From time to time, I get those silly quizzes emailed from friends and family. Some are actually fun and fascinating, and others are lame and insipid. So I've decided that my first resolution for 2007 is that I will no longer respond to any of them, ever again. Instead, I'm posting my own survey here, once and for all. So here you go, everything you think you ever wanted to know about me, in one convenient spot. I'm not asking you to do one of your own, honest. All I'm asking is that you don't forward one for me to fill out, ok?
Thanks and have a very happy new year, whether you celebrate it with a massive blowout party that goes until dawn on Monday, an intimate get-together with your darling partner, or you ignore the whole thing and go to sleep at 9pm Sunday night. P and I will be at our annual New Year's party with friends in rural New Hampshire, followed by my longstanding tradition of watching college bowl games until my eyes bleed. Then I'm flying to New Jersey for work Tuesday morning.
1. Birthplace: New Bedford, MA
2. Residence: Maynard, MA
3. Eyes: hazel/brown
4. Hair: brown, increasingly grey
5. Facial hair: yes
6. Height: 5’10”
7. Weight: (mumblemumble)
8. Right handed or left handed: Right
9. Allergies: Alcohol, pollen and stupid people
10. Tattoos: No thanks
11. Piercings: See tattoos
12. Tonsils intact? Yes
13. Appendix intact? Yes
14. Ever broken a bone? Why yes, just recently. A little one, though.
15. Nicknames: “Duv” (You can use that nickname only if I refer to you as “mom” or “dad”), “Sweetie” (you can call me that only if you’re blonde, beautiful, and own a smaller version of my wedding band), “Daddy” (only if you’re a long-haired dachshund), “Hun”, “Sugar”, “Darlin’” (only if you’re a southern-born and bred waitress in a diner, Denny’s or Waffle House), DSG. Otherwise, it’s best just to stick to “David”. Do NOT call me "Dave".
16. Spouse: Patricia (a.k.a. The Amazing P, Sweetie, and other endearments we needn’t go into here)
17. Pets: Cami Missy Diva Princess Punky Girl and Harry Potter Dachshund Greene
18. Siblings: Either 5 or none, depending on how you look at it (I’m gonna hear it from my half-siblings now….)
19. Hobbies: Writing, watching sports events and wishing I were sailing
20. Favorite drink: unsweetened iced tea with lots of lemon
21. Favorite meal: fresh brewed coffee, fresh-squozed orange juice, eggs benedict, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries
22. Last 5 books I’ve read: Flags of our Fathers, Walden (edited by our neighbor!), Stiff, Devil in the White City, The Good German
23. Favorite TV programs: The Civil War, Angels in America, The West Wing, Soap, CBS Sunday Morning, St. Elsewhere, M*A*S*H, Hill St. Blues
24. Ten Favorite movies: Airplane, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, Casablanca, Field of Dreams, The Hunt for Red October, Joe vs. the Volcano, Monty Python & The Holy Grail, The Princess Bride, Schindler’s List, The Usual Suspects
25. Favorite stage productions: Sweeney Todd, Les Miserables, Othello (w/ James Earl Jones and Christopher Plummer)
26. Occupation: Software trainer (though my business card says Applications Specialist)
27. Cities most recently visited by air: Tulsa, Phoenix and Honolulu
28. Favorite vacation spots: The Maine coast and Paris (France, not Maine)
29. Best thing about 2006 : Buying the house!
30. Worst thing about 2006: Way too much time spent away from said house
31. Happiest place to be: Snuggled in bed with P, Cami and Harry on a lazy weekend morning, with a big mug of coffee and a plate of fresh croissants (although it would require entirely too much effort to keep the dogs away from the croissants).
32. Biggest fears: Surviving a nuclear attack or being in an earthquake
33. Car I currently own: 2000 Honda Accord Coupe
34. First car I owned: a 1970’s era VW Rabbit
35. Car I want: Lexus ES 350 or BMW 328xi
36. Teams I root for: Boston Red Sox, Syracuse University Orange, St. Louis Rams
37. Teams I will NEVER root for: New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys, Georgetown Hoyas
38. Things I collect: Baseball caps and autographed baseballs
39. Ten people, living or dead, I wish I could have dinner with: Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton, Mark Twain, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Leonard Bernstein, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Julia Child, my paternal grandfather, P’s father.
