Think I’m the only one? No, I’m not. New York State Senator Diane J. Savino, a Democrat from Staten Island who is right in the middle of all the brou-ha-ha in Albany, got so fed up with the pure hatred spilling from these people, she put a box outside her office door, with a sign on it reading, “Bigots and homophobes please put your literature here.” When asked why, she replied, “If you could see and hear some of the rhetoric you would appreciate my sign.”

I know damn well my words won’t change anyone’s mind. A mind has to be open in order to even consider making changes. I also know that I really don’t need to make my case. The bumbling idiots who tried to defend California’s Prop 8 basically did that for me. Yes, I said the defendants. In case you haven’t been following, the case presented by those fools was so weak that even some of the expert witnesses for the defense admitted the weakness of their arguments on the witness stand. In their appeal, the Prop 8 supporters tried to claim that Judge Vaughn Walker was not impartial, because it turned out he himself is gay (that silly argument was also shot down). But in actuality, the case presented by the Prop 8 supports was so weak that any judge who ruled in their favor who have had his or her legal training questioned. So despite the fact that the arguments against marriage equality have already been shot to pieces (by people much more eloquent than I), maybe if I spill my guts, I can actually get some work done around the house.

So to all you haters out there:

To the Traditionalists, who claim, “Humankind has been in existence for thousands of years, and no society anywhere on the planet has ever had a tradition of allowing same-sex marriages.” To you, I counter with, “I could throw a dart at a timeline, and make the claim, ‘Humankind has been in existence for thousands of years, and no society anywhere on the planet has ever had electricity.’ Does that make electricity wrong? Should we turn off all the power just because it wasn’t ‘traditional’ at some point?”

To the Parentalists, who claim marriage is about child-rearing, and gay marriage endangers the children. To you, I say that, although they frequently go hand-in-hand, marriage and procreation are actually two different things. Look it up. And to those who say that only the biological mother and the biological father can raise a child “properly”, I say to you, “MY kids’ biological mother was called to heaven by God, so your little ideal situation ain’t never gonna happen in this family. And I have it on good authority that she isn’t the first mother (or father) to die and leave small children behind. So stop trying to shove that this-is-the-one-and-only-way bullshit down our throats.”

To the Slippery-Slope-ists, who claim that allowing they gays to marry will lead to legalized polygamy, marriage between species, and God-knows-what, I want to say something like, “My partner and I REALLY love our toaster, but it’s just not ready to commit,” just to point out how silly you sound. In fact, I will say that, because you Santorum-lovin’ fools really do sound that stupid.

To the Christians, who pretty much take all of the above, wrap it in a package with paper that reads, “If you allow gay marriage, the government will force us to perform them in our churches,” and then tie it all up with a bow that says something to the effect of, “The love between a man and a woman, bound by marriage, is like the love between an individual with God.” I want to say so many things:

1. Oh yeah? Do you do with God what you do with your wife? And if so, does she know about it? Either you and God are cheating on her behind her back, or it’s some kind of sick, three-way, polygamist marriage between mortals and an immortal. Just the kind of stuff Rick Santorum is working so hard to keep us from
2. I, for one, don’t want to get married in your church, and don’t give a damn who you chose to allow or refuse to get married at your altar. This is about my CIVIL rights, and has nothing to do with you and the god you pray to on Saturday, Sunday, or five times a day seven days a week.
3. For those Christians who keep spouting claims of “A church in Canada was defrocked because they wouldn’t rent their hall to a gay couple for their wedding reception,” or “A heterosexual couple in England was not permitted to adopt a baby because they refused to teach that gay marriage is OK,”": PRODUCE SOME FUCKING PROOF THAT ANY OF THESE EVENTS ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE. I know it’s been 60 years since Joe McCarthy claimed to have a list of ’57 known communists’. But some of us actually studied history, and those of us that did know that your claims are not just lies, but that your style is plagiaristic.
4.  And finally dear churches, stay the FUCK out of my government, or start paying taxes.

Finally, to the Benefitists, who claim that allowing me and Brian to marry will drain the Social Security coffers more quickly, because the government will have to pay benefits to the survivor when one of us dies. To you, I say, “You’re right. It will take money from Social Security which could have been spent on YOU.” It’s a benefit that you receive that you’re trying to deny me. It’s called equality.

It is the so-called Christians that make me saddest of all today, because they claim to follow this man/god who only really ever tried to teach one thing: “Love each other”. But these miserable, stupid, vile, mean-spirited, close-minded hate-filled mudslingers have chosen to twist and mold and misinterpret this simple lesson into whatever they want it to be. And then they stand behind it and tell me I’m “unholy” for disagreeing with them. I leave you with the words of Mahatma Gandhi, who is a wise and famous non-Christian, so you blithering idiots have probably never heard of him:

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.”

