January 2004 Archives

Similar to the MyWorld66 meme, by way of Amanita.net.

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington DC /

Total: 40/51 (including Washington, DC)

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

[updated: 04 May 2005, to reflect April trip to Nebraska and Iowa]

The "Washington Whispers" column in the January 26 issue of U.S. News and World Report notes, in the "Master of His Web: Colin Powell" entry:

Hey, State Department Web gang: Think twice before blowing off those E-mails asking what may look like niggling questions. They're possibly from Secretary of State Colin Powell. The latest proof that Powell is a 24-7 techie who E-mails with abandon and would rather Google an issue than phone an aide comes from insiders, who say he has set up an anonymous E-mail account from which he "bombs in" questions about what's on the State site. "He's checking response times," says one insider. Powell's desire to have the best government Web site doesn't end there. He recently showed off a cheapo digital camera from Amazon.com and said top aides should have one. "When you travel," he said, "we can put your pictures up." Pals say Powell is proud of making the Internet available to over 43,000 State computers--up from a few hundred--and wants it used. Overseas, he often steps into the ambassador's office "to see if the computer is in use or being used as a hat rack," we're told. And he's not just an at-work techie. At home he loves his TiVo, taping shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy for fun.

I'm responsible for the intranet at one of the State Department's bureaus, and we're always very good about responding promptly to our webmaster email, but you can bet I'm paying very close attention to every one that comes in these days.

I can vouch for some of this piece. It's true that until Secretary Powell's tenure at State, employees here did not have Internet access at their desktop. When I took this job in the summer of 2002, I was stunned to discover that my colleagues had only had Internet access for about 18 months, when I'd been using it at all my previous (albeit non-government) positions for at least 8 years. I'm very grateful that the Secretary made changing this situation a priority on his watch.

I also remember the Monday morning I came into the office to be summoned immediately to the Executive Director's office; the Secretary had been trying to access his online distance learning account on Sunday night, had been unable to log in, and sent a fax to the Director of my bureau that night. We were on it first thing the next morning (it turns out that the third-party site that provides some of the online training does maintenance on Sunday nights, so fortunately it wasn't something for which we were responsible), but it was interesting to see that even at home on his own time he was making use of the Department's online resources.

But I don't believe that I'd label the Secretary a "techie." He certainly is an avid user of the Internet and other new technology, and he's a wonderful evangelist and supporter for our efforts in using multimedia and technology for training, but my suspicion is that the Internet and related technology is not something that he understands at a more fundamental level (this is not a criticism). And that's fine, because that's why I have a job.

Yesterday at lunch I finished reading an amazing Irish novel, At Swim Two Boys, written over a ten-year period by openly gay author Jamie O'Neill, whom many critics are calling the successor to James Joyce and Roddy Doyle. Fortunately I was eating lunch late, when few other people were still around, because I was a little embarrassed sitting in the cafeteria trying unsuccessfully to fight back my tears as I read the final few pages.

I strongly recommend this new Irish epic, but one caution: I think of myself as a reasonably literate person, and have always taken some pride in my vocabulary. This was the first book I've read, though, where I really did have to keep a dictionary nearby. And even that wasn't always helpful, as a fair amount of the words I didn't recognize weren't just obscure, or just Irish regionalisms, or even just early 20th century usage, but were simultaneously obscure, early 20th century Irish regionalisms. The language is so beautiful and so rhythmic, though, evocative of Joyce, in fact, and much of the unknown vocabulary was at least guessable from context.

Now I'm jumping on the bandwagon and turning my attention to The DaVinci Code, while also finishing up the last half of Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.

6:25 p.m., Thursday, January 29. I'm just about to leave the garage at my condo to go pick Jeff up at the Metro. The garage doors open and a red car--is that a Prius?--drives in. I circle around and see that it is, and it's pulling into the parking space of my ex and still good friend Jay, who owns a condo in the same building. I drive up behind the car as he's getting out; the sales sticker is still pasted to the passenger-side window. I roll down the window. "You didn't..." "Yep." He did.

I knew Jay was planning to get a Prius. After all, just three weeks ago he stopped by my condo to pick my brains about the car and the local Toyota dealers I'd considered. He has a long commute to work, and like my boss wants the advantage of being able to drive in the HOV lanes. A week later--just two weeks ago--he told me that he'd put in his order.

So what happened? Here I was just last night making a minor rant about the Toyota corporation, concerning the waiting time for the Prius--three months and counting for me--but at the same time defending Toyota dealers in a separate comment. Well less than 24 hours later, though, a friend pulls up with a new Prius after having ordered one only two weeks ago. Turns out that while I've been waiting for my dealer to get back to me when they get to my name on the list, Jay's been actively calling all the dealers in the area; today he reached one that had just received a new Prius that the person who ordered decided not to take. So they sold it to Jay; apparently they didn't contact the next person on their waiting list, but sold it to someone who just happened to call them and ask for it.

Now, it wasn't my dealer, but I was still pretty pissed. Not at Jay, though he thought I would be--it's not his fault that some dealerships don't play fair, and I'm happy that he benefitted from it. And it also wasn't the option package I wanted anyway, but rather the more limited package I was told in November I could probably get within a couple of weeks. So maybe there really wasn't anyone else waiting for a Prius who wanted this one. But I did have a strong visceral reaction, at first almost angry enough to call and cancel my own order. But really I wouldn't send any kind of message to Toyota, or hurt anyone but myself by doing that; there are plenty of people waiting who would snap up my car when it finally arrives. I have sent an email to my dealer, though, asking what their own policy is for distributing cars when the person who ordered it decides not to take delivery.

The most shameful truth, though, is that part of the reason I was upset was that I had made the decision first, months ago, and Jay only recently decided to buy a Prius. And yet now everyone will see mine showing up in a month or two and think that I was a copycat. Yes, it's not an adult reaction. No, I don't really care what the other people think and, frankly, I bet no one will even give it a thought. But it still went through my mind. I wanted to be special with my car, at least for a couple of months. I think Gene would understand.