40. Favorite holiday: New Year's
41. Favorite quote: Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
42. Favorite word: Bubble
43. Favorite scotch: Tape
44. Favorite animated characters: Opus, Jessica Rabbit, Gromit
45. Favorite comfort foods: BBQ ribs, thanksgiving turkey stuffing, strawberry-rhubarb pie
46. Coke or Pepsi: Coke
47. Most exotic places I’ve been: The owner’s box at Fenway Park, the Oval Office, Stonehenge, and inside the eye of two hurricanes
48. Places I haven’t visited but would like to: The Grand Canyon, New Orleans, Westminster Abbey, Palace of Versailles, Australia, Venice
49. Guilty pleasure: Oreos
50. My wish for 2007: That we start to bring our troops home from Iraq, the Red Sox win another championship, and my family and friends enjoy a safe, healthy and happy year.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
It's important to understand your limitations
Although I’d be the first to boast over the things I do well, I’m also perfectly happy to admit to those things I do poorly. It would be an understatement to say I’m not handy. To be sure, I can cook, I can hook up audio, video or computer equipment without a problem. I do those all the time. Changing lightbulbs, no big deal. Painting, well, I can do that, though I wouldn’t make a living at it. Changing my oil? Nope. Electrical? Hahahahaha!! Patricia is, in fact, a great deal handier than I am. My male ego has no problem with this. I do some things better than she, and she does other things better than I. When neither of us are confident, we farm it out. It generally works out well. So this brings me to last weekend.
It’s starting to get chilly here in New England, and it was time to remove the air conditioners that were creating unwanted drafts. The worst offender was the one in my third floor office. P asked me to go upstairs and wait for her, and we’d do it together. I was being impatient (P likes to call it “manic”, but I think that’s an excessively dramatic term). I decided to get a head start, since I remembered from when it was installed with the aid of a local handyman that this air conditioner was actually quite light. In fact, I was fairly sure I could remove it from the window all by myself, and wouldn’t need any help. So, I got started. In retrospect, that was mistake 1, 2, and 3 through 12. In surprisingly little time from when I opened the window, the air conditioner became less stable than I would have initially predicted, and proceeded to obey the prevailing laws of gravity. That is, it fell out.
Now, it should be noted that on that side of the house, it is not a straight shot to the ground. Below that window is the 2nd floor window of our bedroom. Below that is the roof for the side/back porch. This (what I thought was easily handleable) air conditioner leapt out of my grasp, scraping two fingers in the process, tumbled downward, making lots of noise in the process, and eventually landed on the porch roof. P, by this time on her way up the 3rd floor stairs rather faster than she had originally anticipated, started asking me in a loud and (some might say) anxious voice what exactly was going on. You can insert a few choice, brusque intensifiers in the question, and get the precise wording yourself. I don’t think I really need to quote the exact question as she worded it, do I?
When she got to me, she saw me peering out of the window, seemingly unhurt (she was present when I fell while trying to descend from Diamond Head, so the extremely loud crash bang she heard downstairs could certainly have resulted in real injury to me, she rightfully assumed). In this case, I was mostly unhurt, save the aforementioned scraped fingers. However, the air conditioner that she was intending to help me with was nowhere to be seen. My leaning out the window looking downward was probably her first clue as to what had happened. And she was correct in her query (insert brusque, choice intensifiers here, as well. In fact, repeat them a few times just for good measure, because at the time, P was repeating the same question rather a lot). As I remember (this was only last weekend, but I’m already trying to forget all about that afternoon), I didn’t have much to say for myself. I do remember wishing that I suddenly had Spider Man’s genetic makeup, so I could make a miraculous save of the situation. I’m not sure I’ve ever before wished I were Spider Man, actually, but this was a perfect time for that outfit.
What we (actually P) very soon learned was that on its precipitous way down to where it came to rest, the pesky 3rd floor (now 1st floor roof) air conditioner had bounced (though P would say “crashed”) off our much larger, 2nd floor bedroom air conditioner, dislodging it from its previously very secure, draftproof positioning, to where it was now askew, and itself now needing to be taken out. After briefly attending to my now-bleeding fingers (P had much less sympathy for my fingers than she had had for my sprained ankle a month before in Hawai’i), we both managed to successfully extricate Air Conditioner #2 from the bedroom window without losing that one to Newton’s Gravity thing.
