My sister posted photos

She made a Flickr Photo Gallery.

Highlites:

1. I like Karen's haircut.
   
2. Roshambo Vineyards!?! Might there also be, somewhere in the California countryside, a Bear-Ninja-Cowboy Ranch? One can only hope.
3. The engagement! No close-ups of the ring, unfortunately. It's probably far to sparkly and so shorted out the camera's sensor.

Sounds like they had a wonderful time. Huzzah!

Quite an Eventful Weekend

Memorial Day weekend is usually a time when nothing really happens. Because everyone goes off on little jaunts here and there. The whole point, in my opinion, is to do nothing and have nothing happen so that you can't relax and unwind.

Nelly and I did our part. We went up to her parent's lakehouse in far north-western CT. It's a very nice house on a very nice lake and I must say we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to visit and enjoy the lake. It's very reminiscent of my summers in New Hampshire at Laurel Lake. And I tend to go on-and-on about how great that was, until Nelly tells me to shut-up about Laurel Lake. But she's very sweet about it.

The weather couldn't have been nicer and Nelly and I had an absolutely fantastic time. Except for almost being killed by a reckless and careless motor-boat driver, it was an absolutely perfect weekend.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, people were doing some crazy stuff:

1. My sister got engaged! She called with the good news last night. Her boyfriend (now Fiancé), Rodger proposed to her while they were vacationing in Northern California. Apparently they were in the Redwood Forrest. Very romantic and memorable. The entire Bellin family is aflutter with this exciting news.
2. Laurie flew out to Germany. She's only out there for a month (but what a month to be in Germany). She says that it's difficult (or impossible) to get tickets to see the soccer, but I think she's not being adventurous enough. We'll see. But how can you go to Berlin when Germany is hosting the world cup and not take in a game? There's gotta be tickets. Maybe to the Tunisia v. Saudi Arabia game.

Memorial Day! Very very exciting.

A "DaVinci Code" Stupor

I went to see DaVinci Code last night. The theater was absolutely packed. There was a palpable tension in the air... and then they played twenty minutes of ads and trailers. And I forgot what movie we were actually there to see.

I had heard some of the criticisms of the movie, but hoped that since I didn't ever even consider reading the book, I would be able to enjoy the film on its own merits. Unfortunately, it really doesn't have that many merits.

Other than making the audience laugh at inappropriate times, Ron Howard manages to remove any emotion from the performances of Tom Hanks or Audrey Tautou. The script banks on their growing affection for each other, but neither character ever exhibits anything more than a passing interest in the other.

The movie plays as almost a direct rip-off of National Treasure which was itself a play on the popularity of the "DaVinci Code" book. The movies have obvious similarities (e.g. pasty, unappealing lead actors) but National Treasure is much livelier and more interesting.

I say that and I didn't even really like National Treasure. But it seems like a gleaming masterpiece after seeing this plodding, pointless and pedantic picture.

Yogurt Battle!

As many of you know, Nelly and I have been living together for a few months now. Overall it has been a wonderful experience. However, while this arrangement has been blissful for the two of us, there are signs that some sectarian strife may be bubbling under the surface.

Take for example, this shocking scene which I witnessed in the fridge the other day.

I am fortunate that I had a camera available to document this brutality. The Yoplaits, apparently used to dominating Nelly's fridge, weren't willing to put up with sharing space with my Dannon coffee yogurts. And once they had numerical superiority (due to the irresistable deliciousness of Dannon coffee yogurt) they mercilessly attacked the one remaining cup.

Clearly the Yoplait Whips! was the firebrand of this gang of yogurt thugs. And I am glad to say that she has since received a just punishment.

Everyone knows that Dannon and Yoplait have fundamental differences, but why can't they focus on the things that bring them together? Like that they are yogurt? I mean, isn't surviving in this crazy world hard enough? When yogurt turns on yogurt, can the end be far behind?

