*giggle*
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You Are 45% Normal (Somewhat Normal) |
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While some of your behavior is quite normal… Other things you do are downright strange You’ve got a little of your freak going on But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself |
Apr 192005
Apr 182005
I had a wonderful time in Milwaukee last weekend. I wish I hadn’t had to come home.
Jill and I got in on Friday, early evening. We rushed to the hotel and then to Whitefish Bay to see Sandra Stark perform as Mona Monet in Drop Dead! We crashed that night, and then got up to have brunch with Sandra and Bruce at Ma Fischer’s diner on Saturday.
Saturday afternoon we went to Watt’s Tea Room for lunch with Anna & Jason, my parents, and Jason’s parents. It was the first time we all got to meet Paul & Irene, who were lovely. Then we all trooped out to the semi-constructed house my parents are having built, and explored the construction site, imagining the appliances, paint, carpet, etc. The house is so large I think our house would almost fit in the basement. Mom must be reacting against having been in a tiny little 2BR for the last year. (For anyone reading in the DC metro area, the neighborhood my parents are building in makes Jill and I both think of Mitchellville, MD, in P.G. County.)
We made a break for it after the tour and had a nap, then dinner and a low-key evening with Meredith. Peter was away on tour, so he didn’t get to join us. And apparently Patrick & Kirsten are struggling to get Sam on a sleep schedule before their baby girl is born in May, so they weren’t able to come out either.
Sunday morning, we had breakfast with Ginny, and then headed off to the engagement party and Jerry and Cindy’s. I had a great time catching up with old family friends and meeting Andrea’s new son Kaden, whom her daughter insists is named Jimmy, and Heidi’s week-older son Daniel, whose siblings appear to have accepted as a Daniel. Both little peanuts are less than 3 weeks old and their Mom’s are already looking thinner and in better shape than most people.
Everyone, including Anna and Jason, took the "Shalom Y’all" hats with good humor, but I’m glad I also got the nice challah board.
I so wish Russ Feingold could be the President. He’d be amazing, like Michael Douglas in An American President — who was, in the movie, from Madison, Wisconsin. The movie came out 3 years into Senator Feingold’s first term in the US Senate. Coincidence?
Unfortunately, that character ran into trouble dating while in the White House, and I have no doubt that Senator Feingold would actually have even less privacy, were he to date and run for office at the same time.
So I am sad to learn that Senator Feingold and his wife Mary are separating. They say it is amicable, and I’m sure that’s true, but it still has to be a hard thing to do. And the emotional challenges of any divorce are made all the more difficult by the fact that they live in a fishbowl, and almost anyone hearing about it will think about the political implications for his career, not just the sadness for their family.
Good luck, Senator. I wish there was something I could do to help.
Apr 122005
Saturday was the third and final workday for the Self-Expression and Leadership Program I’m coaching. It was an amazing day!
The way this course works, each participant — and each coach — creates a project in a community in their lives, and then causes the project to happen during the ~4 months of the program.
On Saturday, people shared where they were with their projects, and some of the people just blew my mind. One of the people I’m coaching originally created a project to have 200 children get healthy meals through the federal summer meal program, and to hire teenagers to prepare the meals, giving them work experience and teaching them about nutrition and healthy cooking.
Saturday she announced that she’s up to 1150 kids in the program! And they are still taking new day care and summer camp programs.
Other people are seeing more results in their personal lives — parents acknowledging their adult kids and asking them to be responsible for settling their estates when the parent passes away; landlords finding themselves in the middle of police-tenant drug busts and handling the situation powerfully and with ease; and the less dramatic power of people relaxing and handling the stuff life hands to them.
That’s what I’m getting the most out of coaching this program. Knowing that I had to be in communication with my participants and fellow coaches helped so much when I was upset and coping with learning that Wanda, and then Liz, died, and that I couldn’t go to either funeral.
I was NOT in the mood to reach out, and left to my own devices, hiding under the covers seemed very much like the thing to do. But knowing that I could still make a difference for others, and that they were there and wanted to make a difference for me, was a lot more productive.
Now, there’s still the matter of my project, a fun fair of activities for the kids in my neighborhood. I’ve been being pretty lazy about that, which doesn’t work. I’m going to call the HOA Pres tonight and get the ball rolling on that.
Apr 062005
All three candidates for Wisconsin Bar President replied to my email message asking for their views on Wisconsin’s proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage.
Their answers were surprisingly similar, which I think is a good thing.
Dean R. Dietrich indicated that although he personally opposes the legislation, believing "that this is a personal matter and definitely should not be a constitutional amendment," he has not yet made up his mind about whether or not individual sections of the bar should be allowed to lobby, and he does not think the bar as a whole should take a position.
G. Jeffery George answered with a cogent explanation of the process the bar has undertaken in order to attempt to resolve conflicting views on the issue between sections, but did not offer an opinion on the correct outcome of that process. He did, however, indicate that he did not think the bar’s governing rules would allow it to take a position as a whole. And as an individual, he says, "Personally I oppose this amendment. It seems another example of the religious right marginalizing members of our society."
Steve Levine believes that sections of the bar should be allowed to take positions on all issues, and although he didn’t say so directly, the implication was that any contradictions among sections are simply the result of, "The more free speech, the better; and the more sections that speak up, the better." On a personal level, he also opposes the constitutional amendment, noting, "I believe the proposed constitutional amendment is unnecessary, discriminatory, spiteful, and just a terrible idea — contrary to Wisconsin’s tradition of accepting everyone."
Obviously, I’m happy that the next President of the Wisconsin Bar Association will oppose the amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage. But this wasn’t very much help in terms of my voting.
Apr 062005
Jessamyn is always a great source for things that are both random and facinating.
For example, you can now get satellite photos from Google Maps.
Here are links to a few places I have lived:
- Milwaukee, the house where I grew up
- Washington, DC, my first house (wow, you can really zoom in close on that one…a little scary, but not surprising)
- Reston, VA, our first home together. Zoom in close enough and I swear that’s Jill’s car in our parking space. Our condo was in the unit positioned like a "C" in the building, on the top/inside of the "C"
Apr 062005
I’m happy to report that Sean is back on the list of Blogs I Read.
I reorganized and renamed that section as I started adding people I didn’t know, but I also played with TypePad’s naming conventions, and either I named everyone else, or I named everyone else’s sites.
Then I organized them to display alphabetically by whichever one of those I did not assign to Sean.
And then beat on the machine, trying to figure out why he wasn’t there.
Welcome back, Sean!