The first piece of good news is that the 3rd floor is no longer drafty. The other good news is that I was headed out of town in very short order, and I would therefore miss the ceremonious removal of pesky Air Conditioner #1 from its temporary home on the porch roof. The bad news is that I will never, ever, EVER hear the end of the story. Also, P made me promise to blog about what will forever after be known as The Air Conditioner Incident. My fingers are healing nicely, by the way, thanks.
It’s starting to get chilly here in New England, and it was time to remove the air conditioners that were creating unwanted drafts. The worst offender was the one in my third floor office. P asked me to go upstairs and wait for her, and we’d do it together. I was being impatient (P likes to call it “manic”, but I think that’s an excessively dramatic term). I decided to get a head start, since I remembered from when it was installed with the aid of a local handyman that this air conditioner was actually quite light. In fact, I was fairly sure I could remove it from the window all by myself, and wouldn’t need any help. So, I got started. In retrospect, that was mistake 1, 2, and 3 through 12. In surprisingly little time from when I opened the window, the air conditioner became less stable than I would have initially predicted, and proceeded to obey the prevailing laws of gravity. That is, it fell out.
Now, it should be noted that on that side of the house, it is not a straight shot to the ground. Below that window is the 2nd floor window of our bedroom. Below that is the roof for the side/back porch. This (what I thought was easily handleable) air conditioner leapt out of my grasp, scraping two fingers in the process, tumbled downward, making lots of noise in the process, and eventually landed on the porch roof. P, by this time on her way up the 3rd floor stairs rather faster than she had originally anticipated, started asking me in a loud and (some might say) anxious voice what exactly was going on. You can insert a few choice, brusque intensifiers in the question, and get the precise wording yourself. I don’t think I really need to quote the exact question as she worded it, do I?
When she got to me, she saw me peering out of the window, seemingly unhurt (she was present when I fell while trying to descend from Diamond Head, so the extremely loud crash bang she heard downstairs could certainly have resulted in real injury to me, she rightfully assumed). In this case, I was mostly unhurt, save the aforementioned scraped fingers. However, the air conditioner that she was intending to help me with was nowhere to be seen. My leaning out the window looking downward was probably her first clue as to what had happened. And she was correct in her query (insert brusque, choice intensifiers here, as well. In fact, repeat them a few times just for good measure, because at the time, P was repeating the same question rather a lot). As I remember (this was only last weekend, but I’m already trying to forget all about that afternoon), I didn’t have much to say for myself. I do remember wishing that I suddenly had Spider Man’s genetic makeup, so I could make a miraculous save of the situation. I’m not sure I’ve ever before wished I were Spider Man, actually, but this was a perfect time for that outfit.
What we (actually P) very soon learned was that on its precipitous way down to where it came to rest, the pesky 3rd floor (now 1st floor roof) air conditioner had bounced (though P would say “crashed”) off our much larger, 2nd floor bedroom air conditioner, dislodging it from its previously very secure, draftproof positioning, to where it was now askew, and itself now needing to be taken out. After briefly attending to my now-bleeding fingers (P had much less sympathy for my fingers than she had had for my sprained ankle a month before in Hawai’i), we both managed to successfully extricate Air Conditioner #2 from the bedroom window without losing that one to Newton’s Gravity thing.
The first piece of good news is that the 3rd floor is no longer drafty. The other good news is that I was headed out of town in very short order, and I would therefore miss the ceremonious removal of pesky Air Conditioner #1 from its temporary home on the porch roof. The bad news is that I will never, ever, EVER hear the end of the story. Also, P made me promise to blog about what will forever after be known as The Air Conditioner Incident. My fingers are healing nicely, by the way, thanks.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Moonbase Alpha
Somewhere in the current administration, there must be a guy whose job it is to come up with ideas for misdirection. A month ago, the GOP rabble on Capitol Hill was told to pack their bags and go back whence they came. It’s time for a new boss, who (we hope) won’t be the same as the old boss. A couple weeks ago, NBC News decided that putting up with the Administration’s hallucinations no longer made sense, and in the interests of reality, from here on in they will refer to the ongoing chaos in Iraq by its rightful description: “civil war”. Soon, Colin Powell, who had previously been co-opted by Shrub’s Gang to be their helpless, hopeless mouthpiece (also known as Secretary of State), agreed that yes indeedy, that’s a civil war going on over there (though, sadly he didn’t say the next part out loud, “and boy, am I glad that isn’t MY problem anymore!!”).