It may just be the conspiracy theorist in me, but isn't it suspicious to see the Arm & Hammer box peeking out from behind the box of strawberries. Arm & Hammer has been in the fridge since nearly day-one. And I would say that nothing happens in that space that he is not aware of. Could he have goaded the Yoplaits, whipped them into a frenzy (pun intended?) and sent them after the upstart Dannons? Were the Dannons getting cocky, muscling in on his territory. Is this what the Arm & Hammer people mean when they say "odor control"?

And I have to say that I feel terribly conflicted seeing the Baby Bell cow laughing merrily at this scene. As though it was concocted for the cow's enjoyment. Does she feel no compassion for her fellow fridge-dweller? They are both dairy products, after all. And one day, perhaps, Arm & Hammer will be coming after her as well.

New Glasses

On saturday, Nelly and I stopped by the Lens Crafters in Paramus (it's conveniently located on my way to work). I purchased my current pair of glasses in Sophomore year of high school (HIGH SCHOOL). So, by my calculations, that was something like 12 years ago. Which seems so outrageous, but I think it's absolutely true.

So suffice it to say that my glasses (and as it turns out, my self) are completely out of touch with the latest trends in fashion opticals. Nelly was very helpful on this front. We looked at several frames that were very similar to my old ones (made by the always classy Brooks Brothers). Any of those would have been fine. But we were not going for "fine". We were going for "You buy glasses once a decade, so these had better be some pretty fantastic frames."

And so we continued to look. We wandered over to the center display, where the trendier & more pricey frames are located under lock-and-key. And in that place Nelly and I discovered, as though put there by some force beyond our comprehension (perhaps the store manager?), my new glasses.

They are Versace. (Woooooooooooooo)


I am moving up in the world, but I haven't changed. My love don' cost a thing. I'm still Jenny from the block.

Let it not be said that I do not listen to my fans.

bonus

Thank You, Frank Rich

It may well be that I am not reading the right articles at the right time, but I have found the new coverage from all corners on the Porter Goss resignation very dissapointing. As I stated here previously, the problem is the gross incompetence of officials in our government, up to the very highest levels.

However, news coverage is either matter-of-fact reporting or a focus on the more salacious tidbits.

Frank Rich finally took the time in Sunday's Week In Review to step back and refocus on the actual problems (Times Select subscription required), the root causes.

From the article:

What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude. It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press's exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security.

And later...

Besides driving out career employees, underperforming on Iran intelligence and scaling back a daily cross-agency meeting on terrorism, Mr. Goss's only other apparent accomplishment at the C.I.A. was his war on those traitorous leakers. Intriguingly, this was a new cause for him. "There's a leak every day in the paper," he told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune when the identity of the officer Valerie Wilson was exposed in 2003. He argued then that there was no point in tracking leaks down because "that's all we'd do."

Also, I hadn't heard this, but apparently:

The Qaeda cell that hijacked American Flight 77 and plowed into the Pentagon was based in the same town, Laurel, Md., as the N.S.A., and "for months, the terrorists and the N.S.A. employees exercised in some of the same local health clubs and shopped in the same grocery stores."

(Frank Rich attributes that last piece to James Bamford in The Washington Post)

So thank you so much Mr. Rich for finally saying what no one else has seemed to be willing.

This is gross

My friend Jon sent me this link to the (perhaps a tall and certainly incredibly gross) tale of a man who cured his serious adult-onset asthma by contracting Hookworm in Cameroon. He did this mainly by walking barefoot through public latreens.

His theory goes that in the western world asthma and other auto-immune system diseases (such as Crohn's -- thus my interest in this article) are becoming increasingly prevelant because we are increasingly avoiding the dirty world. Our immune systems, built up over tens of thousands of years to deal with the worst nature can throw at us, are now bored and so take to picking on healthy tissue rather than just going on vacation.

Hookworms, in order to avoid being destroyed by the body, produce a compound that suppresses the immune system's response (by sending it a free all-expense paid ticket to the destination of its choice, perhaps?). And lo, the symptoms of the auto-immune disease go away... Hookworm's die off and do not breed in the body so the benefits of this treatment are dependent on a continuing vector for hookworm infection.

While I salute this man's gung-ho attitude, and I appreciate the desperation that led him to this course of action, I must say that I most certainly do not want this hookworm treatment. It's really just gross.

