This weekend's three-day retreat at Asilomar left me talked out.  Good people, important topics, interesting things to think about.  Yet, three days of being careful, intentional, moderate, deliberate, and speaking only for myself is exhausting. Being around the same 9 people for three days is hard on my only-child sensibilities, too. Fortunately Geoff, fuzzygruf, and David were at Harvey's yesterday evening.  I appreciated the opportunity to speak, bitch, snort, and scratch without monitoring for process violations. Asilomar must have been spectacular when it was built in the early 1900's. The Monterrey dunes and shore are perfectly windswept and made magical by blowing fog.  [...]

Today's fun piece of green cheese is at http://moon.google.com .  Be sure to zoom in all the way!

Summer? In San Francisco? Oh Noooooo! However improbable a warm July day is, we've got one! It's 74.3 degrees at 3 pm with full sun and a light wind. (Yes, we record the weather readings from the back yard.) We were going to go to Harvey's and watch the men watch other men out on Castro Street.  Instead, the BBQ is calling out.  Time for Tower Market Mollie Stone chicken sausages. 

One of the new gay/lesbian/etc. cable networks, LOGO, is reviewed in Slate today.  Their critic's verdict is that LOGO is too bland and stuffed with g-rated stories. "So far, the network's slate seems to consist largely of earnest gay-themed movies like The Brandon Teena Story (a documentary about the real-life murder case on which Boys Don't Cry was based), Heavenly Creatures, and The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story, in which Glenn Close plays a lesbian colonel who sued the military after being discharged for her sexual orientation," writes Dana Stevens. "Earnest"? I use TV as mental Sani-flush.  A steady diet of those movies [...]

Today the answer from the Administration (and their hard-right flakguard) is that we're in Iraq to fight terrorism.  Some professor of apology from the Hoover Institute was featured today on KCBS' In Depth.  He nailed the current muddle by saying that it doesn't matter why we initially got into Iraq. We're there now and  have to stay and "win" because we're fighting terrorism. Or not.  It strikes me that it's more likely that we're stupidly hardening a generation of American-hating terrorists (or, "freedom fighters", if they eventually force the United States to leave Saigon-style and write this chapter of history). More [...]

Recently I have been happily blogging, reading, and enjoying the online LJ community. The public sharing of lives -- even what I grew up thinking of as "secrets" -- has been fascinating. Good fascinating. I was constructing my blog-as-therapy theory as recently as this morning's exercise-bike reverie. Sure, I was mulling, I may not want to know the details about someone's toenail-fungus-induced insomnia.  Yet, there is health in sharing personal pains with others who will step forward to sympathize and to share their own hurts.  There is reassurance in the basic similarity of experience.  While I am personally not yet likely to [...]

Today's Internet yak breeding adventure has had me go through the posts of the LJ'ers who danced at the specialty tip at the International Association of Square Dance Clubs' convention. (See otterpop58's list of LJ dancers at the tip and urso's pictures).  I counted three squares dancing and another square of watchers when we got together Sunday. Reading  about the people I've seen in the hallways and squares is great fun.  My Puritan New England upbringing keeps me from marking all the LJ'ers as "friends" (apparentparadox has a good discussion of Internet "friends")... I don't want anyone to think I'm getting to pushy [...]

Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation creates the opportunity for the hard right to swing the Supreme Court further into reactionary activism. The President's brief statement on the vacancy this morning managed to include a political swipe at moderates by suggesting that the Senate should prepare itself to act "responsibly" by quickly rubber stamping approval for whomever Bush nominates. MoveOn is organizing an electronic petition to Senators asking that they resist the attempt to stampede them into approving a nominee. MoveOn thinks Bush is going to announce his choice after deliberating all the way until next Tuesday. They want to turn in [...]

Our very nice meal for six last night at Garabaldi's in Oakland was cheapened by the restaurant's policy of adding a 20% gratuity on the bill.  That percentage is too aggressive for the mediocre service we received. If you’re going to add a generous tip to the bill for a table of any size, you best guarantee very good service. Our service was not good, much less very good. At the end of the evening, I talked to the manager about being unhappy having to pay 20% for such service. She agreeably said we weren’t required to pay the service. Huh? [...]