Earlier this week I received the latest annual assessment on my condo from Arlington County. Whoa! My assessment went up by 27 percent from last year, which itself was an increase of 20 percent over the previous year; in Arlington County, condo values have increased at a higher rate the past two years than have single family homes [update: single family homes increased by an average of 17 percent]. Granted, I benefitted from the significantly higher appraisal when I refinanced last fall, but I'm dreading my tax bill later this year.

I bought my condo in 1997. By 1999 the assessment had fallen 7 percent, but in 2000 had increased to just shy of the 1997 assessment. In the Arlington housing boom since then, however, the value has dramatically shot up to an assessed value 83% higher than the 1997 value. And on the market the condos in my building are going for even higher than the County assessments. I've had cold calls from realtors with interested buyers for my unit; of course, if I sold it I'd just have to pay the same premium to buy anything new, so the increase in value is only theoretical, while the additional tax expense is real.

I'm just really lucky I bought when I did. With federal salaries increasing only by low single-digit percentages each year, while home prices are rising 20 to 25 percent annually or even more, I wouldn't easily be able to afford my modest 1,300-square-foot condo now.

Earlier this evening in a climactic battle aboard the Star Forge I defeated the Dark Lord of the Sith, won the heart of the girl (eh, whatever; I still wish there had been an option to pursue Carth instead of Bastila, but I guess that's why it's called a roleplaying game), and saved the galaxy as the most powerful servant of the Light the Jedi Council had ever seen.

After about 40 hours of gameplay over the past two weeks (wow, practically a part-time job), I've finished Star Wars "Knights of the Old Republic." Wow... and fortunately Jeff hasn't left me in the interim.

Last November, I noted that my television was showing signs of failure, and might need to be replaced. Recently the signs have been mounting. For probably close to a year, the set might work fine for a few days, then out of the blue I can turn it on to find the picture distorted; this can last a few hours or a few days, and then the screen reverts to normal.

Over the past few weeks, though, there have been some new behaviors. Occasionally, in the middle of watching a program the picture will just vanish. Usually when this happens, just turning the set off and back on will bring the video back.

And last night, about halfway through Sunday's TiVoed episode of Sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker suddenly started to flouresce in a kaleidoscope of colors. After a few moments of wild color oscillations--though oddly mostly just in the flesh tone range--like some sort of cool media player visualization, the video desaturated leaving us with only a grayscale image. Briefly disoriented, I imagined Carrie and Aleksandr leaving Manhattan for Pleasantville.

Turning the set off and on again resolved this issue as well, at least for the nonce. But it probably really is time for the boyfriend and me to start shopping for a new set.

It's beginning to feel like everywhere I turn, I see or hear advertisements for your exciting and innovative new Prius. What I want to know is why you're spending so much money advertising this car when you can't even make enough of them for those of us who already have placed orders, and your local dealers are now suggesting that the wait for new orders could be as much as six to eight months?

Mightn't you put that money to better use by spending it on an extra shift at the factory, or building another?

OPM finally has decided to dismiss Washington-area federal employees three hours early today, just in time for the new round of freezing rain, sleet and snow expected this afternoon and evening. Actually, the OPM web site has yet to update the official operating status [update: it has since been updated], though we've gotten word from within the Department; the Washington Post and other local media, as well, have been reporting the early dismissal for nearly the last hour, meaning that most of that time the contractors have been sitting around surfing and constantly reloading the OPM page, or coming up here to ask me, such that little work probably has been done (to be fair, it was lunch time for many of them).

So that means I'll officially be off work at 2:15, though I'll likely stick around a bit. Jeff's office is closing at 3, but he'll then have to take the Metro with all the other tens of thousands of commuters let go at the same time, so it may be a lengthier commute for him than usual; rather than picking him up at the usual time, I just told him to give me a call from the mall when he gets there and I'll come pick him up at that point (the Pentagon City mall is only about a mile and a half away from the condo).

My friends David Levine and Kate Yule live in Portland, Oregon. I met David and Kate back in the mid-90s through our mutual hobby of squaredancing. The couple also publish a wonderful, occasional 'zine, Bento (some issues of which are available online).

David is an award-winning, up-and-coming science-fiction writer, nominated last year for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His incredibly beautiful and emotionally stirring (I cried) short story "The Tale of the Golden Eagle" has been nominated this year for a Nebula. For a limited time, this wonderful story is available for free on The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction web site. Go read it.

Sandia Laboratories has decided that we need computers that monitor and tell us how we're feeling; even scarier, they believe that our computers should snitch on us, telling our colleagues and supervisors how we're feeling and how those feelings might impact our work.

That computer on your desk is just your helper. But soon it may become a very close friend.

Now it sends your e-mails, links you to the Web, does your computations, and pays your bills.

Soon it could warn you when you're talking too much at a meeting, if scientists at Sandia National Laboratories' Advanced Concepts Group have their way.

Or it could alert others in your group to be attentive when you have something important to say.

Aided by tiny sensors and transmitters called a PAL (Personal Assistance Link) your machine (with your permission) will become an anthroscope--an investigator of your up-to-the-moment vital signs, says Sandia project manager Peter Merkle. It will monitor your perspiration and heartbeat, read your facial expressions and head motions, analyze your voice tones, and correlate these to keep you informed with a running account of how you are feeling--something you may be ignoring--instead of waiting passively for your factual questions. It also will transmit this information to others in your group so that everyone can work together more effectively.

Just what I need. A tattletale computer that tells my boss and co-workers what I'm really thinking. Believe me, no one needed a Personal Assistance Link this morning to know that I was this close to quitting.

Those concerned about privacy--who see this as an incursion similar to HAL's, the supercomputer that took over the spaceship in the movie 2001--can always opt out, he says, just like people choose not to respond to emails or decline to attend meetings.

Really? How many people are able to opt-out of email and meetings on a regular ongoing basis, and still keep their jobs or any promotion potential?