Timmy will now step down from his soap box…

One very cold Friday night (it was January, I think), Brian was out of town, Logan and Heidee were already off at college, and Benjamin was spending the night at a friend’s house. Timmy was a free man! Those of you who don’t have kids or some other person(s) that are in your care don’t really know what a rare treat that is. Now, there have been times when opportunities such as this were staring me right in the face, and I was too damn tired to take advantage. But not this night. Look out, Columbus. Here comes TCole!

Went out to this bar we had been to once or twice. Nice space, but it seemed to be dying. (and in fact, did die just a few months later) I ordered a drink and wandered around, looking for familiar faces. I spotted one (and only one) which did look vaguely familiar. But I had to be eye-to-eye with him before I realized who it actually was.

I have a friend who’s originally from Columbus, but who moved to New York after college. This guy’s best friend still lives here in Cowtown, and the two of them are like brothers from a different mother. The friend who still lives here in C-bus has never been especially warm to me. But he was always cordial; never rude or mean or anything like that.

So we’re in this bar, about two feet apart, and we both finally realize who the other is. He says, “Oh, you’re that guy who has the kids, aren’t you?” He doesn’t say, “Oh, you’re Tim…” He says, “Oh you’re that guy who has the kids…” That right there should have been a sign to me that something was up. But call me naive; call me overly eager to connect with SOMEONE, ANYONE I knew on my rare night out. I invite the guy to sit down at a table and chat.

What occurred over the next 45-to-60 minutes was the most bizarre, surreal, out-of-left-field (my kids would say “random”) conversation I think I’ve ever been a part of. As soon as we sit down and finish exchanging some pleasantries, this guy takes aim at me like a pirate ship firing on an enemy vessel, cannons belching at my broadsides. He immediately tells me what a horrible, pathetic, deplorable excuse for a pseudo-parent I was for being out in a bar when I should be at home, saving those poor children from starvation/rape/disease/fire/aliens/Bible beaters/etc./etc./etc. It was unTHINKable that I could leave the house with those babies unprotected at home. I had no right to even consider a social life of my own–not now, not tomorrow, not EVER, from what I could gather.

Now, in my 15-plus years as a stepparent, I’ve met my share of people (most of them well-intentioned) who feel the need to share their child-rearing wisdom with me. One of my exes literally couldn’t help himself when it came to dispensing parenting advice–to the point where I had to put our friendship on hold for a time. One of our best friends continues to share his expertise with us, although he hands it out with a light-hearted, “and of course you know I’m an expert in these matters.”

But here I was, sitting with this guy I barely knew–a guy who couldn’t even remember my fucking NAME–who felt not just comfortable, but COMPELLED to berate me for stepping foot outside my house. This wasn’t the friendly advice of a member of our inner circle. This was a goddam SERMON from an asshole I barely knew. And you know what? I actually engaged him. As I mentioned before, I actually had to put some distance between my ex and me until he could learn to keep his opinions about my kids to himself. But I let this near-stranger have his word, and I’m not entirely sure why.

Mind you, I didn’t sit there silently. I pushed and rebutted and made him defend his points. But the fact that I even gave him the opportunity to criticize (nay, vilify) me still strikes me as odd–almost as odd as the fact that he was criticizing me in the first place. And let me take a step back here and give you some more details of his criticism. Never was there an attempt on his part to gain understanding of my situation, either short- or long-term. No attempt to walk a mile in my shoes. Not once did he say (even in the early, semi-friendly moments), “So, what are your kids up to tonight?” He just launched right in to me for being out. Period. When I attempted to explain that we weren’t talking about helpless little babies in diapers here, but teenagers who were all either off at college or spending the night at a friend’s, you know what I got in response? “Doesn’t matter.” Seriously. Doesn’t matter. I should be at home, waiting for that inevitable 911 call.

And at what point, I asked him, could Brian and I expect to be released from the shackles tying us to our children’s cribs? At what point would they finally be old enough, responsible enough, independent enough, adult enough that we could venture out into the that great, big world called “self”?

Never.

Never?

Never.

“So,” I asked him. “Where are YOUR parents right now?” Are they at home, waiting for that phone to ring?

“Damn right they are. Aren’t yours?”

As I mentioned, this was January, so my response to his question about my parents was, “No, they’re spending the winter in Florida, like they always do.”

“But, they’re sitting AT HOME in Florida, where they could be reached.”

“I don’t know that,” I said. “For all I know, they’re out attending some drunken, drugged-up orgy. You know, kinda like one of those wild 70′s parties where the men toss their car keys in a big bowl when they walk in, and the pills are passed around in serving trays.”

That really set him off. How dare I say such horrible things about my parents? What gave me the right to make such horrible accusations? My response, “Who says they’re so horrible? If they’re getting high and getting laid at 70, more power to ‘em.”

BOOM!

“DAMMIT, you can’t talk like that about the people who RAISED you!” (his voice raised to an attention-gathering level at this point)

“What they do on their own time is THEIR business, and not mine.” (my voice only slightly raised, and even then, only to prove that I’m ready to stand toe-to-toe with him) “They’re people with LIVES, for God’s sake. Not just parents who live for nothing but their kids.”

