Happy 4th!
Wow, I can't believe it's the 4th of July again already. It feels like time is flying. Jake observed that yesterday didn't really feel like the 4th of July and I agree-- probably because it was 70 and cloudy all day. Much like last year, I just sat around and enjoyed the day off. I read some, played some video games, took a nap. I did get a little bit of work in that ended up being trying to figure out why firefox was caching an old version of the javascript i was working on, gah. Oh, and I played with my desktop computer that I've just put ubuntu on!
The writing of this entry was just interrupted by Baby trying to steal a pen, me trying to move the pen, me knocking over a glass, and me cleaning up the pieces of said glass. Yep, I'm still a klutz. I think the best klutzy moment I've had lately was when I was in the Philly airport and looking for Patty who was walking up and down the hallways while waiting for our flight. I was trying to see down the hallway without leaving my bags "unattended", and after not seeing her, I proceeded to walk backwards, trip over a leg of one of the rows of chairs, and wipe out in front of a pilot and a flight attendant. Yeah.
As alluded to, Patty and I went on a Grand Europe Extravaganza, going to Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, Salzburg, Florence, and Rome over two weeks. We had a really good time and managed not to kill each other! I liked Berlin and Salzburg the best.
Not a whole lot has changed since last year, I'm still living and working in the same place. Oh, I'm carless-- gave it to Patty to take to grad school. It's been a weight lifted off my shoulders and is saving me a lot of money with gas prices the way they are, plus I can just use zipcar if I need a car. The year has been much more like the Sky Princess rather than the Fahrenheit, up-and-down wise. I'm feeling... not "in control" of my life per se, because who ever is, but "in tune", if that makes any sense.
Jake and I watched the fireworks from the roof at work, and it reminded me a lot of watching them from the 14th floor of the building in Baltimore that I was living in 3 years ago. We could see the downtown ones but also some of the southern suburbs on the other side of Mt. Washington, I think, and some to the north of us and some to the south of us. Today I've got another band concert at Kennywood!
Politically, this was a pretty quiet year for me-- I found it hard to care about the Democratic primary. Sure, having a different president will be exciting, but the top candidiates weren't really THAT different, and they're not going to be able to do much unless the Democratic majority in the Senate gets to be over 60 votes, and there are going to be a lot of messes to clean up (Iraq, FISA, there are still hearings going on about the Plame scandal, NCLB, the economy in general, diplomatic relations with lots of countries) before we can work on new things (health care, getting serious about alternative energy and global warming). It all feels so distant and I feel so helpless about the big things. I'm really excited about the primaries in 2009 for mayor and a few council races-- now THAT'S going to be fun, and I'll definitely be out there pounding the pavement for someone. With the New Three council members of Patrick Dowd, Bruce Kraus, and Ricky Burgess, we've come a long way, but there were still silly time-wasting issues this year, like whether a sign is really a sign, and various threats made by Ravenstahl and his cronies that just aren't going to work like they used to around here.
And that about wraps it up for this year, I think. :D Happy 4th of July!
The writing of this entry was just interrupted by Baby trying to steal a pen, me trying to move the pen, me knocking over a glass, and me cleaning up the pieces of said glass. Yep, I'm still a klutz. I think the best klutzy moment I've had lately was when I was in the Philly airport and looking for Patty who was walking up and down the hallways while waiting for our flight. I was trying to see down the hallway without leaving my bags "unattended", and after not seeing her, I proceeded to walk backwards, trip over a leg of one of the rows of chairs, and wipe out in front of a pilot and a flight attendant. Yeah.
As alluded to, Patty and I went on a Grand Europe Extravaganza, going to Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, Salzburg, Florence, and Rome over two weeks. We had a really good time and managed not to kill each other! I liked Berlin and Salzburg the best.
Not a whole lot has changed since last year, I'm still living and working in the same place. Oh, I'm carless-- gave it to Patty to take to grad school. It's been a weight lifted off my shoulders and is saving me a lot of money with gas prices the way they are, plus I can just use zipcar if I need a car. The year has been much more like the Sky Princess rather than the Fahrenheit, up-and-down wise. I'm feeling... not "in control" of my life per se, because who ever is, but "in tune", if that makes any sense.
Jake and I watched the fireworks from the roof at work, and it reminded me a lot of watching them from the 14th floor of the building in Baltimore that I was living in 3 years ago. We could see the downtown ones but also some of the southern suburbs on the other side of Mt. Washington, I think, and some to the north of us and some to the south of us. Today I've got another band concert at Kennywood!
Politically, this was a pretty quiet year for me-- I found it hard to care about the Democratic primary. Sure, having a different president will be exciting, but the top candidiates weren't really THAT different, and they're not going to be able to do much unless the Democratic majority in the Senate gets to be over 60 votes, and there are going to be a lot of messes to clean up (Iraq, FISA, there are still hearings going on about the Plame scandal, NCLB, the economy in general, diplomatic relations with lots of countries) before we can work on new things (health care, getting serious about alternative energy and global warming). It all feels so distant and I feel so helpless about the big things. I'm really excited about the primaries in 2009 for mayor and a few council races-- now THAT'S going to be fun, and I'll definitely be out there pounding the pavement for someone. With the New Three council members of Patrick Dowd, Bruce Kraus, and Ricky Burgess, we've come a long way, but there were still silly time-wasting issues this year, like whether a sign is really a sign, and various threats made by Ravenstahl and his cronies that just aren't going to work like they used to around here.
And that about wraps it up for this year, I think. :D Happy 4th of July!