I'm actually fine with the idea that my computer might pass information to me about my apparent mental, emotional and physical states, but I'm extremely uncomfortable with this kind of data being made available to my employer. Beyond just the potential for misinterpreting the data, there seems to be real potential for Big Brotherly misuse; what if my company decides, for example, that my stress levels are consistently high and deems me an unacceptable insurance risk? What business is it of my boss if my pulse races, my respiration increases, and there's a rise in my, um, brain activity when I'm meeting with the cute guy on my team?

Well, it was about the worst possible outcome for me personally. All the local schools are closed. The federal government, however, rather than closing has opened with "unscheduled leave," which means that you're supposed to come to work but if you don't think you can make it you can take leave without having it pre-approved. When the schools are closed, though, many of my co-workers who are parents end up staying home, and I end up often being one of a skeleton crew here.

At 6:00 this morning, one of my staff called me at home to tell me she couldn't come in. She called back around 7:15 to say that she'd talked to the lab manager, who also wouldn't be able to come in. So I had to throw on some clothes and rush in to work to open the labs--the executive director gets upset if they're not open precisely on time at 7:30--and then go back home to shave, change into my suit and take Jeff to the metro before coming back to the office.

I'm back, and the deluge of calls from co-workers saying they won't be coming in has finally subsided. What makes it even worse today than the fact that practically everyone has called in to say that they're not coming is that there's a big event scheduled here this morning with the assistant secretary and some Hill staff. My boss and I have to do a tour and lab demonstration for them, but since none of the lab staff are here I now have to do all the setup and preparation alone, handle any customer issues all day, as well as staff the phones in the main office since neither of our administrative assistants showed up and my peers always conveniently manage to find reasons to be out of the office when that happens, rarely taking their turn on the phones. My boss--who is willing to take a turn on the phones--did arrive, so at least I don't have to do the tour on my own.

And the Washington Post headline at the moment is "Storm Blankets D.C. Area, But Worst Yet to Come," noting that while the snow is mostly over there will be ice and sleet falling throughout the day, continuing to make the roads slick and dangerous. I saw several cars in ditches already--before the icing had begun--just on the mile from my condo to the office, and that was on two main roads.

So your tax dollars are at work; at least, the portion you pay for my salary is.

It's snowing; in fact, there's already a noticeable accumulation on the ground. The forecast is for a winter storm warning with a total of between 4 and 8 inches. The worst of it is projected before midnight, then tapering off until around 7am. Too soon to tell, then, if the government might close tomorrow, giving me another nice long weekend.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

In a scathing column in The New York Press, Michelangelo Signorile justifiably takes Mary Cheney to task, not just for her silence in the face of her father's reverse on the issue of who should determine the legality of gay relationships, but for her complicity in this position by joining the vice president's re-election campaign. Signorile angrily asks:

"What the hell happened to you? Are you just another spoiled rich brat--the lesbian Paris Hilton--worried about getting a chunk of those 30 million Halliburton bucks should Dad's heart conk out?...

"It would be one thing if you had simply slithered away into the background when it was announced that your father would be Bush's running mate in 2000. (People can't, after all, pick their parents, as Patti Davis and Ron Reagan Jr. are painfully aware.) Instead, you became active in the Bush/Cheney campaign. As the lesbian poster child, you helped sell the snake oil of 'compassionate conservatism.' You went along with the program, tricking people into thinking that your father and W. would be tolerant on gay rights....

"...[T]here will be a lot of political gay bashing, the kind that fuels the Christian right as well as thugs on the streets. The impact of that can't be underestimated, and yes, Mary, blood will be on your hands too. I'm sure you think that's unfair of me. But life is unfair. Just think: You could be a poor dyke getting your head bashed in a rough, urban neighborhood every day of your life. Instead, you're a woman of privilege who has done a lot of damage and now needs to take responsibility for it by stepping down from the campaign and speaking up. History, Mary, will judge you by what you choose to do in the coming months."

Came across this link to MyWorld66 from JaseWells.com. Select the countries you've visited, and it will create a map with those countries marked in red.

Here's mine. Sadly, for someone who thought he was so worldly, I've only visited 13 countries so far. I need to get moving.

create your own visited country map

I found a similar application for creating a map of the states I've visited. Here I've done a little better, having visited 36 plus the District of Columbia. I just need to take one train trip from Mississippi up the middle of the country ending in the Dakotas. Well, that and two flights to Alaska and Hawaii.

Yesterday I stayed home from work, feeling a little under the weather; my stomach and gut had been bothering me since the weekend, when I had attributed it to the rich food Jeff and I had been eating, and Monday when I ascribed it to the greasy Johnny Rockets burger and fries.

On Tuesday night, we decided we would watch the State of the Union farce speech, and it's probably no great surprise that it angered, distressed and even sickened me; I actually felt physically ill throughout the speech, and slept very poorly later that night, getting up several times to use the bathroom. So, even though I don't have much sick leave and probably could have functioned reasonably well at the office, I decided to burn a sick day anyway to rest and remain close to the toilet.

Today, when I returned to work, I discovered that several of my colleagues had been experiencing similar gastrointestinal symptoms over relatively the same period. My boss reported having felt sick over the weekend, and one of my employees had stayed home on Monday when both he and his son were experiencing the same thing. So maybe it wasn't the food--and maybe Bush only exacerbated the discomfort, rather than being solely responsible--but some sort of mild bug we were passing around.

Interestingly, Alex (the cat) has just been back to his litter box--which sits in a closet not far from the computer desk--three times in the last five minutes, so this bout of diarrhea doesn't even seem to be confined to the humans of my acquaintance.

I was eating some Triscuits with my soup tonight at dinner, and on the back of the box noticed that one recipe called for, and I quote, "KRAFT Roasted Garlic Flavor Cheddar Pasteurized Process Cheese Food."

I rather suspect that anything that has to assert in its name that it's food, probably isn't. And anything that includes "x flavor" in its name doesn't really taste like x.

Well, it's been a while since I've participated in a blog meme, but as Mac at Go Fish notes, this one's about books and therefore was difficult to resist.

