Blog Master G

It’s right around 20 degrees outside this morning. I just walked the dogs. The difference between 40, where it’s been, on average, pretty much since October, and 20, is significant, especially with the wind chill, which makes it feel even colder. 20 is face-numbingly cold; 40 is go outside in flip-flops weather. 20 is too cold for my thin leather “driving” gloves; 40 is gloves-optional. 20 is hat required; 40 is naked-headable.

Saturday night we saw Ocean’s 12. I didn’t like it so much. The movie was like a big Hollywood inside joke. In many ways, the movie itself was a lie. There was nothing to figure out; no clues given. We the audience are shown one thing and in the end, Soderberg tells us, “Psych! Just kidding. That’s not what really happened. Here’s what really happened and you just weren’t cool enough to know because we didn’t tell you until now.” The whole movie I found myself just waiting for that moment to happen. It’s not even like you can guess, because it’s so far off what we’re actually shown; there’s really no way of knowing. Ocean’s 11 was better, but is still guilty of much of the same, except that you can kinda maybe sorta figure out what the crew is up to.

Jane recently writes (and hopefully won’t mind my quoting at length because it’s just so good):

An Open Letter To My Pregnant, Straight Friends

Recent evidence suggests that various biochemical factors during pregnancy can influence a woman’s children’s sexual orientation. Women who take amphetamine diet pills or thyroid during pregnancy are more likely to give birth to lesbian girls, while women who are highly stressed are more likely to produce gay boys.

Since our gay powers of recruitment are limited (Will & Grace just isn’t cutting it, and all our lesbians just end up hosting talk shows), and since we clearly need more liberals to populate those almost-blue states and tip the balance, won’t you help us out and either drug yourself up or stress yourself out?

Just think: For the price of a handful of Dexatrim, you could assure yourself a lifetime of mowed lawns, gorgeous cabinetry and perfectly functioning plumbing. Just think of how much you’ll save by buying overalls and Carhartt jackets instead of nail polish and perms. Alternately, exchange some hair-raising car rides or maybe just a few good suspense rentals on Netflix for an adoring son who decorates not only his room but yours and has no interest in going out for football.

The world needs more queers, people. Gays are tidy, productive, open-minded members of society, and we clearly need more. Do your part for the nation and the planet: Stack the deck for tiny homo progeny today!

In other news, big congrats to Steph and Dave for the birth of their new baby girl, and to Joe and Jenny for the purchase of their new home!

Mad props to my friend and kick-ass photographer Niki Rossi for taking these amazing photos of Stella and Happy Wednesday night, December 8.

Today is that one special day each year that we get to celebrate the birth of one of the most wonderful, caring, funny, warm, intelligent, and beautiful people on this planet — she whom I’m lucky to call my wife. I’m a better person for knowing her and I’m the proudest husband I could be to call her my wife.

Happy birthday, Jen! I love you and cherish you.

Photo: Jen, doning her seal-clubbing coat, strangles Gabe with mic cord while singing karaoke during her impromptu birthday celebration sometime around 12:30am, December 9, 2004.

Following Monday’s snowstorm the temperatures dropped quite a bit. This is unfortunate. When the temp drops so soon after the snow, my Winter Wonderland begans to turn to mush ‘n slush and gets all melty. There’s a small lake forming at the end of my driveway since a bunch of dirt and mud and other junk has accumulated there. I’ll have to take a shovel to it at some point. I don’t like the slush like I do the white powdery stuff (much like skiing).

Last night Jen and I hit Target for more Christmas fixins like a skirt for our holiday photo that Niki‘s going to take for us tonight with the pups, and red ribbon to lace around the Martha Stewart garland that drapes our banister. As I sipped the nog and ate one of Jen’s homemade oatmeal raisin cookies with the Sounds of the Season playing on the tube, I felt the spirit. Oh yes.

Tomorrow is my beautiful wife’s birthday. Her parents come to town to go out to dinner with us.

Yesterday my long-awaited snow came and came and came. It snowed all day long, turning my town into a winter wonderland. It’s just so pretty. I can’t help myself but feel like a giddy 6-year-old on Christmas morning.

And the moment I’d long been waiting for finally arrived yesterday: Using my snow blower! It was even more fun than I could have imagined. I had plowed the entire 100-foot-long driveway in no time after only a few laps, with Justin’s help manning the shovel.