By now, this fucker is livid, and is unable to push his point any further in any sort of intelligent manner. So naturally, I launch my counter-attack. I hit him from several angles at once, and refused to allow him to refute one point before firing at him with another. “How drunk are you?” “Or are you high? What are you on?” “Do you have some weird Oedipus complex going on?” “Did your parents sexually abuse you?” “Are you really so ashamed of the self-centered, hedonistic life you lead that you think the ONLY way to be a decent person is to give up your own life and focus solely on another?”

I hit him so hard and so fast that his only rebuttal was to turn the conversation “normal” again, by reverting to the type of chit-chat that most people would have engaged in in the first place. He talked about our mutual friend, (and BEGGED me never to tell him about this conversation) vacations, work, whatever. I’m not normally the type that gets pleasure out of making someone uncomfortable. But this guy got what was coming to him. Because I never would let the conversation get completely away from the who child-rearing topic, he finally announced (in a huff) that he was leaving. I flashed him a brilliant smile and said, “Have a great night.”

I always admire the way Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” can have a guest like Mike Huckabee on his show, rip the guy’s points to shreds, prove his adversary to be just shy of idiotic, and still shake the guy’s hand and say “thanks for coming”. I think I was in that Jon Stewart zone on that particular night. So I guess that answers why I chose to engage this guy and not kick him to the curb right away. But that still doesn’t answer why he chose to launch in to that tirade. Almost makes me want to bump into him again. Too bad I have to work tomorrow…

We packed a lot into a very short trip. Saturday we went to Baltimore to see Steven and Dale’s new house (which they’re going to move into just as soon as the current owners repair the damage from the fire that occurred just days after the sale) and then visited the little (REALLY little, but trying) Saturday farmers’ market just around the corner. We continued Brian’s tradition of visiting college football stadia. First, to Annapolis to see Navy’s stadium, then wander around downtown. I’ve always heard Annapolis was really beautiful, and it fully lived up to its billing. New England style meets Southern charm. The perfect weather didn’t hurt one bit, either. We also hopped over to College Park to see what we could of Maryland’s stadium. The latest renovations (everyone’s renovating their stadiums these days, you know) have surrounded the place with parking garages and party pavilions, so it was hard to see much. Saturday night we went and saw “Inception”. Go. Just go see it. Then go a second time to make sense of what you saw. Seriously–I’ve heard lots of comparisons to “The Matrix,” and they’re right. Not that this movie is a copy, by any stretch. It’s just the first movie since “The Matrix” that really makes you think, “What just happened?”

Sunday was non-stop leisurely activities from morning til night. We had breakfast with our friends Joe and Eddie (former Columbus boys who now live in suburban Maryland) in the city. Then we drove down to Mount Vernon (Brian had never been) for a quiet stroll around the grounds and to watch the Potomac glide by. I made sure to find the key to the Bastille, which I missed on my last visit, back in high school. The we drove over to Manassas for a late lunch/early dinner, and then it was off to Jiffy Lube Live for the concert.

Yes, that is the name…Jiffy Lube Live.  When first conceived, it was going to be the Stoneridge Pavilion.  Then Nissan bought the sponsorship rights before it even opened, and so from day 1 it was the Nissan Pavilion at Stoneridge. Then just this January, Nissan was replaced by Jiffy Lube. There comes a point where naming rights become a bit silly. I think we’ve crossed that line here.

I have to say, I was probably more excited about CSN than Tom Petty. I mean, c’mon…these guys are LEGENDS. Think of how many years they’ve been around and the stuff they’ve sung about. But legendary status doesn’t equate to immortality. David Crosby can still belt out a tune, but Stills and Nash have lost a step or two. The incredible harmonies that make me love those guys just weren’t there. But it was still great to see them live. Tom Petty gave me exactly what I expected.  A rockin’ (but not to hard) show, with a nice mix of old favorites peppered with a few tunes from the new album. They threw in some nice twists, with a sweet mellow version of “Learning to Fly”, and the visual effects added punch without overtaking the band.

But of course, this blog isn’t a diary. I don’t mean for it to be a simple checklist of friends visited, sites viewed, and concerts attended. It’s supposed to go deeper, right? So take a dive with me…

First, we couldn’t help but notice as we made our way out to Jiffy Lube Live (snicker) that we were leaving suburban DC and entering The South. Yes, it’s still just a few miles from the capital. And there were still the same stores and restaurants and strip malls. But something had changed. It’s not even something you can put your finger on, but it’s what makes the South different from the North. It just feels different. I’m not going to tell you what causes that feeling, because I don’t know what it is. If you know, please tell me. Is it the accents? The clothes? The hairstyles? The body language? Tell me, because I really don’t know. Other than the noticeable increase in smokers (ick) I just can’t put a finger on it.

The other thing I brought back from the weekend was a series of quotes. The trip was full of ‘em, and they’re worth sharing.

