Come on over! This blog is moving...

I've been trying to figure out how to blog from my iPhone to this blog and not having much luck, even with published methods. I found out about how easy it is to blog from the iPhone to Wordpress so announcing...

http://ifeellikesharingnow.wordpress.com

I was very impressed how easy it was to import all my Blogger posts right into my new blog.

This is the last post on this blog.

What's New?

Anticipating the arrival of Shiloh...

Still traveling to Pittsburgh for work most weeks...

Still pretty burned out.

Skip is still getting treatment for his car accident last September and still isn't allowed to exercise.

My photography is coming along albeit at a slower pace than I'd like. My next class starts in early September.

I see the Doctor again tomorrow about my knee. Neither is still really fixed so I'm going to try to get him to go back in there and fix it.

We're looking forward to my sister's wedding in Colorado in October. Skip is looking forward to making the wedding cake!

Not much can make me go wow at 5 am

but this quote did.

"I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don't run the country, all I can do is yell at 'em. The other option is to run 'em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that."

Well why is that quote wow-inducing, you ask? It was from Conservative Robert Novak in 2001 (Reliable Source, Lloyd Grove). Last Sunday he hit a pedestrian in DC drove away. Someone had to chase him down and stop him until police arrived. Robert claimed that "I didn't see him there" although a witness claimed the person hit "is sort of splayed into the windshield."

Lovely.

Karma and Vista

I replaced the graphics card on my Mac Pro on Friday. A side benefit is that the card supports DirectX 10. So what does my brain do? It tells me (totally without my permission) that I should now upgrade my boot camp partition to Vista. I had tried the Release Candidate and totally hated it, but now that Service Pack 1 is out I decided to give it a try. First I decided to be bad and try an actual upgrade rather than a clean install. It took forever of course and ended up leaving to take Blossom to Day Care and to go to the gym.

When I was in Day Care buying some more tickets for Blossom, a guy came up to me and asked if I had a white Honda. Well of course I do, and he told me that the car had rolled backwards. Into another car. Down a slight hill. It was one of the groomer's cars and there was a very small bump which she wasn't worried about. Skip had to bang our bumper back into place but that was the extent of the damage.

I think, though, this was the universe's way of punishing me for doing a Vista upgrade.

I got home and the install was totally hosed. I ended up having to do a clean install. It actually turned out pretty well (minus the microsoft normal abnormalities) and I haven't had any real problems yet. Fingers crossed.

It's about time

I used to work as a Sign Lanaguage Interpreter and the big rage was the first generation Blackberry devices that could be used to actually text back and forth instantly.  We take it for granted now but it was a breakthrough in being able to talk to my Deaf and Hard of Hearing friends (and of course for them to talk to each other).  Finally in 2008 AT&T has stepped up and offered a data plan geared towards their needs.  I shudder to think about how much money they've spent over the hears for a voice plan that many of them couldn't use.

My Sweetie

Still sick.  Fever hit 103.5 last night.  Sweated out the sheets twice last night.  Even Blossom doesn't want anything to do with me.

I realized that although it's very minor in the scheme of things, the thing I dislike the most about where we live is the lack of good food nearby.  The closest good sushi is 25 minutes away, same for a whole foods, and for my favorite food, Vietnamese, we're probably talking an hour (Arlington).  My sweetie Skippy was nice enough to get me some last night on his way to pick up Blossom.  It was kind of like cheap Chinese, you're glad to eat it, but you know better stuff is out there.

Weight: 196.2

I Dare You

Sick as a dog. Still. Hate it.

I dare you to watch Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years without crying at least once. Let me know if you didn't cry so I'll know where to send a card of condolence and an electric blanket to warm your frozen heart.

Smelly Memories

I loved living in DC.  I did not love walking by a Starbucks and being assaulted by the nasty overwhelming odor of coffee.  I've never liked coffee.  I've never tasted coffee.  The closest I've come to tasting coffee is an accidental (small) spoonful of coffee ice cream that I thought was chocolate.  So you can imagine my relief when Starbucks stopped all that smelly nonsense and you couldn't even tell they sold coffee the air was so clean.  Well evidently they have had enough of that and they are going to grind their beans in-house again.  Sigh.

My apologies

I tend to forget that a certain sector of my audience likes the gorey stuff (hi Sarah and Ruth!) so here is a wonderful picture of my shaved knee three days after surgery. I think I'm done with the drugs and hopefully I'll be able to get back in the water on Friday. The Doctor seems optimistic that the surgery helped and in 8 to 10 weeks he'll do the other knee. By then it will be way too hot to bike :-( but at least I'll be ready for the fall. By the way, that's Stevie's tail saying hi on the left side of the picture. Sarah has taken to calling him "Stevil" as he has a bit of a growling issue, especially when it concerns other cats trying to horn in on his catnip.

Today is Deb's big birthday shindig at our house, wait til you see the cake!

MacBook for Sale

We're doing a little consolidation of machines here in the house and I'm putting up my MacBook for sale at $1400.

