A Trapdoor In The Sun

Last night, Kate and I had dinner with a couple of friends up in Sunbury. Kate has been friends with B. for years now, having worked with her at a Columbus Non-Profit while she was finishing up her bachelor's degree at OSU. Kate's also always been close to B's husband as well. Both are middle aged, middle class, rural living, hard-working Republicans. Despite that, I've always held them in the highest regard. After dinner, over some fine Maxwell House coffee, our discussion meandered into the political realm. This is dangerous territory, for as restrained as I am when debating political ideology, Kate is very much the polar opposite. She often goes in with her teeth bared, friend or not. She had asked B.'s husband what he thought about Scooter Libby being indicted, and the whole Valerie Plame Outing in general. After minor debate, B. brought into comparison the Clinton scandal in 1998, and indicated that she believed that was a much bigger and more serious breach of...

Young Singers Spread Racist Hate Duo Considered the Olsen Twins of the White Nationalist Movement Oct. 20, 2005 — - Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans. They may remind you another famous pair of singers, the Olsen Twins, and the girls say they like that. But unlike the Olsens, who built a media empire on their fun-loving, squeaky-clean image, Lamb and Lynx are cultivating a much darker personna. They are white nationalists and use their talents to preach a message of hate. Known as "Prussian Blue" -- a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes -- the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine. "We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white ... we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race...

So I installed this nifty little stealth tracker on the blog that gives me info on whoever is visiting. I'm trying to figure out who is who... I know who viewed my page from Mojave, maybe from San Bern... Minnisota is probably one of Kate's friends, NY... don't know... Nashville, Indiana? No clue.

I think I'm going to change this template... the pulsating ball is getting on my nerves and the blog never looks right on the Mac at home...

We watched Donnie Darko again the other night. I had seen the movie about a year ago (a library rental) and had a hard time grasping the concepts and plotlines of the film. This time, it seemed to make more since. The story is somewhat like Back to the Future, although there are no DeLoreans, mad professors, Calvin Kleins in this tale. The plot is centered around the life of a teenage boy named Donnie Darko (a name, not so accidentally, reminiscent of a super hero). He lives in the typical nuclear family. His mom is authoritive and his father throws discipline to the wind. They've put Donnie in pyschotherapy and on medication to cure him of his problems, however, his problems take on a life of their own. He begins to be visited at night by a strange guy in a macabre bunny suit, looking something akin to Bugs from Hell. The Bunny, Frank, leads Donnie off one night, leaving him asleep on a golf course. Donnie returns home the next morning to find a stray jet engine had demolished par...

How the Bush Administration Changes a Light Bulb How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb? 1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed. 2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed. 3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb. 4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs. 5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb. 6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner: Light Bulb Change Accomplished. 7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark. 8. One to viciously smear #7. 9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along. 10. And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a lig...

I was 20 at the time. Two years removed from the juvinality of high school, but still had not completely adapted to life in the real world. I was rooming with several friends from high school in the smallish town of San Luis Obispo, about 10 miles from the beautiful Pacific surfline. We rented a small two bedroom townhouse a few blocks out of SLO Town's lively downtown district. Sharing rooms was never ideal, but given the high cost of living in the area, it was necessary. My roommates and myself had primarily met in music courses in high school, except for Ryan, who I met through others in band class. Ryan was one of the most gifted musicians I had ever met. He could play just about anything and made me look neolithic on the piano. Eric, also very musically talented, was always a bit of an enigma. Although a devout Mormon, he was easily the one of the most devilish guys I knew. No, he didn't slay goats and worship the Satanic Bible or anything like that... he was just very mis...

As most of you know, we spent the week of August 7th-14th in Avon, on North Carolina's beautiful Outer Banks. It was Chris and myself's first trip to OBX and Kate's fourth. The weather was wonderful the whole week except for one rainy Tuesday. We rented a cozy yet roomy beachhouse about 100 yards away from the dunes. We literally could wake up in the morning, throw our swimsuits on, and walk down to the water. The beaches were not near as crowded as the ones I remember frequenting while growing up on Florida's gulf coast. Most people would leave their beach chairs and unbrellas semi-permanantly parked in the sand, with no real concern of them disappearing. We left on Saturday the 6th on the 12 hour drive to Avon. Our poor Civic was loaded down like a camel trekking across the Sahara. With our three bikes were strapped onto the trunk, the bike rack was so weighed down that it left a permenant pressure dent in the bumper. The drive seemed to take forever, though hills and...

It's Saturday night here, and a balmy 88 degrees. Well, balmy is relative of course. If I were still living in Bakersfield, I would suppose that this temperature would be like mannah from heaven. Still, for Ohio, it's hot. We put up the tent last night, as Chris and the neighbor's six year old, Arthur, were going to camp out over night. I remember camping out a few times in our back yard when I was a kid. I felt safe being so close to home, yet still got that nice outdoor sleeping experience, minus the mud, bugs, raccoons, snoring campers the next site over, ect. Unfortunately, the tent was too hot for the boys to sleep and they ended up coming inside and sleeping in Chris' room instead. I had a real time trying to get Arthur to go to sleep, as he was wide awake and wired till the wee hours of the morning. Chris, however, values his downtime and punched the clock as soon as his head hit the pillow. Today, we went to the Pool and Highland Lakes again. We're trying to...

It's been a little while since I have posted anything. Actually, I had several drafts that I was going to post but I ended up deleting them. Summer is here and so is Christopher. This is his first year visiting us in a real house. He has been having a blast so far and can't wait to go to N.C. this year. His new bestest friend is a 6 year old living next door. They spend the evenings having light saber duels in the back yard and mud fights in the garden. We also bought a family pool pass for the season and have been enjoying that on weekends. The Highland Park pool can be a little crowded, but it has plenty to do for everyone. The best thing is, it's within easy biking distance from the house so all we have to do is grab a bag of pool goodies and ride down there. Of course, this doesn't work out too well when the weather is sketchy, as it was last weekend. During the week, Chris has been attending various camps at the Westerville Community Center. One week he'll ...