Quote #1 – our dear friends Dale and Steven are currently living with their friend (who has become our friend) Chris, in Columbia, MD. Chris has this fantastic, sprawling ranch house, which he’s put a lot of effort into making very party-friendly. So much so that lots of their friends have their parties there, and the place is actually know in their circle as “The Barbie Dream House”. (those gays!) One of their friends is turning 50, and is having his birthday party there in a couple of weeks. This friend always needs to feel like his parties have something “special” to offer. Apparently, this friend’s definition of “special” includes barbecue served with champagne cocktails. Oh, and he never uses the word “special.” (because that’s not “special” enough) So he calls it “precious”.

So Steven and Chris are loathing this upcoming party, and decided to take the initiative and propose an alternate menu to their friend. They settled on a nice menu of fajitas and paella. Easy to prepare, easy for the guests to get just what they want, tasty, etc., etc., etc. Now they just have to sell their friend on the idea. “Easy,” I tell them, “Just tell him it’s not ‘typical’ Mexican.  It’s ‘Precious Mexican’, or ‘PreshMex’ for short.”  So there you have Quote #1. (World’s longest buildup, world’s shortest quote.)

Quote #2 As we were stuck in traffic someplace, sometime over the weekend, I read the following bumper sticker on the vehicle in front of us:

I am a St-Something-Or-Other High School honor roll parent

Veddy veddy interesting, don’t you think? We’ve been seeing bumper stickers like this for years. But up until now, they’ve always read, “My child is and honor roll student at…” Notice how this one takes the child out of the equation altogether. It’s all about the parent. So much for living vicariously…

Quote #3 – at breakfast on Sunday, we had this funny waiter who talked just like Bruce from “Family Guy”. (thick Southern accent, heavy on the lisp) He kept missing my glass (and only my glass) every time he came around to refill water. Finally, he said, “I don’t know why I keep missing yours.  I must be shocked and appalled by your beauty.”  Appalled?  Did he just say appalled? Is that supposed to be a compliment?

In April of this year, my father willfully and deliberately allowed a doctor to slice open his head and destroy his hearing.

Intrigued?  It’s true, and personally, I think the full story lives up to the teaser. Read on…

At (or around, it’s not certain) the age of 10, my dad had a horrible bout of the mumps. There was a point where they weren’t sure he’d survive. Obviously, he did, but it left him completely deaf in his left ear, and with reduced hearing in his right. It was really never a big deal. Occasionally, as kids, my sister and I could get away with a little something we shouldn’t because he was facing the wrong direction and couldn’t hear something. But what he lacked in hearing he made up for with peripheral vision that bordered on the superhuman. So it was never really a big deal, and people outside the family really wouldn’t know he had any hearing issues unless he told them. He bought a hearing aid about 20 years ago, when he began to notice a little bit of loss in his right ear, but decided the boost in hearing wasn’t worth the effort.

However, over the past two or three years, the hearing in his right ear has begun to degrade, faster and more noticeably. He started going through more and more hearing aids, each more powerful than the last, but with very little result. By Christmas of last year, he had lost around 80% of the hearing in his right ear, and while he could understand you fine if you were speaking directly towards his right ear and spoke clearly, it became very apparent that he was completely missing out on group discussions, (such as at holidays) and was just nodding his head every now and then to feign comprehension or agreement, or smiling when the group laughed at a joke.

What do you do when you go through six different hearing aids and none seems to make things any better? His doctor offered a suggestion–a cochlear implant. Although a radical solution, a cochlear implant isn’t new or untested. And by God, is it amazing. The surgeon plants a receiver inside your head. Leading from this receiver are several fiber-optic wires, which are literally wrapped around the auditory–or cochlear–nerve (the nerve leading from the ear to the brain). The receiver sends electrical impulses through this nerve, to your brain, just like your ear normally does.

Now, if this receiver is inside your head, how the hell can you hear anything? There’s another piece to this whole contraption, which is external. There’s a sound processor, which looks a lot like a hearing aid. The sound processor sits over your ear, and actually does the hearing for you. This processor takes in sounds, and sends them through a wire to a transmitter. The transmitter sits on the outside of your head, and with the help of a magnet, sits right up against the receiver inside your head and passes the signal to it. It’s really, truly amazing technology. In the weeks between Dad’s decision to go ahead with the implant and the actual surgery, I did a lot of reading about it. I learned that the sound you hear isn’t exactly the same as your natural hearing. It’s a very electronic sound. It reminds me a lot of the Cylon centurions from the original “Battlestar Galactica” back in the day. PBS did a documentary on cochlear implants, hosted by Alan Alda, and on their web site, they have examples of what it sounds like to hear with one. Have a look (or rather, a listen):

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1205/features/Interactive/intro1.htm

We were told that the electronic quality of the sound is a limitation of the software, not the hardware. The hardware is already advanced enough to replicate sounds perfectly, but the software just can’t handle all the inputs at this point in time. The nice thing is that as the software improves, the patient can go to the doctor and get an upgrade to improve the hearing experience. We learned this first-hand once my Dad’s incision was done healing and he went in to try out the hearing device for the first time. When they first fired up the device, everything sounded like church bells to him. That was fixed with some very simple software tweaks.  Over the next several weeks, my parents made several trips to the audio therapist to have the software additional refinements. In June, at Benjamin’s graduation party, (which was outside) my Dad was visibly bothered by the noise of the wind blowing in the background. One more tweak at the doc’s office, and that problem was resolved.

