Current GPA: 4 point oh! Dig!

Got my final grades for the semester and I'm currently rocking teh four pointer. Life is good. Now the hard part: not screwing this up.

Happy New Year! Don't forget to eat your grapes!

Happy Holidays everyone!!!

Happy Holidays 2008 from joey fabulous on Vimeo.

Gary Shandling

I hereby declare Live Totem Pole EP by fIREHOSE to be the most ass-rocking cover album ever produced ever. EVER!

Rock god.

Interviewer: So you're some kind of "spaceman," then?
Ace: No, actually, I'm a plumber.

Group project hell

What do you do when you are assigned a group project worth 25% of your final grade and two of the four members in your group are (a) a plagiarist or (b) an illiterate?

Team member "A" cut and pasted entire sections of her contribution directly from sources assigned by the professor and used Wikipedia as a source. Team member "B" included sentences such as "...women, as appose to men..." And "the stradegies include...."

I ended up just sucking it up and writing my section and theirs. Life is too short to educate people in grad school on 8th-grade level term-paper skills.

Turkey Day weekend!

Well, Thanksgiving turned out very nice. We hosted our neighbors K, B, and B from down the street and pigged out on turkey with all the trimmings.

The only kitchen disaster occurred the night before the event, when I stupidly poured a pot full of hot cranberry sauce into a room-temperature, non-pyrex bowl. CRAAAAAAAACK. SPLASH. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" What a freaking mess, let me tell you.

Scored four goals on Sunday. I seriously rock. :-)

Heart = melted

Yesterday Sylvia and I were sitting on the couch, all snuggled up after she had just awoken from her nap. We were taking the opportunity of alone time (Joseph and mommy were in the other room) to "have a quiet talk," as Boo likes to put it.

I was explaining that later in the week we would be having Thanksgiving dinner with our neighbors, and told her about all the things our family should be thankful of, like our nice house, our family's good health, and our general lack of want—things that other children and families don't necessarily have.

I asked her what she was thankful for, and she turned her beautiful little face to me and simply said, "you."

I never felt so good in all my life.

Gahhh!!!!

Joshua Hoffine's work will keep you up at night. The creepiest thing about these shots is that none were Photoshop composites. He uses friends and family as models, and sets the scenes as if they were movie sets. The theme is childhood fears, and I think it's safe to say that he vividly hits the mark. Very cool, and very, very scary:

Election Day

Well, it's finally here. I voted this morning, and had to wait 24 minutes to do so. Not bad, considering that this should by accounts be a record turnout.

I can't believe that some black areas in Virginia Beach and Florida have waits up to SIX FREAKING HOURS to vote. It's a disgrace.

I'm still skeptical that the Republicans will steal the election again (like in 2000 and 2004), but I hope I'm wrong. I also didn't think Barack had a snowball's chance in hell due to his skin color, but it looks like I was wrong. Thank goodness for that!

Go Dems!

GRRRRRRRRR.

(Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Seriously. Cut this shit out.

I want my name back!

Joe Six-Pack.

Joe the Plumber.

Dear Republidicks: please pick some kind of Republican name to use as your "everyman" name. Biff, Lawson, Chad, or Clayton all sound good. Just leave mine out of your bullshit. Thank you.

My oldest friends

Jenny, Joe, and Iris at OHHS 20th reunion
One of the very cool things about growing up in a small town (pop. ±8,000) is having the same classmates from elementary school through graduation. When I went back for my 20th high school reunion (gah!) a month back, I got to catch up with two of my oldest friends, Iris and Jenny.

Iris and Jenny were always partners in crime, and they graciously let me tag along from day one. And I mean day one of kindergarten. We met by luck of the last name draw (W., V., and T.) when we were grouped together in home room.

As an only child, having fast friends gave me a sense of security and warmth that saw me though the difficult days of scraped knees, ABCs, and playground scuffles. We stayed friends all the way through 12th grade cowbell class by virtue of being all of one mind on pretty much everything. Their parting words of wisdom before graduation: "Don't marry anyone named Beth." (Yes, there's a history of Beths and no, it's not a good one. :0)

Now that we're all grown up, I was surprised at how those first-grade feelings of comfort still came rushing back as soon as I saw them again. I love you girls!

In other news

Life is still pretty darn good:

Off the mark

What the hell are they doing up there on the Hill?

According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, only 48% of the public support this preposterous giveaway to the rich bankers on Wall Street that will saddle our children (and likely our grandchildren, too) with mountains of debt. Given that level of split, one might be tempted to think that the Senate would not want to rush headlong into a proposal that would enrage more than half of the voters in this nation. "No problem, screw the people, we're doing it anyway," say the Senators.

And to add insult to injury, the bill is laden with all kinds of bullshit like, believe it or not, cutting taxes on kid's arrows. I swear to god I could not make this stuff up:

"SEC. 503–Excise Tax Exemption for Wooden Practice Arrows Used by Children.

Current law imposes an excise tax of 39 cents, adjusted for inflation, on the first sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer of any shaft of a type used to produce certain types of arrows. This proposal would exempt from the excise tax any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means to enhance the spine of the shaft used in the manufacture of an arrow that measures 5/16 of an inch or less and is unsuited for use with a bow with a peak draw weight of 30 pounds or more. The proposal is effective for shafts first sold after the date of enactment. The estimated cost of the proposal is $2 million over ten years."

Kill me now.

Sarah Palin

Honestly, people. She's not ready for this kind of thing. She's not stupid, she's not an idiot, but she definitely isn't ready to be a heartbeat away from the nukes.

Rainy days

Yucky down here in D.C. as autumn rears its head. Leaves should be changing soon.

Back to School

Well, I'm a student again. It's official: I'm currently enrolled in UMUC's M.S. Non-profit and Association Management program.

Honestly, it was time to get moving again. I've been feeling a little (a lot) stalled lately, and since my company will pay for my continuing education, I decided to take them up on it.

UMUC is the University of Maryland University College, a fully accredited school based in Adelphi, MD (it's not a division of UM College Park, although they are in the same UM system). The classes are all online, which is the only way I could really swing this with two kids under four years old and a full-time job. UMUC is the only web-only program I could find that was fully accredited. Having it be right next door was just a nice bonus.

My first class is a non-credit course on how to conduct graduate-level research. I'm very glad this is required, as I probably would've skipped it otherwise, and the information I'm learning will be indispensable when working in my "real" classes, which start in a couple weeks.

I'm under no illusions that this isn't going to take a gargantuan amount of work and time normally spent watching soccer. :-( But at least I have a goal to work toward again, something that I haven't had for quite a while. It feels good.

Six happy years of marriage!

Well, today Jenny and I celebrated six years of marriage (ten together) with a romantic dinner appropriate to our parenting situation. You can see it in the photo below. :-) This pretty much sums up life with two kids under four. I love you honey!

On set!

Well, I'm on set today shooting the training video for work. Today we are doing the narrator and courtroom scenes. Drama is fun!

NUNCHUCKS!!!!!