The items in bold are the books/series I've read. No, I don't know why these particular books were chosen, that's just the way this meme was created.

1984, George Orwell
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy [in Russian]
Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
The Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky [in Russian]
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
Dune, Frank Herbert
Emma, Jane Austen
Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell [nor have I watched the entire movie]
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Holes, Louis Sachar
I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
Katherine, Anya Seton
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
The Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkien
Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blighton
Magician, Raymond E Feist
The Magus, John Fowles
Matilda, Ronald Dahl
Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Mort, Terry Pratchett
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
On The Road, Jack Kerouac
One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Perfume, Patrick Suskind
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
The Stand, Stephen King
The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Tess Of The D'urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Twits, Roald Dahl
Ulysses, James Joyce
Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy [in Russian]
Watership Down, Richard Adams
The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

[Via Go Fish]

I posted this originally just as a quicklink on my serendipity blog, but decided I wanted to note it here on elf-reflection, too.

As the president prepares to unveil in his State of the Union speech tonight his administration's election-year $1.5 billion dollar plan to "rescue marriage," and as the push for a constitutional amendment against gay marriage continues to gain steam, a columnist in Newsday notes that research shows that the four states with the highest divorce rates in the country (50 percent more than the national average), outside of Nevada, are Tenessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma, all Bible Belt states that went for Bush in 2000. Moreover, divorce rates are higher among Baptists (29 percent) and nondenominational Christians (34 percent) than among atheists/agnostics (21 percent). In the "legendarily devout South," 27% of adults are divorced, while the lowest divorce rate of 19% was in the "liberal Northeast."

As Jeff noted at Rebel Prince, he and I took advantage over the weekend of DC's Restaurant Week 2004, in which a number of the metro area's tonier restaurants offered 3-course prix fixe lunches for $20.04 and dinners for $30.04. Because we found out about it so late in the week, by Saturday morning when we were trying to make reservations, there wasn't much left. I'd heard a lot of great things about Butterfield 9, but they only had one reservation on Saturday, for 10:30 p.m. (and I was worried that by then, only one half-hour before closing, they might be out of many of the limited choices), so we went for an early 5:00 seating at Red Sage, to which I hadn't been in probably ten years or more.

It was an incredible dinner, with perfectly seasoned, substantial portions of food and wonderful service. I started with the ginger cured salmon, only lightly seared and deliciously accented with wasabi oil and salmon roe. I had a pork tenderloin as my main entree (which now doesn't seem to appear on the dinner menu, apparently updated since this weekend), and finished with a bread pudding that had been marinated in butterscotch and then served with a caramel sauce and homemade butter brickle ice cream (also no longer on the menu). Yum. Red Sage also has such an interesting, unique interior, with the adobe-inspired walls and seating, and the water feature running along the wall at floor level like a small arroyo. (Though this was unpleasantly mirrored in their men's room after dinner, where I discovered that the urinal wouldn't stop running, overflowing quickly onto the floor like a sudden desert flash flood.)

On Sunday morning, Jeff asked if I still wanted to go to Butterfield 9; he'd checked again and at that point they were showing an open reservation at 7:00, which he went ahead and snagged just in case. While the dinner there certainly was worth $30.04, overall I have to confess to some disappointment, beginning with the discovery that the menu at table was slightly different from the one promulgated for Restaurant Week on their web site, specifically in that the entree I had most wanted to try--the venison mignon--was being substituted with a filet mignon instead. That said, the filet was the best part of the meal, though relatively unseasoned and requiring some salt and pepper to bring out the flavor, and the pistachio bread pudding was sweet, tasty and an interesting match to the filet. The duck confit and wild mushroom risotto starter, however, was overly bland and heavy, with the mushrooms looking suspiciously to me like cultivated button rather than wild while the duck was overcooked and dry. The crème brûlée was good though nothing special, and the accompanying "house made cookie" was chewy nearly to the extent of taffy; I probably looked like a cat eating peanut butter trying to get through it.

I think we overindulged on rich foods this weekend, though, and then made the mistake of stopping last night for burgers at Johnny Rockets at Jeff's request after I picked him up from work. We both spend the rest of the evening yesterday feeling a little sick, and even this morning I'm wishing I had my bottle of Prilosec here with me at the office.

Last night I started playing the LucasArts/Bioware RPG set in the Star Wars universe, "Knights of the Old Republic." Wow! I'm just barely into the game, which has received multiple awards for game of the year for 2003, and I'm so hooked on it already. The voice acting is incredible, and the storyline seems well-written and engaging.

Earlier this week I had my annual review ("Performance Appraisal Report," or "PAR," in State Department parlance) with my supervisor. Granted, this is the government so I'm told there tends to be a fair amount of the equivalent of grade inflation, but even so I was very pleased that I received the highest possible rating (Outstanding: This is a level of exceptionally high-quality performance. The quality and quantity of the employee's work substantially exceeds the fully successful standard and rarely leave room for improvement.) for each of my individual job elements and for my overall rating.

My boss and I also had a wonderful, honest and thought-provoking discussion about the highlights, successes and challenges of the past year, and about my expectations for 2004. I admitted that while I enjoy the environment in which I work, I'm really not sure where I want to be over the longer term, noting particularly that the current position doesn't provide me any real intellectual or operational challenges; we agreed to work together to try to find ways to offer me greater challenge and opportunity, and she offered her understanding if, in the future, I realize that the Institute doesn't have any growth opportunities that meet my wants and needs, and her support in identifying and pursuing opportunities that might, even if elsewhere. That's the kind of manager I've always striven to be, and I appreciate it when I find it in my own supervisor. We're very sympatico in that regard; she also came into government service relatively late in life, and doesn't see it necessarily as a lifelong career, nor her responsibility to ensure that I spend my life as a paper-pusher. My previous supervisor here was somewhat the opposite: my first day on the job, he pulled me into his office to welcome me. Rather than the speech I expected about the quality of the workplace, or the breadth of my responsibilities, nor the congeniality of my peers, his first words to me were along the lines of "You're a lucky young [sic] man to have gotten hired by the government at so high a level; now you're set for life, because it's almost impossible for them to fire you." Now there's an inspiring philosophy that makes me want to come into work and give my all day after day.

