The “bad musical night” went well on Friday. Charlie, Cara, Alaric, and Sondra showed up, and we had a blast. We watched Repo: The Genetic Opera and The Apple. It was a good time, although Charlie and I did quickly guzzle down a full bottle of wine between us, in addition to a few tasty bottles of Bell’s Pale Ale. I regret that Kate and Michelle couldn’t attend, nor could Ryan or Jess (who were in Bay City for Jess’s brother’s birthday).
Saturday was fun; I went to Rivertown Crossings, purchased the latest in high-quality periodicals (National Review, The Weekly Standard, and First Things), then sat down for lunch at Panera with Becca, whom I had not seen since her departure in the spring for a working summer at Mackinac Island. Saturday evening was mostly quiet, although I did spend about 20 minutes online with Ryan around 2 a.m. — he very helpfully gave me a most excellent tip, to wit: Don’t drink yourself silly when all you have eaten is chewy SweetTarts, because “you puke rainbows.” Sage counsel.
Today has been mostly catch-up. I did some cleaning, some organizing, and I’m blogging this from The Bitter End whilst consuming a sweet, delicious mocha. Mmmm, mocha. One of the proofs of the existence of a benevolent God.
I’ve started reading Boorstin’s The Discoverers. Duane recommended it a while back, and now I’ve pulled it off the shelf. The chapters are short enough I can do them one or two at a time between other activities. So far I’m working through the early chapters on the discovery and mastery of time, and am so far thoroughly delighted with the scope and methods of Boorstin’s narrative approach.
My political sensibilities are starting to recover from the numbness of the later Bush years. Although I voted twice for GWB (and don’t regret it), the final years of his administration were a depressing time for those of us on the center-right who favor federalism, competence, fiscal prudence, and clarity of purpose. Yet give BHO some credit — he managed to take this Republican, who had been distasteful-yet-complacent in January, and help him get his blood up for a return to the political fray.
All for now.
Customer Service
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … and the breadth and depth of customer-service quality was put into stark contrast recently, making me cynical enough about substandard service to rival even Mr. Dickens at his most irascible. The Good: Chris, a tech for Sprint, spent more than an hour on […]
October Omnibus
Only 10 weeks or so left in 2009. Wow. An omnibus update: I recently finished Tom Holland’s Rubicon, a book detailing the final decades of the Roman Republic. It was a fascinating read, made more interesting by his core thesis — that, essentially, the competitiveness of the ruling Roman families lost its constitutional check when the masses […]
Reflections 33
Last Tuesday I turned 33. It was a decent day; I had a whole box of presents from Ryan, Jess, and the kids — and Jess made me a very delicious chocolate cake. Yum. And my mother took me out for breakfast and forgave an outstanding “mom loan,” which was very nice. Yet the tick […]
Technorati (ignore!)
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Obama’s Decline
Commentators on the political Right have observed the decline of President Barack Obama’s popularity with equal parts Schadenfreude and I-told-you-so smirking. Yet most of the commentary about Obama’s decline seems to focus on the One Big Answer so beloved by pundits who substitute pith for prudence. This simplistic analysis will almost surely deprive conservatives of […]
Obama's Decline
Commentators on the political Right have observed the decline of President Barack Obama’s popularity with equal parts Schadenfreude and I-told-you-so smirking. Yet most of the commentary about Obama’s decline seems to focus on the One Big Answer so beloved by pundits who substitute pith for prudence. This simplistic analysis will almost surely deprive conservatives of […]
More Gillikinisms!
I’ve added more Gillikinisms to an old post … http://www.gillikin.org/?p=228.
Site Revisions
… the photo-management part of the blog has been revised to remove the somewhat arcane album/gallery structure in favor of a direct list of thumbailed image links.
Benchmarks!
I just checked my Google Analytics statistics for A Mild Voice of Reason. When benchmarked against other personal blogs, this one significantly outperforms the median on just about every measure, from page views to unique visitors to duration-of-visit. Most interesting, an absolute majority of incoming site traffic comes from visitors directly typing “gillikin.org” into their […]