Resolutions

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Make the FBI's most wanted list. Get your resolution here.

And here I thought I was already on it!

Snagged from Elfkat :-)

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Lady Denise the Ebullient of Fritterton on the Marshes Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

This one's pretty good too! heheheheh

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Baroness Denise the Herbaceous of Tempting St Mary Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Snagged from Elfkat

Santa Tracker

Want to see where Santa is on his route? NORAD is tracking him!

Christmas Eve

Here it is, 5:30 am on christmas eve, and I'm trying to wake up so I can get ready to go to work. Yes, I'm working today, but just for a few hours. Holiday pay. I'm hoping it will be kinda slow at work. Then I rush home (please don't let traffic be bad), load up the car, pick up my wife, and drive to my parents' house for the traditional family christmas eve event. It's earlier this year, so maybe we'll be home fairly early tonight. We're both pretty much wrung out. Then tomorrow we have the kids for Christmas Day.

I have to share - my wife is amazing. Mark calls her "Supermom" for a reason! Not only did she do all the shopping this week, but she was up late cooking last night - a vegetarian main dish and a side dish for the family thing today.

21

It's hard to believe, but my oldest child, Shellynne, is 21 today.

I remember the day she was born. I remember walking the halls of the hospital while in labor, trying to hurry things along a bit. I remember hearing her cry for the first time. I remember they brought us a nice dinner and champagne after she was born to celebrate. I remember telling the nun what her name would be, and that poor nun trying to find a patron saint for the name "Shellynne". LOL

When we were ready to go home, the nursery staff brought Shellynne to me in a red stocking - an early Christmas present, they said. Indeed she was! A Solstice baby, to be sure.

Happy Birthday, Shellynne!

Bunni HoTep

(\__/) This is Bunny.
(='.'=) Copy and paste bunny onto your blog.
(")_(") Help Bunny gain World Domination.

Snagged from Elfkat.

Which Serenity Character Are you?

Your results:
You are Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)

Dependable and trustworthy.
You love your significant other and
you are a tough cookie when in a conflict.



Click here to take the Serenity Personality Quiz


Snagged from faelchu

The Aftermath

One night last week, my son was driving home from theater rehearsal when he was run off the freeway by another driver. He was forced over lane by lane, unable to get away from the other driver, and finally onto the shoulder, where he lost control of the car, and somehow was launched into the air. The car flipped over a 7-foot fence (without touching it) and eventually landed on its roof on a side street about 150 feet further down the road.
The car is a total loss. The front hood is about half the length that it was before it met with concrete, asphalt, and some juniper bushes. If he'd had a passenger in the car, they wouldn't have made it.
When the car finally came to a halt - on its roof - he undid his seatbelt and crawled out the passenger side window (the driver side window was the only one that didn't blow out), getting his only scratch - on his elbow, from the asphalt as he crawled out. It was as if he was in a little bubble of protection. I still can't believe the way the car looks, and how my 6'3" son escaped without injury.

I've been wanting to post this for almost a week, but was waiting until he had the opportunity to tell some people himself. So if you've gotten a call from him in the last few days, and haven't bothered to call him back, now you know why he called. I believe this has been a life-changing experience for him, facing death in such a dramatic way and surviving. He's lost his independence literally overnight, and is dependent upon his using his father's car (again) until the insurance is straightened out. I'm still trying to come to grips with the whole thing myself. Phone calls at 11pm are rarely good news. Seeing the car did eliminate the waking nightmares I was having about what had happened. We still don't know exactly what happened, or what set him airborne, or why that car forced him off the road and never stopped. I'm trying to keep the "what-ifs" from making my head spin. One thing for sure - this kid definitely has something he is meant to do with his life.

A Not-so-new Job

Today is my first day as a full-time employee since 1995.

Weird.

Weird because I've been doing the job at the same site, for the same company, as an independent contractor for the last 18 months, so the day-to-day really isn't going to change. Except that I'll have my own desk :-) And benefits. And get the hours I request instead of the leftovers.

Weird because I'll be working a lot more hours per week than I have in a few years. For the next month, I'll pretty much be working 5 days a week - I've really only been working 4 days a week (most of the time anyway) for the last several years, taking off one weekday for volunteer work, errands, etc.

A relief.

A relief because I'll have health insurance as of Feb. 1. So will Mary! They just started offering domestic partnership coverage as of Jan. 1. I haven't had health insurance for 3 years.

A relief because I will have employment-rate taxes taken out of my paycheck. No more quarterly tax payments. No more paying my half and the "employer half" as self-employed. Finally, a way out of the endless cycle of owing taxes at the end of the year.

Help fund AIDS research and drug assistance

Bristol Myers Squibb will donate $1 for every person who goes to their web site and lights a candle to fight AIDS, up to a max of $100,000. At this point, the counter is 530,717. The website will only allow you to light a candle once, so please pass this along to friends and family.

Please light a candle and help spread the light.

World AIDS Day

Do you remember the world before AIDS? before GRID? before "gay cancer"? I do. I remember the chaos and fearmongering when the disease was first recognized as an epidemic, when the transmission method was not yet understood, and people were panicking. I remember getting my first solid information about AIDS in 1985, in my college Microbiology class. I remember a full-day training for teachers in 1987, an attempt to help Catholic high school teachers in that diocese understand the reality of AIDS/HIV and break down the stereotypes and misunderstandings.

Twenty-one years later, there are still many people who don't understand that this is an equal-opportunity disease. It is not only about gay men, although they were the first community to be hit with it. It is not only about IV drug users, although in the early days, they were a large proportion of the cases. It is about men who have sex with men and then go home and have sex with their women, infecting the woman, who then infect the children they bear. It is about women being powerless about their own sexual lives. It is about religious institutions that claim to be "pro-life" and then condemn millions to die because they refuse to educate about condoms. It is about governments who, because of institutional racism or the leaders' own racism, cut funding to social programs designed to educate the poorest people of the world about safe sex.

It is about 65 million people infected since 1981.

It is about 25 million dead since 1981.

It is about 2.9 million dead in 2006 alone.

It is about 2.3 million children who are infected.

It's about my friend Tom Halsted, who lost his partner to AIDS in 1992, and lost his own life to AIDS in 1995.

It's about courage.

It's about my friend Carl, who, because of his public position and job in a religious organization, told everyone he had pancreatic cancer and then lived another 2 1/2 years before dying in 1993. Most of my friends who had known Carl over the years believe, with me, that he actually died of AIDS.

It's about stigma.

It's about the world losing gifted, talented minds every day to a disease that is preventable and treatable.

It's about finding a cure, and finding a vaccine to prevent it.

It's about being honest with your sexual partners, getting tested, and protecting yourself and others by following safe sex practices.

What will you do to educate yourself?

What will you do to help stop AIDS?