Everyone else at work yesterday was making grand plans for today in their hope that the predicted snowfall would cause the federal government to close today. I was much more cautious, noting that the predicted accummulation of 1 to 3 inches wasn't likely to shut down the government, just make the commute even longer and more difficult than usual for most.

Still, a childlike part of me was full of a gleeful hope as well that the predictions would turn out to be wrong and that we'd see half a foot or more, giving me a holiday from the office drudgery.

And the predictions were wrong. Unfortunately, they just were wrong in the other direction: by dawn this morning, not only wasn't there an inch or more of snow, there wasn't even a single flake to be seen near my home, either in the air or on the ground. And the National Weather Service had replaced its prediction of snow with just a wind-chill advisory, and even that paling in comparison (though thankfully so) to the arctic-like temperatures across New England.

It's really just a geek thing, and probably pretty meaningless to most of you, but I've generated a FOAF file (not sure what that is? here is some info) for myself (just like Matt and Meredith, for example). If you know me and have a FOAF, drop me a line and I'll add you to mine.

Yesterday, I came across Dude, Check This Out!™, which enables sort of a cross between blogging and social networking (a la Friendster, LinkedIn, FOAF, etc.). You create your own blog on the service for saving links to interesting articles, sites, images, etc., and you're encouraged to copy links from other Dude blogs; the site then uses its search engine technologies to suggest other links in which it thinks you would be interested (similar to the technology on Amazon that makes recommendations on other items you might like, based on the other items bought by other Amazon customers who selected the same item you did). It also allows you to make links directly to and with other Dude bloggers, creating social networks of shared interests.

I think I'll continue to use this blog, elf-reflection, just as I always have, as my primary online venue for expressing my thoughts and feelings. However, I am going to play around with my Dude blog, "serendipity :: a journey of elf discovery," for maintaining quick links to interesting links and resources.

Serendipity also has its own RSS feed, for use in syndication or within an aggregator.

[Admittedly, one problem with Dude...! is that it currently only works with IE on Windows.]

[Update 2004-01-17: As noted by commenter Randy, there is indeed a solution for Mozilla.]

I mentioned this in passing to Jeff the other day, and have been thinking about it off and on; I know it's a subject I've seen discussed elsewhere, and it's not even necessarily unique to gay and lesbian couples, though that's the context in which I've most often considered it and seen it considered:

When you can't (or choose not to) get married, how do you determine your anniversary date? Is it the first time you go out together, the first time you kiss, the first time you have sex (yes, I realize that these sometimes are all the same), the date you move in together, something else, or perhaps even something less specific and tangible?

From my own current relationship, for example, I have only a sense that we've "been together" about half a year, but not really a specific date from which to count. Frankly, because of the way we met and began spending time together, there's not even a clear unequivocal first date. The first time we met in person was to go to see the Kinsey Sicks on June 22 last year [update: it was actually June 21, as Jeff gently corrects; the 22nd was when I blogged about it], and we even had coffee and dessert together afterwards, but I went home unsure if it really was a "date." In fact, because Jeff was so quiet that evening, I came home wondering if he'd even had a good time with me, or whether he'd liked or disliked me.

Before that, we'd been commenting to each other's journals, and afterwards turned to emailing, IMing and phoning, but even by our second outing on July 16 to Screen on the Green, to which I even packed a picnic supper (heh, I even bought the picnic basket especially for the occasion), I experienced Jeff still as either shy, reticent or aloof. Even the social goodbye peck on the cheek I attempted felt awkward.

By the time of my birthday just two weeks later, though, things definitely felt different. The weekend immediately prior we saw a frenzy of films in what was starting to feel very much like a series of dates. It also was around that same time that we started sleeping together. After a party the first weekend of August, in which some friends of mine asked about the nature of our relationship and we sort of looked at each other and shrugged, within a few days we were acknowledging the "boyfriends" word among the two of us and by the 11th we were both comfortable enough to post publicly that we were "dating."

It's not really clear precisely when Jeff moved in, either. It just happened gradually, first weekends, then a few nights a week, then pretty much going home only to get a change of clothes. He still has his apartment down town, though he hasn't spent a night there in at least a few months.

So, until we have a more definitive marker, my gut says that we've been together since sometime in July, and that this month, then, is the half-year point. For wedding anniversaries, the traditional gift for one year is paper, while the modern gift allegedly is plastics (!). When next July rolls around, though, what's the appropriate gift for our one-year relationship?

Vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, father of a lesbian daughter, in a 2000 debate with Senator Joe Lieberman:

The fact of the matter is, we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. And I think that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It's really no one else's business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard.

The next step, then... is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction, if you will, of the relationship. That matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy.

Fast-forward just a few years later as, during an interview with the Denver Post this past Friday, the now vice president made an about-face as he said he would support a presidential push to ban same-sex marriage.

What I said in 2000 was that the question of whether or not some sort of status, legal status or sanction ought to be granted in the case of a relationship between two individuals of the same sex was historically a matter the states had decided and resolved, and that is the way I preferred it.

[But] at this stage, obviously, the president is going to have to make a decision in terms of what administration policy is on this particular provision, and I will support whatever decision he makes. [The president has, of course, said that he will support a constitutional amendment, if necessary, whatever that latter qualification means.]

What I find even more amazing is the response of Ted Halaby, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, who has stated that the vice president's message has been misunderstood: "They are looking at it as an anti-gay position, but it is not." According to a later article in the Post, "Halaby explained that Cheney, in the past, has said that states--not the federal government--should decide the legality of gay marriage. [Halaby] said Cheney's position has evolved..." (so the evolution of the Republican Party is towards the abrogation of states' rights?)

Halaby went on to say that Cheney's new position is a policy decision, not a stance for or against homosexuality, one, in fact, that should be appreciated in the context of Republican diversity. "We respect a diversity of opinion in the Republican Party," Halaby said. "The Republican Party is the party of inclusion."