Act One...The Big Bang They say that the bad things in life generally come in threes. I'm not entirely sure who they is specifically, but thats for a different post. Saturday, May 21. We had just left The Great Indoors, after comparing prices on laundry equipment for our new house. I had picked up tickets for Star Wars Episode III and we were heading over to the local megaplex to catch Lucas' final installment, and had planned to grab a quick dinner at Grinder's, a local sub chain that specializes in oven-toasted goodness. We sat at the light at Sancus and Worthington Woods Blvd for what seemed like forever. Part of the road we were turning onto was dug up and was populated with the familiar orange cones of infinite construction. I decidedly turned wide, so I could turn onto Worthington Woods at a better angle. Then I heard the screaching of tires. Then the loud bang.. Our Honda jolted to the side and the impact threw us around the compartment. It took me a millisecond to ...

It's been a little while since I logged into my Blogger Dashboard. I don't think it's a question of having time, but of having the patience to sit down and write. We're less than a few weeks away from closing on the house. I'm a little anxious to get in at this point. The home inspection went okay... only a few minor problems were discovered. For some reason, the current owner was venting the dryer into the attic crawlspace. Talk about your fire hazards! We added an addendum to the contract requesting that this and a few other minor things be remedied. We also made our first major purchase for the house last weekend. We bought a big bottom-freezer refrigerator to replace the aging one the seller was leaving there. We had originally priced the unit at Lowes for roughy $1000 on sale..normally $1300. I went to ApplianceSmart, which is a factory outlet store that sells scratch/dent items from the vendors. We were able to get the same refer there for roughly $700, with s...

Good news to report on the home (finding) front. We are officially in-contract on our first house. Our new address as of June 3rd will be on Andrew Ave in Westerville. Last week, we were both quite frustrated and worried about the prospects of finding a house in the small window of time we had before Chris comes out. Thursday morning we went and looked at a house nearby the said house on Andrew with our realtor. The showing was a quite roomy split-level in an older Westerville neighborhood. The house was certainly acceptable, but it didn't quite have the character to make us fall in love with it. We left the showing even more depressed and uncertain. Later that afternoon, Kate was browsing through the MLS listings while on break at work. She forwarded me a few houses to take a look at. One was this lovely Victorian house in Reynoldsburg. It was in really nice condition, but neither of us really were interested in driving 20 minutes to and from work, and to be honest, Reynoldsburg...

So, here we are in the middle of April. Tax time has came and went. It seems like all of our plans for the summer have come together. Chris' airplane tickets are ordered...the beach house is rented, our vacation time approved. Chris is set up to go to a daily camp at the Westerville Recreation Center during our work hours. I'm sure he'll enjoy that! We bought tickets to a Reds/Mariners game in July... right behind home plate. This next weekend we'll hopefully score some tickets to The Phantom of the Opera, which will be touring through Columbus during the beginning of August. I'm excited about that as I've wanted to see it since my teens. The only uncertanty now, and it's a big one,... is the house situation. We still haven't found what we want in a house... and I'm wondering what's going to happen if we don't find what we want. Are we going to have to settle? Are we going to have to get a short term rental on an apartment or something during...

So I started a multi-user blog basically as a hangout for all my old friends I knew from high school and the 90's. Somehow, with the help of a few old contacts I was able to get the word out to just about everyone in our little circle of friends. It's quite amusing to look back and see how darn geeky we were and still probably are. Some friends have changed, some have moved or are moving. Some are doing the same thing they were doing 10 years ago... and that's fine... since you should live your life doing what you want, as long as it makes you happy and fulfilled in the end.

I think that maybe my first two ultra-liberal posts may have offended my dad. I was hoping they wouldn't. I love my parents, though we don't agree on everything, including politics! But that's okay, right? I actually really like and respect my father. I think he raised us in not always the best of economic situations and did a great job of instilling in us love, responsibility (although I didn't really catch on to that until later), and compassion. Recently, it really dawned on me as to how proud I was of my father. You see, my dad has worked at a private aeronautical company for many years now. Although he is extremely smart, he didn't really have the necessary post-graduate education to work in aerospace engineering, but someone who knew someone at my dad's company decided to take a chance on him anyway. My dad also had a mild stroke six or seven years ago which threatened his future, his employment and his life. He worked through therapy and went right back t...

We were approved for a loan this week so we can officially start the house-hunting process. We are still split between using a Coldwell-Banker Realtor and someone with Keller-Williams. Soon we should be into the process full tilt. We bought some nice mountain bikes for our trip to N.C. this summer. Chris is now wearing glasses. He is getting teased at school, with some mean kids calling him 'nerd' or 'four-eyes'. I just tell him to ignore them.

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Okay. I have the wonderful distinction, if you can call it that, of having my cube directly across from the department 'food cube' . That means every time there is a birthday, special day, retirement, bahmitzvah, ect... someone brings some sort of food-stuff product in, a mass email goes out to the department, and the next thing you know, there are 30 seemingly starved women huddled around the 'food cube' . It's a scene not much unlike a mass of vultures awaiting their chance to devour some recently deceased critter on the side of the highway. It's not that I have anything against bringing in snacks for special occasions, a cake for someone's birthday, or a bunch of pizzas to celebrate some company achievement. What bothers me is that it's completely distracting for that many people to be hanging out so close to my cube. Does this make me a bad, anti-social person? I don't know. Maybe I'm just easily annoyed.