I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Hew Year.
Looking back 2007 was not as eventful as 2006, but it was excellent and challenging all the same. Once again I am thankful and happy to have such a wonderful wife and daughter.
As I look ahead to 2008 I can only marvel at both how long and how short my life seems so far. This year will mark the 10th anniversary of my graduation from college. That means I have known most of the people reading this post for over 14 years now. I guess it also means that I can finally add that second page to my resume.
It feels so odd to think that just 10 years ago I was wondering "Am I ever going to finish my thesis and if I do what the hell am I going to do once I get out of here?" In fact what is really funny to me is that at this EXACT moment 10 years ago I was three or four martinis to the wind, and was trying to convince my friends to ring in 1998 by running around a 16 sided building naked (which we did).
Now, ten years later I am only 25 miles away from that 16 sided building and married to a woman who I met there 14 years ago. If you asked '98 FAU if he thought in 10 years he would be married to that woman, living upstate and expecting a second child on the eve of 2008 he would have laughed at you. But I could not be happier than I am with Em and MLTU in my life and I can't wait to meeting Argyle when s/he arrives.
So I am ready for the first week of the new year, which for me always involves writing the wrong year on notes and checks. This year I will also have to contemplate the fact that we are now closing in on the SECOND decade of the 21st century. Man time flies.
Oh, and I thought this was appropriate for the new year. I think it captures how I feel perfectly:
I agree with Sill Docked, I hate the f*ing Patriots.
But why stop there? There are so many things about Boston to hate:
- I hate the Red Sox
- I hate the Celtics
- I hate the Bruins
- I hate Boston College
- I hate Boston University
- I hate Harvard (and Radcliffe)
- I would say I hate MIT, but those f*ing nerds will rule the world in a few years so I am going to give them a pass
- I hate the Charles River
- I hate the accent (I REALLY hate the accent)
- I hate everyone who ever said "Boston is such a fun town"
- I hate Logan Airport
- I hate the Big Dig
- I hate Faneuil Hall (it is the poor man's South Street Seaport)
- I hate being in a city where you can be driving on a street and the name of the street can just change even if you have not made a turn or even gone through an intersection
- I hate that this article is right (and that it was Jester who sent it to me)
BTW, Em would say that this is too much hate. I disagree, I think this is just the right level of hate to have for a city.
She is going on a "likability tour".
Yes, you read that right, I don't like her because she is actively trying to get people to like her. This is the political equivalent of giving everyone a valentine in Elementary School in the hopes that SOMEONE will give you one back. This is pathetic.
If a politician has to prove that they are likable by going on a tour than they are already sunk. This is something John Kerry would do.
Listen, fellow left-leaning or undecided Americans, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE stop the madness and drop your support for Sen. Clinton. Do you not see how she will bring back all of the worst parts of the Clinton style like over production of image (what name is she using this week anyway?), triangulation, divisiveness, the over parsing of the English language, wonky policy statements, the awkward attempts to be liberal while appealing to conservative Americans and doing neither effectively.
This will be bad, and if Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney get the GOP nomination, I think they can beat her. Listen to me people, I know the Right, I worked for them. They will do everything in their power to make sure she does not get elected, they HATE her.
And they can beat her. Why? Because she needs a likability tour. Bill never needed one of those. Keep that in mind.
Don't make Al Gore angry. You don't want to see Al Gore when he is angry:
Gore is mad, mad, mad and he thinks that the US is bad, bad, bad when it comes to dealing with global warming and climate change. And a lot of other people for all over the world agree with him.
It seems we have not been doing our part on this issue. In fact, we may be getting in the way of progress. Man, if only Bush had listened to me, maybe he would have a Nobel Peace Prize as well. Or maybe not, I guess that whole Iraq situation and talking about World War III kind of killed his chances for that one.
Wait, what's that? Iran is not making a nuke? Oh, never mind.
Let's see, what else happened today? Oh yeah, any faith I had in the sport that I love went up in smoke (or in a syringe I guess). Yeah, that's just great.
