Southwestern jaunt.

We're plotting an escape out west to White River National Forest, Grand Junction, the Arches, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Mesa Verde, the San Juan National Forest and Black Canyon of the (on the? I can't remember) Gunnison. We leave Saturday.



I've been hungry for mountains all summer.

Slow down.

Aaron is growing up. I dropped by this afternoon just as he was waking up (slowly, oh so slowly) from a nap and he was “g’barrassed” to be seen sleepy, “g’barrassed” to be seen half-dressed. His mother gently reminded him that I’ve seen him naked many times, changed many diapers, but he hid until he was awake and dressed, and only then did he want to play. This is the little boy who just a few months ago ran into the living room naked as the day he was born and presented his exposed little self to Bernd, proclaiming that nakedness was “the secret of Santa!” He’s five. I forget he’s five. I don’t always want him to be five, bright and loving five-year-old though he is. Sometimes, I still want him to be three.

How to use your straight marriage certificate to express support for same-sex marriage.

Yes, doing this.

I have asked that our officiant include this letter with our Certificate of Marriage in the hopes that my voice may be heard by someone who has the authority to provide the opportunity to marry to all residents of ______ County. I do not feel that my commitment to my partner is in any way threatened or made less legitimate if a same sex couple were to be guaranteed the same rights that we have. If anything, the great joy that I have upon entering a marriage with my partner has an undercurrent of sadness because we are marrying in a time when our state is denying the joy of marriage to so many.

Fun journalism for kids with short attention spans and growing vocabularies!

TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults

I think we found our rings!

But we need to go to a ring store to get sized and snoop around.

Here's Bernd's - which I found for him, certain he'd love it and he does -



And mine will most likely be simple and slim like this one -



For me, I just find 95% of women's rings so gaudy and unnecessary. I want something very simple that won't snag on things, won't poke anybody's eye out (or in!), and I'm concerned about conflict materials, too. We'd obviously check out where the white gold in our bands comes from, too.

Milwaukee.

Running possible wedding dates past his dad.










RENTED ice cream? Gee… I don’t know about this…

I miss it already.

There's nowhere to walk here - every task and errand requires a vehicle. I need a city. Running out for milk or a pinch of cardamom or an armload of books is a pleasure in a city, where the walk carries you past tall buildings that draw your eyes up, and people people people of all sorts, bicyclists, couples, small families, students, professionals, professional creeps. Here, everyone drives around with their car windows rolled up.

Why you'd want to live here.

Is this the sort of society we want?

Tony Judt, one of my favorite historians and liberal thinkers, passed away. I posted one of my favorite recent quotes from him on my Facebook, but it's worth reposting here:

When I write that we are trapped in “an economic language,” I mean that we have become accustomed to answering (and asking) only economic questions, and only in economic terms. The great economists of the past, from Adam Smith to Keynes, would have thought this bizarre. For them (as for me), a well-ordered society needs to address ethical questions, questions of justice and fairness and goodness and morality and right and wrong. We can’t live just by asking, “Is this efficient?”, “Is this good for GDP?”, and so on. We have to relearn to ask, “Is this the sort of society we want?”, a question to which there will be economic answers but there cannot be only economic answers.

Think of how many terrible realities we accept because so many of us believe that a kinder eternal life awaits us, where everything will be OK. We deem these things livable because of their perceived temporariness.

Chicago.

King-size bed.


You can totally see my bra.


Oh, the devastation! Er, we walked around on the set of Transformers 3.