Then this week, the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group report was released, specifying in excruciating detail how bad it really is, and how appallingly ineffective the US "policy" has been. Shrub, of course, looked dutifully serious, and said he’d “consider all the findings”, which actually means
“If you people think I’m going to listen to you come in here and tell ME, the Leader of the Free World, and the protector of Truth, Justice, The American Way and Big Oil, what I should do about all the evildoers while we’re WINNING, you’re nuttier than Ted Kennedy. We’re winning, don’t you know that? Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said for the past three years? The mission was accomplished! I stood there in my flight suit on an aircraft carrier and announced it. And I looked damn good doing it, too. We’re winning, and we’ll stand down, just as soon as the Iraqis stand up. And we’ll help them pull themselves up by their bootstraps. What? They don’t have bootstraps? Then we’ll GET them some bootstraps. I got me some bootstraps down in Crawford, I’m sure of it. Dad! Mom! Where are my bootstraps?”
Someone in the White House Domestic Policy office must have whispered in Shrub’s ear about distracting the American people’s attention away from his circling-the-drain foreign policy as highlighted in the ISG Report, his utter loss of all political capital in the recent election, and staggering disconnect with reality in general. So this week, the Administration announced its bold, far-reaching vision for the future:
We’re going to establish a permanent colony on the south pole of the Moon!! Did you not hear about this? No, I’m not making it up. Here, look at this article from the Washington Post. What, it doesn’t give you goosebumps reminiscent of President Kennedy’s famous “We choose to go to the moon” speech? Well, there’s good reason for that.
1) To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, George W Bush is no John F Kennedy,
2) We’ve already been to the moon (though it’s been almost 35 years since Apollo 17 blasted off from Taurus-Littrow on its way back home, marking the end of the manned moon missions)
3) Making the first set of journeys was historic and soul-stirring. This announcement is just bizarre and as wisely thought out as “No Child Left Behind”.
Of course, we should absolutely do this, because NASA, the agency that brought you Challenger, Columbia, and a succession of missions that ended up plowing into the surface of Mars at the speed of sound: that’s the right gang to accomplish it. It could be worse, you say. FEMA could be in charge! True that. To be fair, though, Shrub cares a lot more about the moon than he does New Orleans.
It isn’t clear to many people exactly WHY we’re returning to the moon now, but it is disturbing that the whole thing hasn’t been thoroughly thought through, witness this little gem from Doug Cooke, NASA’s exploration systems chief, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, in speaking about a probable site for Moonbase Alpha:
The Shackleton crater near the south pole would be the most likely location for the moon base, Cooke said, because a 300-acre flat site -- almost the size of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. -- lies nearby. That would give astronauts a natural place to land and would put the base close to deep, dark craters where water may exist that could yield hydrogen, oxygen and perhaps other volatile chemicals for creating rocket fuel for return voyages to Earth. "There could even be cometary ices that have lain there for billions of years," Cooke said
Well sure, Doug, and we might find all that green cheese the moon is made of after all, but I’m not thinking that it’s worth flying all that way on that particular hunch. Now, understand, we spent more than $25 billion (in 1960’s and 70’s dollars) for the Apollo program. But the reason we went to the moon in the first place was much less about science (precious little real science was accomplished, to wit the only actual trained geologist to ever journey to the moon was Harrison Schmidt, one of the very last humans to see the moon with his own eyes on the above-mentioned, final Apollo 17 mission) and much more about beating the Russians in a high-risk, high-reward, Cold War pissing contest. And, of course, JFK challenged America to do it.
It’s plain that the reason Shrub threw this ludicrous idea into the public consciousness this week had nothing to do with the moon. Call me cynical, but I’d wager my annual salary that the monstrously dumb Lunar South Pole Base plan will never get off the launching pad. It’s all about misdirection, in order to distract everyone from the reality that he has nothing else positive to point to in his six years in office.