Since becoming a home owner I have learned that there are certain rules that apply to all home improvement projects. To help all of you better understand my world, I present my personal guide to home improvements:
- Never start a plumbing project on a Sunday, you will inevitably run into a problem that requires the project go into a second day, so start on Saturday and save yourself a lot of pain (thanks for my Father in-law for this one).
- Most towns have three hardware store options: Home Depot, Lowes and that independent one (often an Ace or TrueValue). The rule of thumb for shopping is this: buy the big, obvious things at the big box store, then go to the smaller store, talk to the older guys who work there and know everything, tell them what you are doing and buy everything they tell you to buy.
- All great home improvement project include three trips out of the house: the initial trip to get 90% of what you need, the second trip to get those 2 to 3 things you forgot the first time and the 8 or 9 PM run to Home Depot for that other thing forgot and to replace the thing that you broke during the project.
- When soldering cooper pipe there will be one connection (and just one) that will leak, it will drive you crazy, you will need to re-solder it 2 or 3 (or 4) times, you will eventially get it, but you will be ready to throw something.
- You WILL buy a new tool during the course of your home improvement project.
- Whenever possible, get your father or father in-law (but never both) to help you with your project. NOTE: if your father in-law helps and if he lives close-by, you are obligated to return the favor and help him with his home improvement projects. After all, you did not mow his lawn for 8 years so you on a barter system with him.
- Keep your wife and child(ren) out of the house during big projects. If possible, send them away for the weekend. You will be dirty, smelly and foul mouthed for two days, no one should see that, most of all the mother of your children.
- Keep the f-ing tape measure on your belt. I cannot stress this enough, you need it ALL THE TIME, keep it close.
- The project will NOT turn out as you envisioned when you started. You WILL make a mistake (or more than one) and you WILL find a way around it. The good news? Your wife will be so happy you got the project done she will not care about the mistake.
- Eat something. You will forget, so a good rule is to stop at a fast food place while on trip #2 to the hardware store.
In case anyone was wondering, I tried to install a dishwasher today. After over 12 hours of work (and 3 trips to the hardware store) I am still not done. Oh well, at least I started on a Saturday.
One of the most interesting things about becoming a parent is how much thought can go into it. To me it seems like most of my peers and friends spend a lot of time thinking about things like when to become a parent, how many kids to have, how far apart to have them.
Since my generation is one of the first (and thanks to W., perhaps the only) to be trained about birth control in High School, it makes sense that we approach family planning in a very deliberate way. In the 90s we were essentially taught to control the potential outcomes of sex, protect ourselves from AIDS and plan our families.
And so at some point we make a life changing decision to become parents. But the choices do not end there. Some people have only one child (I call them the "one and done" crowd). Some have one and wait a while before having the next one (AKA "one and wait"). Some do the safe, even, common spacing of two kids in three years.
Or there are the crazy people who plan on having two kids within about two years. I can name countless couples who have made this choice and now I can add Em and I to that list.
MLTU is going to be a big sister. Baby Argyle (that is just the placeholder name so calm down everyone) is expected to arrive into the world in mid-May, just one month after MLTU turns 2 years old. I fully expect chaos in the TU household.
Em and I could not be happier. In many ways this is exactly how we wanted to have a family: two kids close in age, living in small, upstate New York home with a big backyard. If I had had written it as a script three years ago it would have looked almost exactly like this.
Of course any pregnancy comes with all of the worry and concern about health and wellness as well as all of the stress about making this all work. But for the most part I am not that freaked out. I may have to give up TV and sleep, but other than that I should be fine. I will say this, it feels much better facing all of this the second time, knowing that I have been through it before.
Today a Creative Director wrote line of copy that painted our client as one of the "oldest brands" in America. And while this is true (the brand is over 75 years old) and relevant to the assignment, it evoked an interesting image in my mind. In one moment I imagined the "old brands" of the world sitting around bitching in the style of the "Grumpy Old Man" as portrayed by Dana Carvey.