We’re told things are actually much easier for someone like my father, who has 70 years of actual hearing under his belt. He can easily distinguish between the sound of a fan and the sound of water running in the sink. (think about it–they’re really very similar sounds, but we’ve learned to tell the difference) Children who are born deaf and receive cochlear implants don’t have that experience to draw from, so learning to interpret all these sounds (especially the difference between “foreground” and “background” noise)  is much more difficult, and takes pretty intensive training.

I’ve also read that, at this point in time, listening to music with a cochlear implant is a waste of time. Music is WAY too complex for the software to handle now. Talking on the phone is also supposed to be very difficult, but can be mastered with lots of practice. (which my Dad is failing to do)

So really, truly astonishing this is. But at the time Dad was considering this, I had to ask…can you really give up what’s left of your natural hearing for this? What if the procedure doesn’t work? What if the implant doesn’t work as well as advertised? What if…? What if…? What if…?

Of course, the decision was my father’s to make, not mine. But I couldn’t help but put myself in his shoes and hypothesize. What would I do? It really brought out a lot of feelings of fragility and mortality in me. Was I being overdramatic? Well, given that this is a pretty common procedure, and has an extremely high success rate, maybe. But I think we all tend to take a look at our own mortality when we see our parents grow old. As I peered into the looking glass, I really felt like my answer would be, “No, I’ll play the hand I was dealt.” Of course, it wasn’t me who was going through the frustration of sitting in a room full of people and not being able to understand a word. And it wasn’t me with a baby granddaughter who was just beginning to talk. So I decided I really needed to walk a mile in his shoes before I could make the decision he had to make.

It was, in the end, the first words of a child which led my Dad to his decision. He couldn’t bear the thought of being unable to hear his grandkids say “I love you”. Besides, although his father died very young, (of kidney failure) his mother’s side of the family has lots of longevity. My grandmother lived to not-quite-95, and the last of her siblings died at 108. At 70, my Dad realized he possibly has 20 more years, and that was simply too long.  Too many words to miss out on.

The Internet? Bah!

Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana

But why dwell on the negative, especially when there’s so much good going on in my life?  Such as…

- Brian and I attended our first gay wedding a couple of weeks ago.  Jim and Cary, two good friends of ours in New Hampshire, were legally wed in a very traditional, New England-WASPy ceremony.  Cary teaches at Exeter Academy (one of the nation’s elite prep schools), and the wedding was held in the Episcopal church on campus.  Full-blown religious ceremony, conducted by a gay priest and his wife (still not sure about that one) who made references to the first book of Samuel, which discusses the pure love between David (slayer of Goliath, future King of Israel) and Jonathan (son of the reigning King), and who spoke of “convention and tradition being swept away by love and joy”.  Except for the fact that there were two grooms, the whole day could have been pulled straight from “The Official Preppy Handbook”.  (Cary would have it no other way)  The men’s suits were linen; the women wore pearls; the formal reception included delicate finger foods and a string quartet; the informal afterparty was held in the garden of their restored Victorian mansion.  We really, REALLY enjoyed their friends, and are really hopeful these are the kind of good-hearted, open-minded folk we’ll get to know when we move there.  And yes, we couldn’t help but talk constantly about elements we want (or don’t) at our own ceremony.

- Just got back from a long weekend in LA.  (I know, I know…I keep complaining about work, and then blogging about trips.  But these were my first two trips since Ft. Lauderdale in January, and I’ll need the memories to get me through the next month, so cut me some slack.)  Brian was raised Mormon, and the church youth group he belonged to when he first moved to Southern California was having a reunion.  He met his wife through this group, and wanted to reconnect with some of them, so we built a trip around it.

We started off Friday in Echo Park, a beautiful neighborhood of big old Victorian homes perched on a hill, with views of Downtown.  It almost made me want to live in LA.  Next we were off to Hollywood, (referring more to the conceptual Hollywood that the actual neighborhood) shopping Ventura Blvd while waiting to watch to our very first TV show taping.  We got tickets to the new Betty White sitcom “Hot in Cleveland”, and we loved every minute of it!  I’ve never enjoyed those studio tours, where they take you around on a little trolley, toss a few famous names about, and show you some empty sets.  I’m sure that’s fine for the star-struck, but I’ve always wanted to see HOW the actual product gets churned out.  Watching this taping was a nice little glimpse.  It’s like a hurricane.  The actual set is like the eye of the storm, with the actors in a relative state of calm, discussing lines and delivery and what could work better in the next take.  Then there’s the noisy, swirling frenzy of activity (writers, directors, makeup artists, camera people, sound people, lighting people, props people, script people, etc., etc., etc.) surrounding them. I expected the audience to be told to be church-mouse quiet the whole time.  But the “fluffer” kept telling jokes and eliciting laughs from us even as taping occurred.  The entire taping (two takes of each scene, plus a “pickup” of any snippets that were unsatisfactory) took about 3 1/2 hours, (for 22 minutes of actual footage) but we were told it often takes longer.  The good people at the studio fed us sandwiches and cookies during the taping, too. (a nice touch) If you happen to follow the show, it’s the episode where the tornado hits.  I think it’s set to air next week or the week after, on TV Land.  If you happen to hear a high-pitched yelp when Susan Lucci makes her cameo, that would be a star-struck Brian.

