[Had a link to the New York Times society page, because I thought it was cool that I'd gone to a wedding featured in the NYT].

I just returned from Capon Springs, West Virginia, where I attended M and S’s wedding. There were 250 or so guests, including 31 MDs and lots of politicos. I didn’t really do much hobnobbing other than with my friends, although I recall making an ass of myself when meeting M’s boss, Congressman __ __ (D-__). I don’t really think he cared too much about Durham, North Carolina politics, particularly as explained by one of M’s inebriated fraternity brothers. I did learn from a colleague of M’s (whose name I will not disclose) that Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) has quoted Popeye from the Senate floor.

I’ll have some pictures up on Flickr soon enough.

It occurs to me that I never quite announced to the world that I am the proud manager of a fantasy baseball team. After about a dozen years away from the sports-geek world of fantasy sports, I’m addicted again, checking in on my team several times today.

Presenting the 2007 Betty White Stockings…

$4 gas?

Yes, I root for the price of gas to go up. Call it schadenfreude.

Dear World,

Please read everything I say in here, because I need the world to know my thoughts…

Dear World,

I just write whatever I write in here for therapeutic purposes. I “explore” my thoughts. I vent. I mock. I share pictures of dogs and cats….

When I see that a “real” blogger puts a link on his page to this page, it takes me aback. Define “real” blogger, Toastie. I don’t know… He writes about substantive things in an articulate, thoughtful manner. He doesn’t litter his blog with trivial nonsense nor does he spew bile when he’s angry and has a point to make. When you see that he’s got a new entry, you look forward to it, because you’re probably going to learn something, or you’re going to start thinking critically about an issue.

I, on the other hand, am not a real blogger. This would be a good occasion to repeat something that I’m sure I’ve written about before, for only a…mildly disturbed individual would bother to read all of my entries. This blog is simply a continuation of a “journal”, a journal I’ve kept for…18 years now.

There are the notebooks and computer files that take me from 1989 all the way up until 2003. These writings are all private, and while I consider opening up the vaults from time to time, I suspect they’ll remain private for at least the near term. Then in late 2003, the LiveJournal experiment began. Most of my thoughts wound up as “friends-only” posts, where “friends” refers to people I may have known in the material world, but also to individuals I’ve never met and will never meet. Some thoughts, I made public. Over time, I’d change my mind often regarding where I’d draw that public/private line. I’ve never been consistent. And so, if you are to browser some old entries, you might learn some startling things about me. I don’t really know what’s in there. There are still some 800-900 “uncategorized” public entries, as all of the LiveJournal public entries have been ported over here to Toastiest.

In 2007, I’m still posting to LiveJournal, but the entries there are not public; they are of personal nature, at least more than whatever I’m posting here.

I moved off of LiveJournal for public thoughts for a few reasons. I’m getting sleepy now, so I’m not going to get into them right now.

This metablogging post could go on for awhile, but it can’t. I really need to get my performance evaluation for work in to my supervisor. (Yes, I have to do this at 12:10AM; it cannot wait).

I didn’t really get to my point. My point I was intending to get to was just that the subject of metablogging has come up in a couple of the local blogs, and I cannot really define precisely what my purpose and motivation are for writing this, nor can I define what this is. (I can’t even figure out if I should adopt a style of using one space or two in between sentences). This website simply is what it is.

The Inflation Calculator

A fun tool to look at while pondering one’s annual performance review…

:: rogerebert.com :: People :: It wouldn’t be Ebertfest without Roger

We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my Festival.

Good for Roger Ebert! I miss his reviews, and I hope he is able to fully recuperate soon.

I had been including in my cabal of “a few racists in position of authority” one elderly, senile individual whose rants, I realize now, should not be construed as influential remarks. It would have been nice had it not been implied to me that I ought to listen and learn from this individual as if this individual still had some authority. Then, I don’t think I would’ve reacted so strongly upon hearing some of this person’s rants. I wouldn’t have thought Durham was quite so entrenched by racial division.

But hey, that’s what happens when someone leads you by the hand to the deep end of the pool, pushes you in, and walks away from the pool. If you don’t know how to swim too well, you tread water frantically just to stay afloat. And while the person who pushed you in could conceivably help, you’re too annoyed to scream out for assistance. (Yeah, there’s my little public jab at my local-politics mentor). Nonetheless, I could’ve “toned it down a notch” until I got some more information from someone else.

I have not read any of the reaction to Dennis Kucinich’s submittal of a resolution to impeach Dick Cheney. I suspect the administration will laugh it off, that most Republicans will dismiss it, and that most Democrats will shy away from it. But I think that everything in Kucinich’s announcement is legitimate, and I admire him for standing up to both the administration and his own party.

I grabbed dinner at Cook-Out. They normally have very good burgers. (Burgers? I thought you stopped eating beef? I did. I’m eating it again). Anyway, tonight, the burger must have been nuked right before they served it to me. I bit into it, and it burned my mouth, pretty badly, I must say. It still hurts nearly a half-hour later. I called their customer hot-line to let them know. I’ll be sure to report on whether or not they offer me generous reparations.

I don’t like to self-censor. If I change my mind about something or wish to clarify, my preference is to let the original comments remain in the permanent blogosphere, even if that later becomes an obstacle to future reconciliatory efforts. A lot of the old news articles I was reading last week, and have read over the past couple of months, have disturbed me in their depiction of the actions and words of some prominent local leaders. But I ought to stress that these are just the actions and words of some.

I shouldn’t be a hypocrite. A recent Charlotte Observer op-ed spoke of how Durham Democrats should be ashamed of themselves. I replied that the actions of a voting body did not express the will of nearly half of the voting body, and we should not all receive such a poisonous label. Likewise, I should not condemn the city of Durham as a racist city. It’s certainly a city with racial tensions that some have chosen to exploit rather than to attempt to heal.