Ladies and gentlemen, the "Grumpy Old Brand":
I'm ooooold! And I'm not longer relvant. I don't like things now compared to the way they use to be. All these new channels and emerging markets -- phooey. In my day we didn't have the internets, with all this interactivity. We talked AT consumers and told them what to to and they liked it! They loved it! We didn't get things like feed-back, feed-back was what the radio did when you got a piece of metal to close to it.
Yeah, in my day we didn't worry about products that were healthy. We had products that would kill you like cigarettes, whiskey, red meat and proceed cheese. And do you think we told people how bad these things were? NO! We told them to shut up a smoke, drink and eat whatever the hell they wanted, even if their lungs, liver and intestinal track would rot from the inside out and that's they way it was and we liked it! We loved it!
Things were easier then. We didn't have all this Web 2.0 goobly-gop. In my day twitter wasn't a company, it was what we did when sales went up. We didn't have blogs and wikis. We had television, radio, newspapers and magazines. And we didn't have TiVo to skip the commercials, we liked the commercials! We loved them!
MLTU has a new habit, she likes to hop in place.
Now for those of you who knew me in college you will recall that I had this odd habit of jumping when I caught a Frisbee. Okay, now get a mental image of that...I'll wait while you giggle...now, take away the Frisbee and imagine MLTU instead of me. That's kind of what it looks like.
It really is one of the cutest things that she does.
This weekend we had our first snow in Upstate New York. MLTU decided to help me clean off the ice covered car.
that I am actually looking forward to the new American Gladiators?
It feels wrong, but at the same time it feels so right. I mean Hulk Hogan is going to be the host!!!
The 90s are back baby!
Sometimes the NY Times still shows the mojo.
Today they ran a piece about how Rudy Giuliani is not so accurate with the facts and the figures. It seems that America's Mayor often get his stats wrong on things like:
- Crime in NYC before he "saved it"
- Rate of spending reductions in NYC when he was Mayor
- Tax rate reductions when he was Mayor
- Revenue from hotel taxes when he was Mayor
- Crime rates in Mass. when Romney was the Governor
- And my personal favorite -- prostate cancer survival rates in England vs. the US
AND
And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record.
In a former life, when I was a Right Wing shill, I would have called this the "liberal media" hanging a Republican out to dry. I now see it differently. As my old High School girlfriend said when she found out I had a daughter "payback is a bitch." The Gray Lady is getting her revenge for all the crap that Rudy spit out as Mayor. They know him better than most papers and like him, they have a national voice and are using it. And I say good for them.
Mr. Giuliani is not alone in citing statistics in a questionable way. Last month, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, said that financing for the National Institutes of Health had decreased under President Bush; it has increased. Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, said the national debt had doubled under President Bush; it has not.
But with Mr. Giuliani running so strongly on his record, statistics have taken on a central role in his campaign.
Speaking as someone who lived in and around NYC at various times during the Rudy Administration I can say the following for sure: in general he left NYC better off than he found it, he cannot take all of the credit for that (he didn't cause the dot com boom), he knows NOTHING about protecting us from terrorists and he is bat shit crazy.
Someone (I can't recall who) said and President Rudy would be "the worst combination of Bush [the son] and Nixon". That is a President with no regard for civil liberties (don't believe me? then read this, this and this) who is also totally paranoid. Seriously, this man must be stopped at all costs, he will start a war in Iran and he will run the White House like "the family."
The saddest part of this piece in the Times is the end where a Republican strategist says the following:
Stephen Colbert said it best: "I want to feel the truth at you." That is what Rudy is doing.“When he talks about New York, people see it,” Mr. Luntz said of Mr. Giuliani, “and they feel it, and if a number isn’t quite right, or is off by a small amount, nobody will care, because it rings true to them.”
More proof that when we love the liar, we ignore the lie. For other examples of how this works see Clinton, Bill and Bush, George W. For how it does not work see Gore, Al.