We spent Saturday morning in Pasadena, continuing our tour of college football stadiums by visiting the Rose Bowl.  We noticed a huge banner hanging from the Norton Simon Museum (which you all know from watching the Rose Parade every year like I do, right?) advertising an exhibit by the Japanese artist Hiroshige.  Brian, having twice lived in Japan, begged me to go. (as if he had to)  It was a spectacular exhibit, and the museum itself is a gem…not too large, but full of high-quality stuff.  And the gardens are beautiful.  Next we were off to South Central to see USC and the Coliseum.  Impressive campus…I guess cheating at football DOES pay, after all.  Saturday night, while Brian and his sister-in-law went to the reunion, I rode the subways around LA-LA Land.  LA does have a transit system, you know.  And while it’s far from all-encompassing, it is impressive, it’s expanding, and it seems to be well-patronized.  Keep it up, Metro.

Sunday was family day–a long lazy brunch with Brian’s sister-in-law Wendee, then dinner with his Aunt Bert (wife of Uncle Pat) and her daughter Linda.  It was great hearing Aunt Bert’s stories…about her parents emigrating from Germany…about Orange County when it was still full of orange groves and vegetable farms…and about her kids, lying by the window every night, watching the fireworks at Disneyland before they went to bed.

Monday was spent at Venice Beach, my favorite part of LA because it’s so funky-cool.  I’m always drawn to places where the hippie in me can set himself free.  And yes, Virginia, we ate at C&O Trattoria, one of my favorite restaurants in all the world.  I first stumbled on it during my very first trip to LA, fourteen years ago (Ohio State – 20, Arizona State – 17), and I’ve gone back nearly every trip since.  And it’s not just great because of the memories, either.  It’s REALLY good.  While Brian and I were there on Monday, an Australian cooking channel was filming a feature on it.  We were told we might see the segment on The Travel Channel here in the US someday, but they couldn’t get more specific than that.

So now, as I prepare to dive back in to go-live hell, I have a few upcoming nuggets of excitement to remind me why I work so hard in the first place:

1) Our little Benjamin is heading off to college.  Sad as that may be, I’m so excited for him, just like I was for his brother and sister before him!  Bless his heart, our gentle giant is really finding it hard to face adulthood, and is really dragging his feet every step of the way.  It’s to the point where he’s admitted he needs help, so we’re trying our hardest to encourage and nudge without criticizing or pushing.  Although he’s been accepted to the Newark campus of Ohio State, he applied too late to get on-campus housing.  He realizes he really needs the sheltering and nurturing provided by dorm life, so he’s also applied to Wright State.  I know, I know…how great can a school be if they’re STILL taking applications and STILL have housing for THIS FALL?  But actually, it’s good (not great) school for Theatre, and Ben has been approached by a drama school about attending, so we’re thinking that maybe once he gets his feet wet and finds life on the outside ain’t so bad, he’ll take the plunge and really go after his goal of becoming an actor.

2) Look back just a few posts, and you’ll find me gushing on and on about my BlackBerry Storm.  You’ll actually find the word “inseparable” somewhere in there.  My, how the times, they are a-changin’.  My BlackBerry died on me a couple of months ago, and although it was still under warranty and was replaced for free, that naturally soured me on it a bit.  I’ve also never been thrilled with the web browser, which is painfully slow. I got excited about this new Android phone from Motorola (the “Droid X” it’s called, continuing Verizon’s branding of Android phones as “Droid”).  It’s a beast, with a 4.5-inch screen, an 8-megapixel camera, high-definition video screen, and screaming-fast processor.    I pondered the Droid X, then decided I should just make a few tweaks to my BlackBerry so I’d fall in love with it again.  Those tweaks included nothing more than a new “theme” to change the look-and-feel of the interface, plus a different web browser (Opera Mini) to make web surfing on the phone more pleasurable.  But you know what?  Those two relatively minor changes caused my phone to go haywire.  Totally.  Utterly.  It’s as if the damn thing knew I thinking of cheating on it, and was taking its revenge proactively.  How bad was it?  Every 10 seconds, the phone would show me an hourglass, and for the next five or so seconds, it was useless.  Imagine that…being able to use the thing only half the time, and then for only 5 seconds a pop!  And I don’t know what it was doing during that five-second hourglass span, but the processing was so heavy that my battery was draining in an hour.  Of course, the low point was while I was in LA, trying to navigate the city without the aid of Google Maps.  I was livid.  Since I got home, I’ve managed to completely reset the thing to its factory settings, and the problem has gone away.   But hell, I’m stuck with the default, out-of-the-box device again.   If I can’t make the icons look like I want, and I can’t browse the web the way I want, and I can’t download the apps I want, I may as well have an iPhone. (“oh, no he di’nt!“)  So I think I’m going with the big, fancy new Droid X, which comes out in exactly 37 minutes.  But I find I’m really torn.  I loved that Storm in its day, and as always, I’m racked with Catholic-bred guilt over spending money which could go to Doctors Without Borders to satisfy my materialistic lust.  Ick. Just writing that makes me feel dirty.

