osheas::blog

After a loooong week in San Jose working the CLA 2008 conference, we’re back home catching up. Even better, we have NO travel plans for at least two weeks! We actually had a lot of fun. Here’s a photo of us in action:

We didn’t have to wear those outfits the whole time, thank goodness.

Here’s my exciting link of the day: there is now an OFFICIAL Monty Python YouTube channel! No more crappy clips cadged from old VCR tapes - the gang has posted really high quality versions of classics like the Penis Song and the Ministry of Silly Walks.

What a year: Obama wins AND we get a Monty Python YouTube channel! Life is good…

After a nice week of no travel, we’re leaving tomorrow morning for San Jose. It’s all work: the annual California Library Association conference. The preparation is always more difficult than the actual event so it will be kind of nice to get up there and get started.

But before turning off the computer for the night, I have to tell the quick story of Chuck’s Thing on the Roof of His Mouth. It’s been there for about seven months, doing nothing much but hanging around and being a fairly unobtrusive bump. Our regular doc saw it when we had physicals and was so unimpressed by it he said, “Don’t worry about it  it’s nothing!” Oddly enough though, when Chuck had an abcess on, uh, the Area That Must Not Be Named, the antibiotics he took made the bump a bit smaller! When he went for his dental checkup however, the dentist noticed it, asked about it, and sent Chuck off to an oral surgeon (the dentist didn’t know what it was either, but found it more intriguing than our regular doc had). The oral surgeon also didn’t know what it was but being an oral surgeon said, “Let’s cut it out!” So that’s what happened last Friday. I missed the really gruesome money shot right after the surgery, but caught a good shot Saturday. the followup shot is from tonight.

Chuck saw the oral surgeon today and he was quite impressed with the healing. The consensus still is on its being a thing, but better a thing gone than a Thing on the Roof of Your Mouth. Oh, and he can’t eat croutons for a few more days.

For the first time ever, I felt emotional, engaged, involved in an election. There were tears in my eyes when Obama gave his acceptance speech, something that has NEVER happened to me before. But the sense of victory is tempered by the fact that Prop 8 passed here in California. Under this bogus proposition, gay marriages are declared once again illegal. *sigh*

We have a road yet to travel as long as any of us continue to be disenfranchised and disrespected. I guess few victories are unambiguous. To all our friends who were dissed in this election, we stand with you. Change is here and will keep on coming. The tsunami of history is on your side.

Jott has become disappointing now that it’s gone to a mostly pay service. Never fear! There’s a new free kid on the block called Dial2Do and it works almost identically AND it’s free (for now). You can import your contacts from a variety of Web-based address books.

It’s that point on Election Day where all things are possible. Right here, right now everything can go just as I hope. If they do, it will be the first time in a very long time where the candidate I supported - believed in - won. Vote, America!
And now for something completely different, and this.

It’s out! It’s free! It’s very cool! It knows where I am!

After working all day, I have to go pack in preparation for a trip to Orlando. Nope, sorry, it’s a working trip, not  a vacation. So it goes. But I have to do some linking before heading out. if this election does nothing else, it sure has generated some funny video!

• Bush Endorses McCain and Palin
• Paris Hilton Gets Presidential with Martin Sheen
• Ron Howard’s Call to Action

Okay, gotta go pack now!

McCain and Obama are debating one last time tonight. Meanwhile, the stock market is down 700+ points today. I’m voting for Obama but I also think that no matter who is elected, they’re going to have a tough time of it without raising taxes in some way. So here’s my idea: institute a federal sales tax, say, of 1-2% on everything - everything, including Internet goodies. No fuss, no muss, no weasling out of it because you have a really good accountant. I know, I know, it’s not very complicated and there are no earmarks or entitlements or other doublethink nonsense. But just think about it - it’s an easy way for everybody to pay their fair share AND actually generate revenue rather than just spend it.

My birthday was this past Monday, and in keeping with our new austerity plan, no huge elaborate celebration was planned. Instead, Chuck surprised me with a Segway tour of Newport Beach! This might not seem all that exciting to some people, but I was over the moon! Segways are SO MUCH fun! And SO easy to learn to ride. If only they were more affordable (oh, and we weren’t on that austerity plan I mentioned earlier), I’d want to buy one! I’m not the most coordinated person you’ll ever meet, and I had the whole navigation/steering thing down in less than five minutes and in the entire hour and a half we rode around crashed into nothing!

After our Segway fun, we headed over to Disneyland for a mellow afternoon of odds and ends. Things got off to a bumpy footing when we went to California Adventure to ride Soaring over California. In an example of really crappy customer service, all of the signage said the wait would be about 30 minutes - but it was well over an hour later before we finally got on the ride. At no point along the way did an employee come out to explain anything to those of us in line. Grrr!! Walt would NOT have been happy! We never did find out what the problem was, but the Fast Pass customers did get preferential treatment - when things began to move, they got on first. Again, people, a little explanation would have gone a long way to keep us all happy.

Shaking that bad experience off, we headed over to Main Street and watched Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years (we actually wanted to see the Mr. Lincoln presentation but that appears to be long gone) for which we had no wait (yay!), then we rode the Matterhorn (I haven’t been on that ride in years, and had forgotten how cool it is), then Pirates of the Caribbean (again, no wait at all), and one that I have never been on before: the Mark Twain Riverboat. I remember back in the old days (I’m dating myself here) that was an E ticket, and given the limited number of E tickets in a book I NEVER wanted to use one on such a lame non-thrilling ride. Well, who knew there was a backside to Tom Sawyer Island with pioneers and Indians! All in all, it was a great day to be in Disneyland: nice weather, manageable crowds (but I have a thought - what about once a month they have an adults only day where you have to be over 35 to get into the park?). We’re premium pass holders, so it cost us nothing (unless you figure in the cost of two deluxe passes). This is our last year for deluxe passes - we’ve managed to go a whopping twice this year, which makes the cost of the passes actually MORE than the cost of just buying tickets when we go to Disneyland.

Pics of all our adventures are here.

We watched the debate last night. I thought it was pretty much a draw. I didn’t like McCain going into it, and he didn’t change my mind. Obama has great presence, great gravitas. But really, what can either of them say about the current economic woes? They both were good with the platitutdes, but weak on the concrete solutions. I read this article this morning, and it said what neither candidate could say and still get elected. But it’s the truth.

As far as foreign policy goes, I thought Obama came close to saying what I think: that the age of America is past and we need to wise up and stop trying to be international cops. I thought it was rather specious of McCain to chastise Putin for invading Georgia (a sovereign nation!) - apparently not all sovereign nations are created equal? At least when it comes to our invading them versus some other country invading them? Because, I assume, we always know best?

All of that aside, I could tolerate a lot of what John McCain says; it really is fairly middle of the road and often sounds not all that different from Obama’s message. But what sort of man who truly cares about our nation would select someone as grossly unqualified as Sarah Palin to be his running mate? On that point alone, he has completely, utterly lost my vote.