THE LAST FIVE ...

Closing up shop
- Wednesday, Aug. 02, 2006

It may be time for a change
- Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Entry in the air
- Friday, April 21, 2006

Still here
- Thursday, April 20, 2006

Music of the moment
- Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Or ... BE RANDOM!


GOOD READS

101 in 1001
American Road Trip, 1998


OTHER PEOPLE

Chupatintas
Dancing Brave
Fugging It Up
Kitty Sandwich
Mister Zero
Sideways Rain
Ultratart
Velcrometer


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Thursday, Jan. 2, 2003 - 5:05 p.m.

... and here's another picture of the cat.

I got the pictures back from New Year's Eve, and apparently, when I'm drunk with a camera at home, I find the cat amusing.

Picture of Casey hugging Oreo. Picture of Oreo on the couch. Picture of Matt, Oreo and Casey on the couch. Picture of Dave, Oreo and Matt on the couch. Add to that the pictures of Oreo on Christmas and T.C. in Johnstown spread-eagle on his back during Thanksgiving (though not taken while drunk), and roughly eight of 60 photos over two rolls (or 13 percent of the pictures) involve a rather heavy black cat with white highlights.

The pictures from the Carnegie Museum from Thanksgiving came out better than I expected. A couple are a little blurry because with the 200 speed film, low light and filter to make the indoor light look white and not yellow without the flash, I feared most would come out "smudged," but they're not. There were also a few good ones from The Hamptons, including one of Howard Stern and Carol looking at one another as they talked about Howard's bulldog Bianca.

I really need to start scanning some pictures in and making this diary flashier. It would be more than just a journal � it would be a scrapbook!

I am horrible at remembering things the past few days. I've frequently been about to say something � or write something, look up something, IM something � and then I completely lose my train of thought. What the hell? I blame George W. Bush.

Speaking of Dubya, someone is telling him that the economy is "pretty darn strong" and yet, he's going to unveil an economic stimulus package. Hello, Mr. Contradiction. He also denies that his economic programs and tax cuts benefit the wealthiest Americans more than any others. How dim can he be?

While in The Hamptons over the weekend, we had a rather lengthy discussion on our current state of affairs and the administration overseeing it all. We wondered where the 70 percent of Americans were who gave the President a favorable rating (because they certainly didn't come to us) and just who, exactly, in this country wants to go to war with Iraq, or North Korea. "It's not personal," the president has said about his hounding Iraq. "Of course, this is the man who tried to kill my father," he later said, referring to Saddam Hussein.

Please shut up.

I think as we move forward, people are going to realize that Bill Clinton was a much better president than anyone thought at the time. In our tabloid culture, we got too caught up in the scandals and the sex and didn't realize that our economy really was pretty darn strong in the 90s and a lot of things were going right. Looking at it now, President Bush seems more hypocritical than Slick Willie. Sure, Clinton avoided the draft during the Vietnam war (because he didn't support the war, which was his right as an American citizen). Bush served � in a cozy National Guard post no doubt arranged by Daddy to keep the young party animal safe and sound.

OK, so Clinton tried marijuana and didn't inhale. Big deal. At least, it was to Republicans. Bush? Gee, he was picked up for drunken driving and dabbled in cocaine. Now he's trying to convince us to attack Iraq and North Korea, while we still haven't been able to find a camel-riding Arab in the caves of Afghanistan.

The best presidents are remembered because they surround themselves with good people and trust their advice. Bush has no doubt done that. Apparently, he just needs to listen to them more.

Meanwhile, our office continues to follow the weather patterns of Chicago, where it's frigid one day (Monday) and sweltering the next (today). Gah!

Today was the day I turned the page on the calendar. More specifically, I threw out three old calendars and broke open three crispy new ones. While some people will open day-by-day calendars and flip through them on Christmas morning, or whatever day in between Christmas and the New Year they receive them, I don't break the seal until Jan. 1. Or 2nd, as was the case at work. I guess I'm a little superstitious that way. If I'm going away, or it's the weekend, I also won't tear off the pages for Saturday and Sunday. I save those for Monday when I return. So I took down my free 2002 wall calendar from the Family Pharmacy in Little Silver and replaced it with the 2003 L.L. Bean covers calendar. Out went the Far Side day-by-day calendar, and in came The Simpsons day-by-day "box" calendar (with trivia!). And finally, I tossed my monthly planner for a similar, no-frills monthly planner. I usually write maybe six things a month (including such things as Notre Dame games in various sports, particularly those in the New York/New Jersey area) and could probably live without a monthly planner, but I enjoy having that security of sanity.

I need to find out why it's taking so long for proofs of the pages I need to see to appear.

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