magical

I'm in New England. I'm in southeastern Massachusetts, on vacation with my family. There's about a foot of snow on the ground. The kids just made an igloo, and then deb took them out back to look for a tree to cut. I'd call it magical, except I have been sitting here logged into work because crap keeps locking up. Not how i planned to be spending my time.

amazing

Screw putting a man on the moon, tonight real history was made.

I watched black students at a Georgia college in tears at what was finally accomplished. I saw Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey in tears. Consider that nineteen percent of black voters this year were first time voters. Consider that when you feel like saying your vote doesn't matter. Or when you think that the democracy we have is pointless. Among so, so many other things, tonight the president elect included gay people in his acceptance speech. Has anything like this ever happened before? Truly, truly amazing.

McCain's crowd booed when he mentioned Obama; Obama's crowd cheered when he mentioned McCain. That says it all. Four years ago, i was sick to my stomach when this country re-elected a megalomaniacal simpleton, unquestionably out of fear and ignorance. Tonight I got to be proud of my country again. I knew we proved again that while we do have a tendency to lose our way, we always eventually manage to come to our senses and try to put things right.

Our oldest got to vote this year, and I'm pretty amazed at what she got to be part of. We also made sure our younger ones watched everything tonight, and while they may not fully understand it now, we tried to make sure they remember that they were seeing something very, very important happening, and that in a few short years it'll be their turn to make sure they make a difference.

slán go fóill

We lost a friend today. Good bye, Tom; cheers.

goofs

milestones

I'm not doing the fantastic job i had intended in keeping up with this. I have to quit thinking that i need something profound to say before i write it down; nobody's coming here looking for profound.

This week we are heading East, to what we still call home. We make the trip every so often, but this one is going to be a bit more of a homecoming than usual. We get to see my brother and his new baby, and deb's sister & her two kids. The kids will be meeting their cousins for the very first time -- it's quite exciting. There's also a reunion of sorts with a handful of my college friends; i haven't seen some of them in over twenty years. Guaranteed to be a heck of a time. Then we'll be off to visit deb's folks for a few days, including a stop to see the ocean again. We're cramming a lot into 8 days, should be a real adventure.

Recently hannah & i went for a bike ride, just the two of us. I realize that for a lot of people that may not seem like a big deal; but our kids never really took to bikes, mostly because we haven't lived in places conducive to kids riding around alone without traffic posing an imminent threat. But hannah decided to persistently teach herself how to ride, and a few months back we got her a mountain bike (just like mom's!) and she's been able to cruise around a bit. So we saddled up and hit the greenway, a paved path that snakes for miles through our neighborhoods. We did about 3.5 miles, and even hit some of the dirt trails on the way.

More soon. That's the plan anyway.

are you sitting comfortably?

Then we'll begin. Check out our pictures from the bike trip.