Wow, the half-century mark!  How does it feel?

Now that gay marriage is the hot topic sweeping the country, I've been trying to formulate my own arguments against it.  As a Bible-believing Christian, the moral argument is the easy one.  But moral arguments are not going to get me very far with, at best, amoral people.  So, I'm looking for more practical arguments against gay marriage.  Let me know what you think.  Even if you think that there are no practical arguments, only moral ones.

We saw The Station Agent last night.  It was pretty enjoyable.  It wasn't one of those movies that has a thoroughly satifsying conclusion, but many of the scenes are compelling and the comic relief is pretty good.   It struck me how low of a budget it must have been shot on, and yet how many people were involved with it.

OK, it's official, we'll be in Texas April 19th-25th!

Hey everybody, Jamie and I are probably going to be in Texas late in April.  Be sure to mark your calendars!

The last thing we did on our Christmas trip to Vegas was to see Cirque du Soleil's Mystere.  It was quite cool, but I think the amazement factor lowers slightly with each Cirque show based on diminishing returns.  Along Came Polly was quite funny.  I'm not sure when the last time I saw a movie in which I laughed that much.

Sorry for the paltry entries in January.  I got really popular work-wise, which is good, but I didn't feel like spending my leisure time at the computer, too.  We'll see how February goes.

Sure, it's been a while, but I thought I'd continue on the Christmas story.  On our first full day, we did a little gambling, got some appetizers at Bradley Ogden's restaurant, and then saw Jerry Seinfeld perform at Caesar's palace in the theater built for Celine Dion.  I really enjoyed Jerry's standup.  Probably the second best I've seen.  First up is Jim Gaffigan, whom we are going to get to see again in February.  After the show we went back to Bradley Ogden's for dinner, which was muy excellente.  I mean, wow.  The only downside was that they were out of mint, so no Mojitos for Pete-o.

The next day we caught a van out to the airport, where we boarded a helicopter.  I should preface this with the fact that my stomach was not too happy with me for several hours before we got to the airport.  Anywho, we got on the helicopter and flew to the Grand Canyon, where we landed down inside and had champagne and crackers.  It was awesome!  I only wish that I weren't so queasy going into it.  But I pulled through without incident.

I was just listening to an interview with James Carville on NPR.  He's a liberal author, perhaps among other things; I'm not that familar with him beyond what I heard today.  He was talking about his book that discusses how to “take the country back”, presumably he means from the Republicans.  There were two things in the interview that made me mad.

First, he stated that Bush went to war under false pretenses.  This is an old argument.  He went on to say that the Bush administration pursued a policy of calling all those who opposed the war “un-American”.  I understand that there are people in this country who believe that people who oppose the war are “un-American”, but I have not heard that from anyone in the Bush administration.  I actually haven't personally heard it from anyone except from the people who oppose the war.  Perhaps their guilt makes them paranoid.  If someone can find me a quote from someone in the Bush administration supporting this policy, I'd appreciate it.

Second, he attacked a policy against gay marriage.  Here's his argument: “It [the policy against gay marriage] is too stupid for words.”  Guess what, James, that's not an argument.  That's name-calling.

Hey everybody, Jamie and I just watched next week's Arrested Development.  It's a really good one, so if you haven't caught it yet, this would be a good time to start.  They're up for a Golden Globe for best comedy.

So far, anyway, I've let this year get away from me.  I have my reasons, but let's not bore them with that.  So, Christmas happened.  Jamie and I stayed in Cali for Christmas, though we are looking forward to our next visit to Texas some time this Spring.  Jamie had to work on Christmas eve, so we didn't get on the road to Fallbrook until 5 p.m., the perfect time to find holiday traffic.  We spent the night at the Siebers and opened up our Christmas presents there the next morning.  As you can see, I got a suede coat, and Jamie got a cat.  OK, so she already had the cat, but this was the best picture I got.  Quick side note while mentioning the coat, I have no become a weather wuss.  Already.  It is not cold here, but now that I have Ugg boots that keep my feet so nice and toasty, I don't like to go out without them.  In New York or even Texas, I would have been wearing sandals even if it were 20 degrees cooler.  I'm pathetic, and I apologize.

Christmas afternoon we went down to Jamie's aunt and uncle's place on Coronado Island.  We snacked and hung out with Matt (Jamie's cousin) and Jackie (his girlfriend).  Eventually, we opened another barrage of presents there, had dinner, and then had a little white elephant gift exchange action.  Fortunately, the fart machine went to Uncle Ron, so that I could have some peace and quiet at home.  We left their house around 7 or 8 p.m. I guess, and headed on to Las Vegas.

We got to Vegas at around 1 a.m. the next morning, and proceeded to check in at Treasure Island.  It took awhile checking in, because it was so late, and they were booked pretty solid.  We had wanted a king size bed, but they said that all they had was two queen size beds; they were completely out of king size beds.  No big deal, but we pressed the issue to see if they might throw a little something our way.  They didn't.  Jamie and I got up to our room, and there was a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and our key didn't work.  I'm kind of glad that the key didn't work, because if it did, and I had disturbed something, then I myself would have been disturbed.  Anywho, I called downstairs to let them know what happened.  After waiting in the hall for 15 minutes, finally a manager came to take us to a different room, because supposedly “the safe was broken in that room”.  Likely story.  We take the service elevator to another room, which did have a king size bed.  A miracle!  Here they had just told us that they did not have king size available, sent us to an occupied room, made us wait, and then all of a sudden someone checked out of their room at 1 a.m.  The room was great; the runaround was not.  Eventually, we settled down to sleep.  One more quick thing before I go.  It was a nice hotel, a nice room, but the towels sucked.  They were like sandpaper.  And then they have the audacity to only wash the towels if they are thrown on the floor.  I wonder if somewhere in the hotel, for the really rich people, they actually have nice big, soft towels.  More tomorrow, or next month.

Yes, there was an earthquake in California today that hit 6.5 on the Richter scale (only a 3.2 on the Andy Richter scale).  We didn't feel anything though.  It was north and west of us here.  Thanks for those who expressed concern, and a pox on those of you who didn't!