3) Last, but not least, we managed to book one other trip, for next month, to coincide with some work Brian’s doing.  Three days in Seoul, 5 days in Beijing.  ’Nuff said.

Over the course of the past few months, as I’ve found myself with a fleeting spare moment or two, I have begun to draft a couple of different blog entries.  Since much of this go-live weekend will involve just sitting around and waiting for jobs to run, I’ll see if I can finish those off and share them with you.

April 15…many of you fear it as Tax Day.  I always take care of my taxes early, but that day will hang over me like a cloud for quite a while.  That’s the day the ordeal began, and I dare say it’s going to be a while before it lets up.  You see, dear reader, April 15th was only the beginning of PHASE I of this mess.  Phase II is yet to come (but thankfully, Phase II has been delayed a month, until mid-July).  For those of you who know (or care) much about IT, Phase I was our conversion from DB2 on the mainframe to Oracle/Unix.  This involved our PeopleSoft Financials, HR, and Supplier Portal systems.  Phase II is exclusively for Financials, and is an upgrade from version 8.8 to 9.0.

I’ve been through this stuff before.  Several times.  I’ve had good projects, and I’ve had bad projects.  This is about as bad as it gets.  The formula for success in these big IT projects is really very simple.  Everyone knows what it is…hire good consultants, make sure your full-time staff is involved in the project (so they’re not blind-sided by the end result when it’s through), train your end users well, and TEST, TEST, TEST.

Alas…everyone knows what the formula is, but for some great, mysterious reason, so many shops refuse to follow it.  ”We’re different”, they somehow convince themselves.  ”We’re unique.”  ”We can follow our own rules and succeed just fine.”  This, my friends, is the definition of hubris. (from an IT standpoint, anyway)  I’m not here to get my ass in trouble by bad-mouthing my employer, but I’m not sure we could have done much more to screw this up.  Let’s go over those rules again, shall we?

1) Hire good consultants. There were good consultants who bid on our project, but we couldn’t be bothered with them.  No, we felt the need to go with a company (whose name, ironically enough, is Sanskrit for “truth”) who just a few months before our project, admitted they had been lying about their financial position for years.  Rather than having billions in the bank, they had around 60 bucks.  Their founder/CEO wound up in prison.  Their American auditor was kicked out of India.  And we handed them a contract to help us make the great leap forward.  I can’t tell you how many consultants were delivered to our doorstep without ever having TOUCHED a PeopleSoft system.  Some of them hadn’t even HEARD of it until they were handed an instruction manual and told to study it on the plane.  You think I’m kidding, don’t you?  Sadly, I’m not.  We’ve sent so many of them packing there was a period we couldn’t keep anyone’s names straight.

2) Make sure your full-time staff is involved in the project. Now really…why fly all those consultants half way around the world, if you’re just going to have your regular staff do the work?  Pure silliness…

3) Train your end users well. To be honest, this piece wasn’t as crucial for Phase I of this project.  Since all the changes were on the back end (database/server platform), had things gone well, the end users wouldn’t have even noticed a difference.  So we didn’t need to spend a lot of time and effort here.

4) TEST TEST TEST. I’ve never, ever, in my 12 years as a developer, seen a shop so willing to bypass testing.  Every single time a deadline was missed, the powers that be simply said, “No big deal.  We’ll just cut back on our testing.  But  we’re not changing our go-live date for anything.”  Hand to God, that’s how we played it.  Normally, when the users start to scream that something isn’t working, we developers can force them to share some of the blame by asking whether they bothered to test things thoroughly.  But in this case, we didn’t give them an opportunity to test!  We just flipped the switch!

Am I boring you?  There’s more…the fallout from all this hubris (there’s that word again!) has been pure hell.  Days.  Nights. Weekends.  All sacrificed in the name of survival.  The low point was probably about two and half weeks in.  One of the consultants needed a glue stick.  None of us could find one, so my co-worker (bless her heart, she meant well) sent out an email to ALL of IT asking for one.  The laughter rolled down the halls like a tidal wave: “Hey look guys!  The PeopleSoft system is falling apart so bad they need a glue stick to keep it together!”

