Archive for May, 2007

A Matter of Resolve

Posted May 31, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Pattie and I had hoped to keep our air conditioner off during the month of May. Despite temperatures hitting the 90s this week, so far we’ve hung in there. But I would not be surprised if things change at 12:01. Truth be told, I’ve just been thankful that my desk is in the basement. It’s […]

The Vote’s In the Mail?

Posted May 30, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Wow, the Inquirer must have known I was in a mood to write about voting, because they have an article about a state representative who wants to hold hearings on instituting a vote-by-mail system. I’ve written before about why I think the current one-day-of-voting plan doesn’t work so well. But I will note that in […]

Now Who’s Rational?

Posted May 29, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I was reading through some post-mortems on the Philly elections that discussed the relatively low turnout – somewhere around 35% of registered voters showed up, and you could probably adjust those numbers to get lower figures (for all voting-age residents) or higher (just for Democrats, who were the only party with a competitive primary). The […]

Memorial Day

Posted May 28, 2007 By Dave Thomer

Thank you to all who serve or have served in the nation’s armed forces. Thank you to all who have given their lives in that service. I don’t have much else to say today, but readers may find the site for Arlington National Ceremony worth a look, especially the Ceremonies and Historical Information links.

A Sticky Situation

Posted May 27, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I decided to take a crack at making homemade chocolate syrup last night, and printed out Alton Brown’s Cocoa Syrup recipe from the Food Network site. I really should have gone to the Alton Brown fan page to check out the episode transcript just to see what details I missed, because when the printed recipe […]

Yankee Schadenfreude

Posted May 26, 2007 By Dave Thomer

The Boston Red Sox are 11.5 games ahead of the New York Yankees in the American League East, and I must confess this makes me quite happy. (Although it could be a setup for a major gut-punch collapse, in which case, won’t that be a story and a half.) Part of me feels bad when […]

No Disturbance Today, Come Back Tomorrow

Posted May 25, 2007 By Dave Thomer

So today is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, also known as the day George Lucas attached a vacuum to my wallet. My major commemoration of the anniversary has been to dive into the excellent new Making of Star Wars hardcover, which I’ll be reviewing in a few weeks over at theLogBook. I enjoy the […]

Not Her Father’s First Grade

Posted May 24, 2007 By Dave Thomer

I went to an open house at the neighborhood public school today – Alex will start kindergarten this fall, so we registered her there. I got to look at the kindergarten classrooms, and the kids there seemed enthusiastic. Lots of projects and signs were hung around the room, and while it wasn’t the brightest of […]

War Funding Disconnect

Posted May 23, 2007 By Dave Thomer

There’s a lot of anger in antiwar circles about the supplemental spending bill that came out of the House-Senate conference committee, which appears to strip all timelines and mandated consequences from the bill. It’s being portrayed as a blank check for the president’s war policy The major thing I’ve been grappling with in this discussion […]

A Ton of Rocks

Posted May 22, 2007 By Dave Thomer

After years of discussing it, today I filled in two areas in front the house with small white stones – snowchips, as the rock store called them. Rather than make roughly three hundred extra trips to Lowe’s, we ordered the rocks from a wholesaler. Thus it came to be that at around 3 in the […]