Even when the diversity of opinion is in the form of inherently contradictory positions held by the vice president.

Evolution. Diversity. Inclusion. I obviously need a new dictionary, because these words seem to have been redefined in the past four years.

Jeff and I have been planning to take a long Valentine's weekend (which turns out to be President's Day weekend as well, a Monday holiday for me) trip to Manhattan, and today we finally got around to doing more than talking about it.

Jeff already had tickets to see the Rufus Wainwright concert that weekend, and even now he's plotting out the other shows we hope to see while there: Avenue Q definitely, and probably one or two others from among Wicked (the cast recording to which I downloaded this evening from iTunes, and we're listening to it right now), The Boy From Oz and Rent. I had really wanted to see Take Me Out, but it seems to have closed its run at the Walter Kerr Theater.

For now, I've made reservations for us at the Roger Williams, just so we'll be sure to have a place to stay that holiday weekend. We may try to stay at either the Inn on 23rd or the Abingdon Guest House, more in the heart of things in Chelsea and the West Village, respectively, but unlike hotels these bed and breakfasts require a four-night minimum advance reservation. Since we're only planning to stay three nights, we'll have to wait until closer to the date to see if they still have rooms available and would be willing to accommodate a shorter stay.

We're also hoping to meet some of the New York bloggers for a drink (like Tin Man, Matt and Mike, such the cuties), though since both Faustus and I now have boyfriends (his and mine), I suppose I'll be foregoing the free sex offered in exchange for the donation I made to the Generator Theatre last July. Just as well, since the 26-year-old keeps me pretty worn out anyway.

Earlier today, Jeff and I went to see Big Fish at Shirlington. This magical, enchanting story of a young man trying to come to terms with his relationship with his estranged, dying father, and to understand the truth of his father's life, seemingly hidden behind--or within--a series of tall tales, has entered my personal list of the best movies of all time. It certainly had the strongest emotional impact upon me of any movie I can recall in quite some time, magnified, perhaps, by its coming so close upon the heels of my own father's death, to the extent that several times I was worried that audible, choking sobs were going to join the flood of tears streaming down my cheeks; I managed to avoid making too much noise, though I was visibly trembling and clutching Jeff's hand for support. Even as the final credits finished, I was still so emotionally overcome that I almost was unable to leave the theater, and was still continuing to break into tears as we made our way to dinner just up the street.

[Apropos of nothing, this is my 400th entry.]

The list of DC metro area gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, etc. blogs and journals has been updated; in the past two weeks I've identified another few couple dozen or so entries, for a current total of 75 76 93 94, and this evening I also added links to the XML/RSS feeds for the more than two-thirds for which I could locate them.

P.S. And if you don't yet have an RSS feed, you should, if possible. All LiveJournal users automatically have an RSS feed at http://www.livejournal.com/users/username/data/rss and it's incredibly easy to generate one for Movable Type as well by just creating a new index file (and you can just cut and paste the RSS 2.0 template available on the Movable Type site after you choose "Create new index template" from your Movable Type "Templates" tab).

For my own part, these days I follow so many blogs that I find it much easier to use an RSS aggregator to keep up with them (my favorite right now is Bloglines, which runs in the web browser, so doesn't require a separate executable to be installed, which means I can even use it at work on my government computer); for blogs without RSS feeds that I can't readily follow in the aggregator, I often don't get around to them for days at a time, if at all.

By the way, Scriptygoddess has a nice primer (from early last year, so not all the included links work, but the underlying information is still valid) on How to's: What is XML? And What is RSS? Why Do I Want It Anyways?

Four white Ikea bookcases line the walls of the media room, three more form a white wall facing the bed in the bedroom down the hall, while yet another in the entry greets me at the front door; on their shelves books lie on top of the standing rows. In the gaps between the cases, piles of other books begin to lean like tiny Towers of Pisa, while in the corners of the bedroom and on tables and desks throughout the condo stacked books stand almost like paper furniture. In the kitchen a row of cookbooks two high line the wall atop one cabinet next to the stove, while others hide behind the door of the microwave stand. And, in the hall and bedroom closet, boxes contain dozens and dozens more--including several in Russian that I probably can no longer even read--while only yards away up the hallway outside my entry door is the condo's library, so full of books that a sign went up two days ago asking residents not to donate any more. There's not an empty shelf in the place for Jeff, who in the meantime has started his own corner stack of books and row of magazine files for his New Yorker subscription and a smattering of GQ, Vanity Fair and Cond� Nast Traveler.

So what did we go and do tonight? Meeting after work at Pentagon City, heading first for dinner at CPK, we then hit the Borders next door, with a coupon in hand for 10% off our entire purchase, and walked out after a couple hours with even more books.

OK, so at least it was only three this time, two of which--The Da Vinci Code, already on sale before the coupon, and Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe--we both have been wanting to read, and another--Eragon, a fantasy novel written by then 15-year-old Christopher Paolini--just for me.

Just don't ask me where we're going to put them when we've finished reading them.

I've just added a new item to my Amazon Wish List, thanks to an entry in Boing Boing today: Barbie and Ken as Arwen and Aragorn.

I'm serious. I have to have this. I'm no Waylon Smithers with his "Malibu Stacy" obsession, but I do own a few Barbies: specifically, Barbie and Ken as unnamed Star Trek (the original series) crewmen, with Barbie looking sort of like Yeoman Janice Rand; Barbie and Ken as The X-Files's Scully and Mulder; Barbie and Ken as Morgan LeFay and Merlin; and the Barbie Fairy of the Forest and Fairy of the Garden (for my fairy and elf collection).

Funniest, though, is the reaction of one of the reviewers on Amazon's site, "lotr_gurl":

For shame mattel. You've taken one of the greatest epics in history and made it into a brabie doll!! Don't you even care that barbie stands for a materialistic snob and that Aragorn is no pampered "Ken"? Arwen may be a princess, but she is loyal to her man and Aragorn may be a king, but it is he unique qualities as a friend and ranger that make him so great. If I was ever given this set as a gift, I would personally burn it and dispose of the ashes. Lord of the Rings is no barbie doll matter. It is that of friendship, loyalty, strength, and honesty. For shame.

