are happily married, but only because it seems to make them, well, happy. I'm also pleased that we don't see much of Michelle Obama or Jill Biden, and that even Cindy McCain seems to have better things to do than to tag along on her husband's campaign trail. All three of those women are well educated and relatively articulate public speakers, and have held some of their own events, but by and large they are trying to maintain a level of normalcy in their families' lives, and keeping the political appearances confined to those who should be making them: the candidates themselves.

So has anyone else noticed that Todd Palin and his stupid goatee are all over the place these days? There are more pictures of him in today's Times than there are of Biden, and last I checked his uneducated ass isn't running for anything! Given the presumably difficult time his eldest daughter is going through, and given his oldest son has just shipped out to Iraq, and given the school year is just starting, why isn't he lending support to his children rather than waving to Sarah Palin's adoring throngs? Doesn't the Republican party claim the mantle of "family values"?

What to wear...

...when someone tells you to "Put on your big boy pants!"


Or, if you are a naked Volkswagon.

Palin and Clinton address the nation

Sounds like the rest of the show was lousy, but this skit is tremendous:



I actually think that Tina Fey may have been one-upped by Amy Poehler this time around.

Happy Monday, everyone!

My life. My choice. My vote.

My alter-ego as a blogger is expanding. In addition to writing this blog, I'll also be contributing to the recently-launched blog of NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut. You can find it in my blogroll under the title "My life. My choice. My vote."

I submitted my first post today, about the danger and ineffectiveness of abstinence-only education in schools. Check it out here!

No, I'm not joking. It's another bathroom sign.

Didn't I mention I'd hoped to find crazy bathroom signs at my new job? Well, here's the latest:


It's a rather pedestrian effort: no graphics, no instructions. But it does have a sing-song rhyming quality, and the mixed closing parenthesis / emoticon at the end is kinda special. Mostly, though, it reminds me how I distasteful I find the word "pee."

Remembering Rent

Last night was the final performance of Rent's 12-year run on Broadway. I've seen it myself three or four times, saw the movie in the theater, and I kinda wish I'd gone to see it on Broadway one last time. I always found the story and the music to be incredibly moving, and despite not being a 20-something, out-of-work, East Village artist myself, I really connected with the characters. So in honor of the end of an era, I cracked a beer and had my own little Rent dance party after Joker and the Bug went to bed last night.

The McCain-Palin Ticket

I actually watched more of the Republican Convention this week than I did the Democratic Convention last week. I guess I wanted to "know thine enemy" or something. Suffice it to say, what I now know makes me like it less than before.

Sarah Palin came out swinging in her speech on Wednesday. She spoke in very partisan, very aggressive terms, and what she said was full of lies and misrepresentations of Obama's and Biden's records. She exaggerated her own so-called accomplishments as the Mayor of Wasilla and as Governor of Alaska. After a week of the campaign berating the media for focusing on her family's woes, she paraded all of her children - and her daughter's condomless teenage boyfriend - in front of the camera. Her speech was style over substance, and the style was offensive.

Last night, John McCain was so boring he couldn't even keep the RNC attendees on their feet. He did bring some substance into his speech, but much of it was also blatantly untrue, like when he discussed his tax plan versus Obama's, or when he said that Obama opposes nuclear power. He referred to himself time and again as "a maverick," and he spoke at length about how he and Palin are going to "shake up Washington." Last time I checked, the best way to shake up a regime is to kick it out and install a new one!

After allowing myself to reflect on the various speeches at the two conventions, I believe that the patina of McCain-Palin will fade quickly. If change is your priority, it cannot be brought by maintaining the status quo. The only way to truly affect change is to bring in a new set of policies, and the experience to make them effective.

If you haven't seen this clip yet, enjoy!

Sleeping in, baby style

A week or two ago, the Bug started sleeping in on weekends. For over a year she has risen between 6:45 and 7:00am every day, but lately she'll sleep until 7:15, 7:30, and even 8:30am on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It's funny for Joker and I to think that staying in bed past 7am actually feels decadent!

In other Sleepytown news, the Bug appears to be transitioning to one nap a day, from having a morning nap and an afternoon nap. It just happened on Saturday, and she did the same on Sunday and Monday. It's another of those funny little milestones you aren't even aware of before you have a baby of your own.