Weekends are getting shorter

This weekend whizzed by. There was a little babysitting, some RBC watching, errands, chores, a little enjoying of beautiful weather today. Throw in a little more TV watching and hey, presto! It’s almost Monday morning.

Well, the RBC did about what was expected and everyone was reasonably happy except the Clinton campaign. Or maybe they were just pissed because no one sent Ickes the memo with the dress code. There was the Clintonista rally outside which looked as if it was fun for the participants. And dignified.

Today, of course there was the primary in Puerto Rico, where Clinton won big as expected but it doesn’t change the fact that Obama will probably wrap things up next week. So, it was a big news weekend in the political world in which nothing very unexpected happened and nothing much has changed. Except that Bill Clinton is reported to be really, really made about the new Vanity Fair article about him. He was already pretty mad, so this is just one more thing he has to be pissed about.

We finished the weekend off by watching the season finale of The Tudors. Spoiler alert – Anne Boleyn loses her head.  Who would have guessed that?  Next season is coming in 2009. They seem to be remaking the Six Wives of Henry VIII in real time. I just love looking at it. The acting is uneven, casting ranges from brilliant to WTF? and there’s been at least one unnecessary fudging of history, but it’s a feast for the eyes. Just about every scene looks like a Renaissance painting come to life.  There’s solace in it for today’s political wives, too. King Henry VIII was a worse husband than Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, John McCain and Eliot Spitzer all rolled into one.

Humor Fail

File under It Seemed Like a Good Idea At The Time:

Authorities in southern Germany said Saturday that they have taken custody of a 7-month-old boy after his parents posted an ad on eBay offering to sell him for one euro, the equivalent of $1.57.

Peter Hieber, a spokesman for police in the Bavarian town of Krumbach, said the baby was placed in the care of youth services in the southwestern Allgaeu region, although the child’s 23-year-old mother insisted that the ad was only a joke.

Well, I thought the listing was pretty witty:

“Offering my nearly new baby for sale, as it has gotten too loud. It is a male baby, nearly 28 inches (70 cm) long and can be used either in a baby carrier or a stroller,” police quoted the ad as reading

.The mom was probably sleep deprived and you don’t have to tell us Americans what kind of gaffes exhaustion can produce. We know.

Monday, Monday

Well, we’re supposed to be sitting here in anticipation of Barack Obama’s appearance on The Daily Show tonight, but it looks like I’ll have to wake everyone up when it starts. Husband, sister, cats and the dog are all draped around the living room, sound asleep. It’s been a busy Monday.

I left work for a while to go to the doctor with Mr. Yenta. Wives often go to the doctor with their husbands if there’s a possibility of something being seriously amiss. This is not for moral support. It’s because we can never get the exact right information from our husbands. They don’t exactly recall what the doctor said, they’re not sure what, if anything, they’re supposed to do now, except in the most general way. Requests for specifics are seldom satisfied. On the whole, it’s just easier to go along and find out for yourself. In this case, it probably wasn’t necessary because everything was fine. A sonogram had shown something on his one remaining kidney and the urologist had ordered a CT Scan to see what it was. It was nothing. We were pretty relieved. Giddy even. We’ve been through enough tests that turned up Something that we don’t automatically assume Nothing anymore.

Then we got home and the euphoria ended. We learned that the bass player’s (the who lives in our spare room and is in the same band as our son) sister had died. She was only in her thirties so it really is very sad. It wasn’t unexpected. She’s been very sick for a long time. She lived halfway across the country and he’s been going to visit her whenever the band isn’t on the road. Now, of course, the band is going out on tour later this week, so in addition to getting a flight to halfway across the country he’s got to figure out if he can meet up with them in time for the first scheduled gig, which is a situation he really can’t control. The New Yorker magazine has run this boilerplate before their Nightlife Listings for as long as I can remember:

Musicians and night-club proprietors live complicated lives; it’s advisable to call ahead to confirm engagements.

It’s true. It’s not all arrests and rehab, you know. From time to time a venue has closed, or been closed by some governmental agency, for instance. Sometimes a performer gets rushed to an emergency room and fails to regain consciousness in time for load-in. But sometimes it’s just that musicians’ schedules don’t easily accommodate their lives. For the most part, they make that work by not having lives – not normal ones, anyway. They work tired, they work sick, sometimes they work when family members are getting married, having babies, graduating from things. Forget birthdays, including their own or most holidays. But sometimes you just have to show up for family, no matter where else you’re supposed to be. They’ll work this out. It’s all part of the deal.

Happy Thomas Jefferson Day!

Hope you all had a good one! If you worked for the Malverne, NY police department and you had a shift today, you’d get comp time for it. It’s less certain if that perk will still be there next Thomas Jefferson Day. Or any of the the holidays honoring Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman or Gerald Ford. Even National Parents Day is in doubt, for Gawd’s sake! Altogether, along with more traditional holidays, the Malverne Police get 35 holidays. Well, it’s rough policing a one square mile village in the middle of a county that has a large police department of its own. Now there’s a labor dispute about it. Go figure!

This beer was made for you and me

One of my new favorite blogs, Soup Is Not A Finger Food reminds us that today is the 75th anniversary of the Volstead Act Amendment. It eased Prohibition a bit by allowing for beer. Go, read. It’s history. While celebrating I happened on a map of the USA created by Etiquette Systems. a label company. Each state is represented by its own beer.

Click the map above to go to the original image. They have a complete list there, too, in case you don’t recognize your state’s beer label.

Another one of those stupid quizzes

I’m a lab. That’s cool with me. All my best dogs have been all or part lab. I don’t think I have a whole lot in common with Dr. Phil, though.