Kevin

For what it's worth...

Age 18-29 -- Yes 39% No 61%

It's not fair, but sometimes equality takes time.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#CAI01p1

Recently a friend sent an email to me encouraging me to vote for John McCain. For anyone who is interested, a trimmed down version of my response is behind the cut.

( Response... )

Many of you know that in the past I've been a supporter of John McCain. I want to be clear for the record that most of my respect for him evaporated in 2006 (torture bill). More recently, this is completely disgusting. And now, McCain thinks he can keep playing the terrorist/fear card, but still "respect" Obama. He's fanning flames of hate that he can't hope to control. Oh, and if he's trying to tone down the rhetoric, he might want to make sure that his campaign staff is on the same page--unless he really does approve of this message.

A quick follow-up to B's 'Hate People' post: Today while we were driving home B was talking about a snail that R was fascinated with. He was very curious, but wouldn't go near it. I remarked that this was probably because "it might jump up and bite me." B chuckled a bit, and then R started yelling, "Bite me! Bite me!"

Of course, laughter from the front of the car just encouraged it.

On Monday we took a trip down to Monterey to visit the Aquarium. We'd been talking about taking R for a while, and for several reasons this last weekend seemed like a good time. We had a blast. R did really well, considering the car ride down, lack of a nap, and constant activity from 10am to about 3:30pm. We got to see pretty much everything, though I think we spent half of our time in the Wild About Otters exhibit (mostly because they had a slide there that R refused to leave).

Anyways... some pictures behind the cut.

( See pictures... )

I've been lj-nudged. I suppose there are many things to write about, but I'll break the posts up into a few entries over a few days. This is the one where I talk about family (including a new family member).

R is almost three. His vocabulary is exploding, finally. After a long period of a relatively small set of words and a few short phrases, he's finally starting to use words for almost everything. He still signs a few things but he's using about half dozen new words every day.

The whole family is going to have to make some adjustments now, because R is going to be a big brother. We have another little boy on the way in May. May 15th is the absolute latest date for the delivery according to the Doctor's orders. If there are any complications it will be sooner. I should post the ultrasound video when I get a chance....

B hasn't had any of the severe precursor symptoms she had last time, so hopefully that's a sign that things will go more smoothly *knocks*. She finished up her last week at the school on Tuesday of last week. She's going to do the stay-at-home mom thing for a while.

The Big G gives me 7 weeks paid family leave, and I can break that up in week-size increments over the course of a year. So I'm going to try to take 3-4 weeks initially and maybe another 3-4 weeks when extended family visit later in the year, but that depends on how things are going at work (in short: really well overall, but that's another post).

R is finally going to try sleeping in the "Big Boy Bed" tonight. We'll see how it goes. He's getting out of the bath now and it's my turn to do nite-nite.

So yeah... "Nite-nite, everyone!"

Barbecue! Pork shoulder smoked with hickory.

I've been meaning to try home-made BBQ pulled pork for about a year now, but I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to control the heat on my charcoal grill. I finally tried it on Saturday. Smoked the pork for about 4 hours, and finished it simmering in apple cider. The pork came out great.

I tried two different BBQ sauces. One had too much vinegar (home-made), the other was too sweet (pre-made, but you can't buy it in stores... yet). I have some left over scraps and I'm going to try another home made BBQ sauce tomorrow. If the new sauce comes out right I'll probably post a recipe sometime this week.

Anyone have any barbecue/smoking tips to share?

It has been a while since I last read this. Today seemed like a good day to revisit it.

The Declaration of Independence.

Occasionally when R is going down for bed time he likes to have us sing Old MacDonald for him. He'll make an animal sound, and that's the animal that Old MacDonald has. Apparently Old MacDonald has acquired an elephant... and a train.

Well, this is the end of the first week at the new job. Obviously I can't share much. Though there are two observations I can discuss.

1) The commute is not fun. On the way home it's around 45+ minutes. It's pretty consistent no matter when I leave (any time between 4pm and 7pm). Definitely longer than before, but it's tollerable. On the way in, it's a different matter. If I leave at 6:40, it takes about 25 minutes. If I leave fifteen minutes later it takes nearly an hour and a half (87/101 is crazy like that). Fortunately there's a shuttle stop near my place, so I'm thinking of checking that out next week. If nothing else it'll save me 2-4 gallons of gas per round trip.

2) The variety and quality of the food is great. Which can be a mixed blessing if you're trying to lose weight (as I am). The upside is, it's pretty easy to differentiate between the stuff that's good for you and the stuff that's bad for you; and the stuff that's good for you still tastes great. I had two lunches this week without any meat, and both were delicious.

But I'm not sure I can resist the pulled pork sandwich next time I see it on the menu...