Model: MacBook 15"
Color: Black
Processor: 2.16 GHZ Intel Core Duo
Memory: 2 GB 667 Mhz DDR 2 SD Ram
Hard Drive: Serial ATA, 160 GB
Optical Drive: Matshita DVD-R
Display: 15" LCD
Graphics: GMA 950 (mac resolution 1280x800)
AirPort Extreme: Built-in
Bluetooth: Built-in
Camera: Built-in
OS: Mac OS X 10.5.2 Tiger
AppleCare: Until August 2010

Oh Ellen, you're so funny, Oh Sally, you're such an idiot

So you've heard about the Governor of Oklahoma, Sally Kern? Evidently she thinks we gays are trying to indoctrinate two year olds and feels strongly that we are THE biggest threat to civilization, more so than terrorism and Islam. A great write-up is on Duane Moody's site here. Even Ellen DeGeneres has something to say about it. She almost never talks about gay things here but you just can't help but love her for how she handles this...

Surgery, blech

At least I got to come home a day early from Pittsburgh.

I had knee surgery this morning. Not totally sure how it went, I'll see the Doctor tomorrow and find out.

The medication they gave me at the hospital is wearing off....

Quick Hits

After more than 2 months, I finally started traveling again. This week it is Pittsburgh. I'll be in Pittsburgh or NYC for the forseeable future. At least there is snow here, as opposed to balmy Baltimore.

After a 3 month wait I finally got to see a specialist for my knee. First of all, I have never had a Doctor take a personal call while talking to me (not even an apology) but he took two different personal calls right in front of me with no remorse. Ugh. If it didn't take so long I would want to switch Doctors. I'll be having knee surgery in mid-March so that will keep me home for a few days.

In the water aerobics class, older citizens seem to love to use the same pool lanes as the water aerobics class to float around. Usually they are very courteous and move out of the way if they are in the deep end and the class moves down there for example. But not one rather large gentleman who refused to move. When I reminded him that there was a class in session he told me to "get your faggot ass back to the other end". All manner of hilarity ensued after that including the lifeguard, management, the gentleman insisting that he was a part of the class (which made the teacher laugh) and him insisting he never actually called me a faggot and how could I prove it. A tiny bit of investigation revealed that he is mean to pretty much anyone and unfortunately his language is status quo for him. I've only been back to one class since the incident so we'll see how that goes.

Skip is still out from his car accident and still not feeling much better after almost four months.

My current work assignment has a new Project Manager and lead architect and both are turning out to be very capable and easy to work with in the face of a challenging client. Fun work.

Two new songs I am liking this week - So Much Betta by Janet from Discipline and Backwoods Barbie (a true Dolly classic) from Backwoods Barbie by Dolly Parton.

Now I'm on a roll but my Project Manager likes to have team breakfast at 7 am so it's time to hit the shower...

Well I thought I was pretty smart. But...

I got tired of managing multiple backups due to multiple partitioned drives, etc. so I decided to move my Mac install to a 1 TB drive and the Boot Camp partition to it's own 250 G drive. Not so hard, use SuperDuper to backup the Mac and then to restore it to another drive. Used WinClone to clone the boot camp partition and then move it to another drive. Then early this am before the gym I was wiping the old drives so I wouldn't have to worry about accessing old data and of course I delete the Windows partition. So with no backup of my Windows data I start the install process and now I'm mostly done except that I have a c: drive with almost nothing on it and a d: drive with most everything on it.

Valentine Love

I have not laughed out loud at a video in a long time. Get freaky!

Splish Splash

Some of you know that I have been battling some knee problems for a while now, to the point where I basically had to stop doing cardio in September. Last week I decided that I would do water aerobics (low impact) but of the three weekly classes I could take at Bally's, I can only go to the Wednesady night class. And that assumes that I'm actually home during the week that shouldn't last much longer. I joined another gym that has more than 15 classes a week and have taken six(?) in the last week. Being an Aquarius, I love, love, love me some water and the classes are a lot of fun. At Bally's I am one of six or so guys, but at the new gym I'm always the only guy. C'est la vie!

Don't want to pay your library fine?

If you belong to a certain Massachusetts library, you can play Dance, Dance Revolution to work off your fine!

Syrupent

For Sarah's wonderful Mexican fiesta last night, Skip made a great Viva Pinata cake of the snake Syrupent. It's a huge cake. At the end of the party only a part of the tail was gone. Now it has gone to a better place in the land of Deb and Keith. You can see more of Skip's cakes here.

RIP

Nurse Amy! Nurse Amy Vining from General Hospital has died of renal failure. She was always so fun. Whenever someone said something juicy she was just around a corner, behind the door, etc. ready and willing to spread that gossip. I used to be so addicted to General Hospital for a few years when Anna Devane came along.

This will probably come out wrong

If you want great table scraps for your dog(s) you should give Lebanese Taverna a try.

No really. They are one of my favorite restaurants and I'm so happy they finally opened up a location in Baltimore. I always get the same thing and last night was determined to try something new and it happened to be a raw meat dish. Well I just wasn't into it so it made up the basis for Sarah's treat to her dogs.

My favorite dishes there are the Kibbeh appetizer and Shish Taouk. Only the peppers from the Shish Taouk escaped my greedy lips.