Jarrett House NorthSecond verse, same as the first.

At Shel’s wedding, I asked several of her friends, who were also Virginia Tech alums, if anyone had seen the score of the annual Virginia-Virginia Tech football game. The consensus was, “No, but I bet Tech won.” What a pleasant surprise, then, to see on CNN in the hotel lobby this morning: Virginia 35, former [...]

Nothing says “happy ending” to a vacation quite like a wedding—or at least a celebration of one. We got back an hour or so ago from the celebration of Shel’s wedding to Eric “Vik” Gamble (which happened with a small group of family the day before Thanksgiving). Shel was radiant even four days after the [...]

Deliberately old fashioned lead in. Did it ever strike anyone else as odd that it takes a corps of bloggers that is growing at a rate of at least 8,000 to 9,000 blogs a day to keep track of everything that’s interesting on the Internet as it comes on line? What does that say about [...]

It has been a lazy holiday day—well, lazy if you don’t count housecleaning and some desultory day-after-Thanksgiving shopping (at Lowes, so I’m not sure it really counts). Tonight I repeated the sautéed duck breast recipe from last night (when I bought the breasts from Larry’s, I didn’t realize the package had four breasts, not two. [...]

We said goodbye to Ed and Gina a few hours ago; this was the second Thanksgiving holiday we’ve had with them in as many years. Partly this is because they’re the only ones of our friends who don’t head back to their respective families for the holiday, but mostly it’s because they’re such great company. [...]

Augusto Pinochet claimed on Tuesday, during an interview on the occasion of his 88th birthday, that he was a democratic leader, a “patriotic angel” with nothing to apologize for. On Monday, new court testimonies were published giving details of how at least 400 of the thousands of Pinochet opponents who were “disappeared” during his regime [...]

Last year at about this time I had my rock and roll debut at the EMP’s Liquid Lounge. I’m returning with some of the same musicians this year for additional holiday party musical jam goodness. I get to go a little further afield this year, doing backing vocals on a bunch of rockabilly, Motown, and [...]

I spoke too soon when I mentioned that the Washington Weather Alert RSS feed showed no active watches, warnings, or advisories. For the past few days, there have been winter storm warnings throughout the Cascades and Olympics. As a consequence of all the snow that has fallen this month, several of the ski areas are [...]

Funny article in the Washington Post yesterday about the Foo Fighters’ remake of the infamous “Darling Nikki” (from Prince’s Purple Rain). I think this was the moment when we all knew Prince had Arrived: on the schoolbus, on the way to middle school, a chorus of white suburban kids gleefully singing along, “I met her [...]

One of the points about “traditional” church going that always bugged me was the difficulty in reconciling logical inconsistencies in the Bible with the divinity of the text. Even among churches that don’t insist on the literal truth of the Gospel, you sometimes get people discussing the differences in the Gospel of John, for instance, [...]

The report that the FBI is keeping tabs on anti-war protesters casts a chilling shadow, even giving the damages already inflicted on freedom of association by the PATRIOT Act. The FBI says it’s only looking for “anarchists and ‘extremist elements’ plotting violence.” But by Singin’ John Ashcroft’s actions last year, the agency is already using [...]

Dave points to the National Weather Service’s experimental RSS weather alerts service. I’m subscribed to the Washington State feed, which (like Massachusetts) currently reports “no active watches, warnings or advisories.”

A great thread on Plastic about cooking turkey reminded me of my own favorite poultry cooking recipe. It hasn’t been turkey tested but might just work with the Big T (where T stands for tryptophan). (Note: original recipe published in Cooks Illustrated, but (a) it’s not on line, (b) I don’t have the magazine any [...]

After business school and a couple of years away from being a programmer, you’d think my geekiness would be dropping. Apparently not. I just took Newsweek/MSNBC’s Digital IQ quiz and scored 194, where anything greater than 110 is “nerd” level. Sigh…

Our friend Shel is getting married around Thanksgiving. I’ve written a bit about Shel before; suffice it to say that the “happily ever after” day for the woman who introduced me to my wife is a pretty big deal. So we’ll be driving down to Portland the weekend after Turkey Day for the party, music [...]