Wonder what lotr_gurl thinks about the Gollum plushie, the Pubs of Middle Earth shot glasses or the entire line of, *gasp*, Lord of the Rings Bobbleheads?

Continuing the tale of our shopping trip on Saturday evening, after our Gap spree we moved on to Filene's Basement, where I found a very nice Kenneth Cole watch in a polished silver finish with a black polyurethane band; I have a brown and gold Armani I wear most often, but I was looking for a black and/or gray watch to better coordinate when I wear black, gray or blue clothing. The new watch is much more attractive in real life than in any of the photos I was able to find, especially the silvery white face; metal finishes seem to photograph badly, making shopping for any kind of jewelry online risky.

I really love watches, but have had some bad luck with them over the years. When I was living in Boston, for example, I had a collection of a dozen or so, all of which were stolen when my apartment was broken into just two weeks before I was scheduled to leave to come to DC. (The thing that made me most upset about the break-in was not the stuff that was taken but that the thieves smoked cigarettes and ground out the butts on my floor and rummaged in my refrigerator, drinking a couple of beers and eating a piece of my leftover birthday cake!) Additionally, when I was younger the battery-powered watches I owned often would stop running within a few days and seemed to drain quickly (my mom, though, had an even odder problem in that early battery-powered watches used to start running backwards when she would wear them); with quartz movements, though, I don't seem to have that problem.

In probably unrelated matters, though for some reason this discussion reminds me, my normal body temperature is closer to 96.8° than 98.6°, and I also seem to exude some kind of corrosive enzyme; the doorknobs in the house where I grew up are pitted and scarred, especially the one I used most, on the inside of my bedroom door, and my mother says she could always tell when I'd been the last person to drive the car before her because the steering wheel would be slightly tacky as though it had been melted. What a lousy, low-level superpower, though, not much better than Meg's fingernails in the "Super Griffins" segment of the Family Guy "Viewer Mail #1" episode.

Chris: "We demand obedience!"
Meg: "Or else!" Her fingernails grow.
Guy: "Is that all you can do?"
Meg scratches him on the arm.
Guy: "Ow! That kinda hurt! Is that bleeding? Well, I guess it's all right, ouch though!"

In conjunction with our trip to the salon yesterday afternoon for my hair cut, Jeff and I indulged in an evening of shopping downtown. We arrived in town early, so decided we'd go to Borders beforehand. On the way to Borders from where we parked, we passed by the Gap. Jeff suggested, and I concurred--since I've told him in the past that I'm not much of a fan of the Gap--that he would go later, while I was at my appointment.

When we left Borders and walked to the Grooming Lounge, I told Jeff that he could go on and I'd call him on the mobile when I was finished. He said that he'd come in for a bit first. I think he really just wanted his complimentary espresso. As we sat waiting for my appointment, though, I told him that if he waited for me there, I would go with him to the Gap afterwards. He did, and I did.

And now I have to publicly retract the negative things I've thought or said about that chain. We arrived to find they were having a terrific winter sale (some prices in the store were lower even than the ones on the online sales site). By the time we left, probably an hour later, I'd found a number of things I liked and ended up outspending Jeff by about $10. I bought two pair of khakis (one black and one "air force gray"), two nice long wool scarves (here's one, in "cloud" and "sunshine"), two cute wool and wool-cotton knit winter caps (which I now tend to call, perhaps incorrectly, "toques." As a kid, we called them "toboggans," but in college I was told that this must be either a regionalism or a familyism, since a toboggan is only a sled. Yet now I see "toboggan hat" used on a number of Internet shopping sites, at least for the wool hats with pom-pons on the end. So, what do you call the wool close-fitting caps worn in winter, like the one in the picture?), two pair of funky striped socks, two pair of nice boxer briefs in olive and charcoal, and two heavy wool baseball caps in heather gray and olive.

Ok, there is one thing for which I'm still not too happy with the Gap. While I was originally drafting this entry, I logged onto gap.com to see what they called those wool caps (only to find out now that they call them simply "caps" and "hats") and that new browser window froze when I clicked on the Gap's Winter Sale link. I moved back to the first browser window and quickly copied the text I'd put in the field for this entry--just in case. A moment later I was feeling self-congratulatory, because the browser crashed. I opened a new blog entry screen and hit Ctrl-V. Nada. Somehow, though, even though I'd copied the text, it was gone anyway when the Gap page crashed the browser. So I had to recreate this entry, which was obviously much better the first time.

For Christmas, Jeff gave me a gift certificate for a haircut at the Grooming Lounge; he had been there previously and had written positively of the experience and I had expressed interest in checking it out as well. With shaggy hair badly in need of a trim, I made an appointment for yesterday afternoon, and Jeff accompanied me downtown (where we also did some shopping, about which I'll blog in subsequent entries).

It was an interesting, indulgent experience. A trip to the Grooming Lounge includes offers of choices of beverage from espresso to root beer. And the haircut itself includes a shampoo, conditioning and scalp massage beforehand; a hot face towel to relax the skin post-shampoo; and a shoulder massage after.

I remarked to Jeff as we left, though, about how "straight" the place felt, almost but not quite unsettlingly so (if that makes sense); he agreed, but noted that it had had a different feel the times he'd been there (during my visit, all the staff cutting hair were men, whereas Jeff has had his hair cut there by women). I think the shop actually aims for that feel--they boast that they've been featured in GQ and Playboy, for example, and the web site tenders an invitation to stop by to "watch some ESPN," while the interior of dark wood feels like a cigar bar. When we arrived, there was a game of some sort on one of the TV screens in the waiting area, but the sound was off; rather, an emjoyable and eclectic selection of music, from the Doors to Frank Sinatra, played softly. Near the end of my appointment, though, the sound to the game was turned up and it became the topic of conversation among the staff and a few visitors; I kept expecting Michael, my--um, what do you call the person who cuts your hair at a place like this? "Stylist" seems too foofy yet "barber" feels too lowbrow. Ah, his card gives the answer.--"grooming expert" to ask me what I thought of the game or whom I was for, and frankly I had no idea what sport was even on, much less which teams were involved. He did ask me if I play golf, though, but fortunately didn't ask me any questions about the "little woman."