There's a couple articles on the BBC: here's a pretty old one, and here's one that's even older. (The BBC sure loves it's close-up pictures of hookworm.) And here's a pretty recent reference in The Observer. Note how none of these articles understands (or even discusses) the mechanism hookworm uses to suppress the immune system. As they say in Legend of Zelda, It's a mystery to everyone.

GateGate-Gate

You may have heard: the head of the CIA, Porter Goss, is stepping down after a notably brief career. A related story hasn't been getting as much ink, but plenty of bytes & pixels are being filled in the blogosphere.

It's Hookergate. Oh... wait... no. I mean, "Hookergate".

Clearly it's a scandal, because the bloggers have chosen to add the suffix "gate" to the dirty word "hooker".

First of all, Watergate is the name of a hotel that was burglarized by Nixon's cronies searching for dirt on the happless DNC. You can read about it in the wikipedia (thank god for the wikipedia) if you need to, but clearly the scandal that drove Nixon out of the White House did not involve him using excessive amounts of water.

If only the hotel had been the Hilton/Best Western. Then we wouldn't be saddled with this meaningless suffix.

My second gripe about the name is that it puts the emphasis for the scandal on the hookers that were supposedly sometimes used in the influence peddling. As though influence peddling not involving prostitution would be fine.

Can't we have moral outrage stemming from the fact that Bush appoints lackies to key positions in government. And then those unqualified hacks, demoralize and deflate the angencies they're supposed to be leading. Which leads us to a disaster.

Isn't it enough that Porter Goss may have done to the CIA what Michael Brown did to FEMA?

But his swift and surprising resignation wasn't due to the fact that he was incompetent. It was because Bush & company couldn't keep this story under wraps any longer. (The scandalous behavior has apparently been going on for a decade or more)

So how about a new scandal? You can call it Competencegate.

The Rav Saga: Epilogue

So on our trip to Lewes, DE this weekend, Nelly and I finally caught the Rav making some funny noises at the gas station and had a chance to investigate. It turns out the muffler was rubbing up against the rear mudflap, and had actually burned a hole for itself through the hard-plastic.

Last night, after we got back, I removed all the mudflaps. I think that a lot of the odd noises that the Rav has been generating over the past 2-3 years are due to these crappy mudflaps. The screws and bolts used to hold them on were rusting or had already fallen out or had been removed and improperly replaced over the years. So taking them off led to a startlingly smooth and quiet ride in the Rav.

I'm hoping that removing the mud flaps will increase the fuel efficiency of the car (at least a little bit). I know that the weight + drag of the flaps isn't that significant, but I have to wonder if we removed all the mud flaps from all the SUVs that never go offroad in this country, maybe we'd save some gas.

Ah well, just pie in the sky.

As a bonus, here's a picture of the bottom of the Rav after I removed the flaps. Note where the plastic has bonded to the muffler.

He's a trooper, that Rav o'mine.

The Soreness Begins

It's spring-time once again. The birds are signing, the trees are blooming, and the children are behaving like animals. Also, ultimate season has officially started for Nelly and I.

This weekend, we went down to Delaware to play in the Beth Coltman Memorial tournament in Lewes, DE. We went down with my old team "Your Mom" because they were going and they promised that no one on our team would really try that hard.

Now, one might argue that half of the team drinking heavily on the sideline is not a recipe for success. In this case, that argument would have been the correct one. We lost all our games, getting blown out in most of them. Our last two games we made close, so it wasn't a complete travesty (except if you were to look at just the win-loss column).

Cape Henlopen State Park is right at the horn of Delaware's northern coast. It's pretty, um, windy there. Which makes for some ugly ugly ultimate. Mostly involving trying to throw the disk as far downfield as possible and then setting up what basically amounts to a wall of people to stand in front of the throwers. Nobody was winning any pretty points. But it was good cover for the fact that everyone on our team was out of shape and hadn't practiced in months.

So, now it's monday morning. I am exhausted, my face is sunburned, my hands are sunburned, my back is sore, my neck is sore, my legs are sore and my entire right arm is sore. And I feel great!