I woke up early this morning to salt the slippery front steps and porch, do some shoveling, and back the car out of the driveway for Jen. (I also just wanted an excuse to drive the Scoob in the snow, which I love doing.)

There’s a chance of light snow in the forecast today and mostly rain in the coming days. But all signs point to a White Christmas, if yesterday’s snowfall is any indication.

It’s all about the Benjamins.

Politics, like many other things in life, gets its lifeblood from money. We can all make contributions directly to the political candidate or party of choice, but think about this: Every time you go to a store, buy gas, pay your utility bills, you’re indirectly making a contribution to a political party, whether you like it or not.

Want the skinny on which companies support which political party? Want to make more informed consumer buying decisions?

Now you can with Choose the Blue.

You can search for a brand or browse shopping categories. What’s interesting (and expected) is to see how many oil companies are straight up red. In fact, of those oil companies tracked, only Shell Oil leans Democratic (57% of contributions are blue vs. 43% red).

So along with boycotting brands like Kraft and Bocca (owned by Philip Morris), next time you need gas or a new TV, be sure to Choose the Blue.

My great aunt Nora died last night after 86 incredible years on this planet. She lived an amazing life and had a profound effect on everyone she met. She was always the life of the party and appreciated being alive each and every day.

Born in 1918, the year of the influenza pandemic, Nora fondly became known as “Fluey” since she and my late Grandma Joan survived when their parents and so many others died from the flu. Nora and Joan were sent to live in separate orphanages in San Francisco. As children during Prohibition in the 1920s, they were paid by bootleggers to stand on the shores of the Pacific in San Francisco and alert them when booze ships would arrive.

In her later years, Nora owned and operated a business of her own, the Oaks Card Club in Emeryville. Her legacy lives on now and always.

My fondest memories of Nora include visiting with her and my late Grandpa Elmer in her Bodega Bay condo. Nora was nonstop fun, always telling stories that left me aching with the pain of so much laughter. I’ll always remember her story about the Roofer. Nora was also a great friend to Nana, who cherished the time they spent together in Bodega.

The whole family gathered last November to celebrate Nora’s 85th birthday. As usual, she was the life of the party, commanding all eyes as she danced and sang. It was a fitting celebration of her life and I’m grateful I was part of it. She declared at one point that we’d all be back again to celebrate her 90th birthday.

We will continue to celebrate life in your honor, Aunt Nora.

We all love you and miss you dearly.

There’s nothing that energizes me quite like snow. And not too long ago (it’s about 8am right now) the wonderful white flakes began to appear. I threw on my snow pants (which I tend to wear all winter long), coat, and ran outside to frolick.

I covered our air conditioning unit with the car cover I’ve never used.

I took a photo of the snow coming down and will surely have to fire up the camera for more when the promised inch or so has accumulated today.

I really can’t explain, but snow just brings a smile to my face. It’s beautiful and exciting. It’s also probably got something to do with the fact that skiing is one of my passions in life. I dropped off my skis for their annual tuning last week, and they’ll be ready next weekend. I love that for the first time in my life, I live somewhere where I have the option of going night skiing after work, since the closest hill is only about 30 minutes north.

The flakes are pretty big right now.

Let it snow, let it snow!

I spent a good part of my Thanksgiving break and the early part of this week revamping my two PCs — backing up, reformatting, partitioning, reinstalling Windows XP. It was the biggest pain in the ass and truly made me appreciate even more the beauty, simplicity, and superiority that is the Mac OS.

After much stress and many long nights, both systems are pretty much back up to speed and super-snappy. I’ve created a partition on each dedicated only to OS and Program Files, so that will go a long way in keeping a snappy system running. And I finally have sorted out my data enough such that I can use my old PC purely as a backup machine (and host to all my software installers).

A Dell tech was even here on Tuesday to replace my DVD-R drive since it could do everything but record DVDs. Even after replacing it, it would still not work, so that’s the last thing I have left to test since reinstalling the OS. I also bought a new spindle of DVD-Rs in case the spindle was bad, as the tech suspected.

New strategy: Install only the apps I really, really need to keep things running smoothly. I also have another OS partition on which I’m going to install Windows 2000 for testing purposes.

View all Christmas Tree 2004 photos.