Things ARE getting better, I dare admit.  The whiteboard where we’ve been tracking the major issues is getting whiter and whiter every day.  And I did get to spend some time away from the office this past weekend. (Memorial Day)  Went to my parents’ to help them with some stuff on Saturday.  Got some yard work done (FINALLY!) on Sunday.  Felt good.

But as I mentioned, Phase II is coming.  July 19th is the date.  The players are all the same.  The rules (and the flaunting thereof) are all the same.  The delays are all the same.   I think I hear the angry mobs forming already…

So it is with great pleasure that I read about the passage of President Obama’s historic health care legislation yesterday and the reaction from both sides of the political spectrum today.  Seriously, it fills me with glee!  The Republicans are predicting the downfall of the Democratic party, of the Republic, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Bill O’Reilly tries to predict the collapse of the entire universe on his show tonight.

But you know what, right-wingers?  Nyah, that’s what.  Your leaders bet the farm on this one, and they’ve lost.  Like spoiled children, they crossed their arms, stomped their feet, and declared unconditionally that they would vote no for this piece of legislation. Period. There would be no negotiation, no compromise, no cooperation. The New York Times states today that this monumental victory also signals a bit of a loss for Obama, because he took office promising a new era of “postpartisan” politics. With this vote (says the Times), that promise becomes unobtainable. And is it supposed to be Obama’s fault the GOP declared up-front they wouldn’t bargain? Hardly. Obama also promised to reform healthcare, and on that, he delivered. Which of those two promises do YOU think is more important for this country?

In forcing Obama to give up on his “postpartisan” promise, the Republican leaders took an enormous gamble, with a potentially enormous payoff: defeat health care, and Obama becomes an ineffective lame duck for the next three years. It was a simple plan, and the right-wing brain trust probably listened to Sarah Palin (“Gee, ain’t she purdy?”) talk about “death panels” enough to believe it was possible. But they forgot how to do math. The American people gave the Democrats an absolute majority in ’08, remember? Did they really believe they could swing enough Democrats over to the “no” side to defeat this thing? If so, they sadly forgot who they were dealing with. Have you ever heard Obama speak? It’s easy to forget, in the day-to-day humdrum of politics, what a powerful, earth-moving speaker this man is. Reagan? Clinton? Mere amateurs by comparison.

Over the past several days, Obama channeled two of the Republican party’s own all-time greats when he quoted Teddy Roosevelt (“Aggressively fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.”) and Abraham Lincoln. (“I am not bound to win, but I’m bound to be true. I’m not bound to succeed, but I’m bound to live up to what light I have.”) The quote from Lincoln, in particular, took me back to high school, during the Reagan years. My physics/chemistry teacher declared, “What this country needs is fewer politicians and more statesmen.” (Partisanship didn’t start in 2008, you know.) I love how the President managed to awaken the statesmen/stateswomen in his party.

And what words did the GOP have to counter Obama’s oratory? Really, it all boils down to just one word, and it’s the only word they seem to know how to use any more: fear. “Challenge the decision to invade Iraq, and the terrorists win.” “Vote for Kerry in ’04, and the gays will get married and convert all your children.” “Pass this health care bill, and ‘death panels’ will decide your right to live or die.”

One of my favorite writers in all the world is a Pulitzer-prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald, named Leonard Pitts, Jr. On September 12, 2001, he wrote a column that was so powerful and so in-tune with my own thoughts that my eyes swelled with tears. Pitts is one of the reasons I was inspired to start a blog; I want (someday) to express myself that succinctly. Last week, in the lead-up to the health-care vote, he wrote about Republican fear-mongering. Have a look and tell me if it doesn’t ring true.

By wholeheartedly refusing to take part in the shaping of this health care bill, the GOP had no say whatsoever in it. It is 100% the Democrats’ creation. How do you think that’s going to work out for you if this health plan succeeds, Teabaggers? I’m not predicting the future, but many of you already have, and in doing so, you’ve forgotten what a Republican plan this really is. This isn’t socialized medicine; there isn’t even a “public option” in it. It works to reform the health care system within the free-enterprise framework that already exists. Sure, there was negotiation, and there were compromises made to the original plan, but that was done to appease the conservative wing of the Democratic party. And therein lies the most painful aspect of this loss for the GOP: this is a piece of Democratic legislation, formulated by Democrats and enacted by Democrats, without Republican input. Where did that line in the sand you drew leave you? On the outside looking in, that’s where. Tens of millions of voting Americans who previously had no access to health care now have it, and you had nothing to do with it.

In the aftermath of this gargantuan struggle, there are some pundits on both sides saying this will mean a disaster for the Democrats in the mid-term elections this November. Maybe. But look and see what David Frum, a speechwriter for George W. Bush (ahem) has to say.

Congratulations, Mr. President, Madame Speaker, and the members of Congress who had the fortitude to do what’s right. Back in September, I wrote that the Obama administration has filled me with a new sense of hope. I still don’t pretend to predict the future, but we do seem to be moving in the right direction.