The experience overall, though, was a satisfying one, and it was very nice to be pampered like that. Michael spent really quite a lot of time on the haircut (I was in the chair close to an hour), which I think turned out well; Jeff seems to like it, at least.

Here's a little warning for Metro riders in the DC area: don't put your cell phone near your farecard. As I noted yesterday, Jeff and I went downtown on New Year's Eve to meet his college friends for dinner. After we entered the Metro at Pentagon City, I put my $4.00 farecard in my jacket pocket. When we arrived at the Dupont Circle station, the farecard was rejected at the turnstile. The station attendant checked it out, told me that the card had been completely erased, and asked if I'd had it near my cellphone. Indeed, my cellphone was in the same pocket as I had placed the farecard en route; apparently, though this information doesn't seem to be printed on the card itself, their vending machines or any official WMATA source that I've been able to discover (nor does a general Google search turn up any information), a cell phone can completely erase the information on a Metro farecard's magnetic strip. And this must happen frequently enough for the station attendants to make this the first question they ask when your card turns up erased.

A few weeks ago, my State Department ID badge, which also has a magnetic strip, stopped working as well and it was discovered to have been erased. I'm now wondering whether my cell phone--which I often wear in a pocket on my messenger bag in such a way that it rests on my chest, where my ID card dangles on a lanyard around my neck--was responsible for this too.

It's just as I feared would happen. While my TiVo wasn't wearing a housecoat when I got home this evening, and had not in fact recorded Jerry Springer, it had done something just as bad: it had recorded two episodes of Maury and one of The View.

While I apparently have their TiVo, somewhere in middle America a frumpy housewife in curlers and her disheveled, stained t-shirt wearing, unemployed husband (I keep picturing Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances) are sitting in front of the TiVo in their trailer, while enjoying a couple of Budweisers, and wondering why it keeps recording Sex in the City, Will and Grace and the Biography channel special on Judy Garland.

Who better to be part of one of my experiences of synchronicity than Brian Greene. Two days ago I wrote about him, then a day later the New York Times published an op-ed he authored about the nature of time.

One of the most interesting points he makes is that with a more scientific understanding of time (as opposed to our more intuitive but inherently subjective experience of it), it's perhaps even possible "in moments of loss [to take] comfort from the knowledge that all events exist eternally in the expanse of space and time, with the partition into past, present and future being a useful but subjective organization." How zen, and how beautiful.

In high school I was a math whiz and have continued to be fascinated by mathematics and contemporary physics, though in college I made a decision not to pursue them formally, going down the social sciences road instead. Sometimes, though, I wish I'd taken that other path, for the sheer intellectual joy for their work that so many mathematicians and physicists seem to express. On the other hand, in some parallel universe, Thom-2 did (and Brian Greene-2 is blogging about him).

Jeff already has written about what we did, with whom and where for New Year's Eve. I'll admit that with New Year's Eve being his and my reunion after a week apart over Christmas, I was kind of hoping for a quiet evening alone together. However, I also wanted to support Jeff's meet-up with his college friends, who were in town only through the next morning, making New Year's Eve really his only opportunity to get together with them here in DC. And he and I did get to spend a wonderful lazy afternoon together, as I was able to get home at 2:30 when our office closed surprisingly early for the day.

Dinner was wonderful. I love Ethiopian food, but just don't go out for it much; this was probably the first time in more than a year. Much of the rest of the evening, though, was smoky, crowded and loud, and the lines for the bar were so long that Jeff and I only got to drink one extremely overpriced (and only average in taste) appletini (cf. here and here), missing out on a champagne toast altogether. I also felt a little like I was intruding upon their get-together, a sort of fifth wheel.

The actual turning of the new year itself at midnight was also a little anticlimactic. One of our number having heard that there would be fireworks over the Mall (though neither Jeff nor I had heard or read anything of it locally), we left the bar at 11:45 in order to try to get to a good vantage point for the display. So at midnight the five of us were walking down a random DC street, and Jeff and I were able to give each other only the merest pecks to welcome in the new year together. Still, the sky was clear, the air was fresh and brisk and we were together, which was what I most wanted.

And, truth be told, I'm not really a big New Year's Eve celebrator or New Year's Day resolutionist anyway. In terms of my own soul-searching and intuitive sense of the cycles of the year, I tend to be in tune more with the old Celtic calendar, with its year turning occurring on Samhain at the end of October. Still, I did feel something significant and symbolic in ending one calendar year and beginning another hand-in-hand with Jeff, regardless of where we were or what we were doing at the time.

So it's clich�, but 2003 for me really was "the best of times... the worst of times."

The worst thing that has ever happened to me, the death of my father, occurred this past year. In fact, I suspect I have yet to plumb the depths of what that really means for me. Sometimes it seems that I've pushed that event to a corner of my mind, still a little numb and unbelieving. For example, I often find myself speaking of him in the present tense, and having to stop and correct myself. At other times, though, the reality, its import and my grief all hit me squarely, and become almost palpable in their physical impact, nearly making me gasp.

Yet 2003 was the year I also met Jeff, who provided an unexpected and unexpectedly fresh new beginning to what I, alone at 40, had begun to think was moribund, my romantic life and ability to love or be loved. In a relatively short six months, I've come to care for him as deeply as anyone I've loved before, yet with what feels--at least to me--like a more relaxed and less frantic, more interdependent and less codependent experience than (many of) my previous relationships. I'm trying to live with him and, I hope, reasonably successfully so, according to the philosophy of two songs, one from each of two favorite musicals to which he introduced me, "No Day But Today" from Rent and "For Now" from Avenue Q, the latter a truly hopeful song even as it notes that the good in life, no less than the bad, is transitory.