So look at the moon! Isn’t it pretty? Yeah. Let’s go back there. That was a good time. When we were last there, Richard Nixon was president. Don’t you miss him? A petty, small-minded, egomaniacal crook. Those were the good ol’ days.
Then this week, the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group report was released, specifying in excruciating detail how bad it really is, and how appallingly ineffective the US "policy" has been. Shrub, of course, looked dutifully serious, and said he’d “consider all the findings”, which actually means
“If you people think I’m going to listen to you come in here and tell ME, the Leader of the Free World, and the protector of Truth, Justice, The American Way and Big Oil, what I should do about all the evildoers while we’re WINNING, you’re nuttier than Ted Kennedy. We’re winning, don’t you know that? Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve said for the past three years? The mission was accomplished! I stood there in my flight suit on an aircraft carrier and announced it. And I looked damn good doing it, too. We’re winning, and we’ll stand down, just as soon as the Iraqis stand up. And we’ll help them pull themselves up by their bootstraps. What? They don’t have bootstraps? Then we’ll GET them some bootstraps. I got me some bootstraps down in Crawford, I’m sure of it. Dad! Mom! Where are my bootstraps?”
Someone in the White House Domestic Policy office must have whispered in Shrub’s ear about distracting the American people’s attention away from his circling-the-drain foreign policy as highlighted in the ISG Report, his utter loss of all political capital in the recent election, and staggering disconnect with reality in general. So this week, the Administration announced its bold, far-reaching vision for the future:
We’re going to establish a permanent colony on the south pole of the Moon!! Did you not hear about this? No, I’m not making it up. Here, look at this article from the Washington Post. What, it doesn’t give you goosebumps reminiscent of President Kennedy’s famous “We choose to go to the moon” speech? Well, there’s good reason for that.
1) To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, George W Bush is no John F Kennedy,
2) We’ve already been to the moon (though it’s been almost 35 years since Apollo 17 blasted off from Taurus-Littrow on its way back home, marking the end of the manned moon missions)
3) Making the first set of journeys was historic and soul-stirring. This announcement is just bizarre and as wisely thought out as “No Child Left Behind”.
Of course, we should absolutely do this, because NASA, the agency that brought you Challenger, Columbia, and a succession of missions that ended up plowing into the surface of Mars at the speed of sound: that’s the right gang to accomplish it. It could be worse, you say. FEMA could be in charge! True that. To be fair, though, Shrub cares a lot more about the moon than he does New Orleans.
It isn’t clear to many people exactly WHY we’re returning to the moon now, but it is disturbing that the whole thing hasn’t been thoroughly thought through, witness this little gem from Doug Cooke, NASA’s exploration systems chief, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, in speaking about a probable site for Moonbase Alpha:
The Shackleton crater near the south pole would be the most likely location for the moon base, Cooke said, because a 300-acre flat site -- almost the size of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. -- lies nearby. That would give astronauts a natural place to land and would put the base close to deep, dark craters where water may exist that could yield hydrogen, oxygen and perhaps other volatile chemicals for creating rocket fuel for return voyages to Earth. "There could even be cometary ices that have lain there for billions of years," Cooke said
Well sure, Doug, and we might find all that green cheese the moon is made of after all, but I’m not thinking that it’s worth flying all that way on that particular hunch. Now, understand, we spent more than $25 billion (in 1960’s and 70’s dollars) for the Apollo program. But the reason we went to the moon in the first place was much less about science (precious little real science was accomplished, to wit the only actual trained geologist to ever journey to the moon was Harrison Schmidt, one of the very last humans to see the moon with his own eyes on the above-mentioned, final Apollo 17 mission) and much more about beating the Russians in a high-risk, high-reward, Cold War pissing contest. And, of course, JFK challenged America to do it.
It’s plain that the reason Shrub threw this ludicrous idea into the public consciousness this week had nothing to do with the moon. Call me cynical, but I’d wager my annual salary that the monstrously dumb Lunar South Pole Base plan will never get off the launching pad. It’s all about misdirection, in order to distract everyone from the reality that he has nothing else positive to point to in his six years in office.
So look at the moon! Isn’t it pretty? Yeah. Let’s go back there. That was a good time. When we were last there, Richard Nixon was president. Don’t you miss him? A petty, small-minded, egomaniacal crook. Those were the good ol’ days.
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