My favorite thing today...

...is the fact that it is almost Noon, and I still don't know who won on American Idol last night.

Rachel pointed out,,,

...that tomorrow will mark 20 days since I posted. Far too long. Lots has been going on and I am faced with a backlog of things to write about.

In the mean time, here's us at the Giants game (well, me at the Giants game, the rest of the crew were there to see the A's) last weekend.

And here's Richie doing it himself...

Those are two of the 300 or so pictures I took with my new Canon digital SLR. It rules. But man it eats up storage space.

We saw Morrissey tonight...

He looked kind of like this...



I didn't know what to wear.

Ended up in (nice) blue jeans, nice shirt, nice shoes, and my grandfather's jacket. I looked sharp enough.

Rachel, Jake and I have vowed to be better about getting over the hill and to events on time. And we left REALLY early because this show was a very big deal to Paul. And we got to the gas station in Calistoga before realizing that the tickets were on the counter at home. That sucked. And cost us an hour and nine minutes.

Then we couldn't find Paul, Lauren, Mike, and Dolores. (Cr)Appleby's, was our designated meeting place, it was packed when we got there, but they weren't there. And we couldn't reach them by cell phone. So we bailed and went through the McNasty's drive thru and headed over to the Luther Burbank Center for the show.

Screw Wells Fargo in this regard - it will always be Luther Burbank to me. And Pac Bell Park. A little ironic that - that I am rebelling against one corporate sponsorship in with nostalgia for another. But hey - it's the house that Bonds built.

After arriving, we made several trips back to the car. First, to stash our cell phones. Then to stash Rachel's purse. No cell phones, no purses. I couldn't believe they were able to enforce this rule. And I hated it. But it seemed to work. Rachel saw one flash go off, just one. Compared to the last concert we went to, Jack Johnson, where the entire Greek Theater was a sea of luminous floating recording devices, I guess I prefer it somewhat. It just felt a little Draconian to me.

We arrived at the end of the line at the same time they did, fortunately.

Kristeen Young opened. I dug it, but the rest of our crew, not so much. It was just her and her huge voice, a keyboard, and an amazing drummer named "Baby" Jeff White. The sound mix wasn't so great, drums too loud for the small venue and keyboard to soft, but I enjoyed it - new and different sound.

Then came Morrissey. And lucky for me, this was something of a "Greatest Hits" tour. Lucky because I haven't heard his latest album. But I knew most of the songs he played from my college days and from hanging around with Paul and Lauren. One song blew me away. And it's on the new album, so I hadn't heard it before.

Life Is A Pigsty

It’s the same old S.O.S.
But with brand new broken fortunes
And once again I turn to you
Once again I do I turn to you
It’s the same old S.O.S.
But with brand new broken fortunes
I’m the same underneath
But this you, you surely knew
Life is a pigsty
Life is a pigsty
Life is a pigsty
Life is a pigsty
Life, life is a pigsty
Life, life is a pigsty
Life, life is a pigsty
Life is a pigsty
And if you don’t know this
Then what do you know?
Every second of my life I only live for you
And you can shoot me
And you can throw me off a train
I still maintain
I still maintain
Life, life is a pigsty
Life is a pigsty
And I’d been shifting gears all along my life
But I’m still the same underneath
This you surely knew
I can’t reach you
I can’t reach you
I can’t reach you anymore
Can you please stop time?
Can you stop the pain?
I feel too cold
And now I feel too warm again
Can you stop this pain?
Can you stop this pain?
Even now in the final hour of my life
I’m falling in love again
Again
Even now in the final hour of my life
I’m falling in love again
Again
Again
Again
I’m falling in love again
Again
Again
Again

It made me cry. I was just standing there swaying, and the next thing you know, I'm taking off my glasses and wiping my eyes. Full on waterworks.

I'm sure I'll find a set list somewhere, but other highlights for me were Panic (Hang The DJ - I was saying that all day to myself and the dogs), Please, Please, Please (brought back a lot of memories of driving around by myself in the old Chevee- or maybe the Olds), and The First Of The Gang To Die.

That's it - bed bed bed. I have to work on our response to an RFP tomorrow. That may sound impressive, but it's really not so very. It's a simple matter of providing vague answers to vague questions and throwing in some pictures in the hopes of convincing somebody to spend their money with us instead of someone else.

Being a generalist is my specialty, and I'm pretty good at it.

The War President?

So Congress sent the President a bill that tied war funding to troop withdrawal. The AP described the bill as "a rare rebuke of a wartime president" And that's the problem. The Republicans and the media still call him a "wartime president." The war is over. It has been over for a long time.

I am not pitching my tent in the camp of those who say the war is lost. I believe we won the Iraq War. We won it quickly and decisively. And we won it a long time ago. If I had to pick a date, I would say we won it four years ago on this very day. Four years ago today, Bush donned a flight suit and landed on a U.S. Carrier that was ordered to pull back so that the Coast of California was not in sight. Our President stood under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished and announced that major combat operations had ended.

I support our troops. They did what they were supposed to do, what they were trained to do. They won a war.

Since then, our presence has been an occupation. We have failed miserably at this task. 6 out of 7 major reconstruction projects have failed. Oil revenue and oil is missing. Our troops are targets. There is civil war. It is an ongoing disaster and it is killing people.

Most of us want our troops to come home. Most of our troops want to come home. The only reason our troops are still there is because we have not yet convinced (coerced?) the new Iraqi government to pass the legislation the powers that be here want passed - the oil legislation. And now the Iraqi government is set to take two months off at the end of May. I am tired of throwing good money after bad and more lives after lost lives. It's time to bring our men and women home.

Please, do something, anything to help bring this about. Call, write, and e-mail the White House. Support our Congress and do whatever you can to help hasten the day that we pull out of Iraq.

And any time someone says that we are at war, please correct them. Tell them we won the war, and it is time for our troops to come home.

Holy Crap, it's May!

It snuck up on me again. I hate when it does that.