House Made

Needless to say, Merideth and I are sad that Proposition 8 passed. We are appalled that discrimination was written into the California Constitution. We are disappointed that other anti-gay measures were passed in Arizona and Florida.

However.

We are thrilled that our nation overcame a history of racism to elect a man who will be a fantastic President.

We are excited about the progress that California has made in gay rights. As Jono, our brother-in-law pointed out this morning:

In 2000, Prop22 [a ballot initiative that prevented California from recognizing same-sex marriages] passed 61% to 38%. In 2008, Prop8 passed by only 52% to 48%. In 8 years 10% of California changed their minds, and on issues like this that’s a huge change, and something to be happy about.

You know this is gonna be on the ballot again in another 8 years, and you know the trend will continue and next time we win.

We only need another 2%.

We have discovered, as one does in times of trouble, who our friends are. And they are unparalleled. Thank you so much to those who have written or called with condolences.

We have noted that counties that have a high gay population had higher numbers of voting against Proposition 8, which just goes to show that people who know and love gay people have a much harder time voting to restrict their rights, as the gay population alone could not have produced those numbers.

We’re going to make a ton of money on the diet book I’m going to write entitled, “Eat All You Want and Don’t Exercise — Lose Weight By Maintaining a Constant State of Stress and Anxiety Coupled With Periodic Breakdowns!”

creepy turnips


pumpkin and turnips

Last year I read some little story about the history of Halloween and learned that the original Jack ‘o Lanterns were made out of turnips. As turnips are disgusting, I felt really good about the idea of disfiguring them and jamming little candles in their heads. Turns out when you carve them out and light them up, you can see all this grainy detail on their skins. I love it and will definitely be butchering them again next year. Perhaps I’ll do a total cannibal/shrunken head theme.

To compliment the heads, Beth carved a pumpkin into a snake-like thing complete with forky tounge. Snake AND shrunken heads? Maybe we could have a “Horrors of the Fictional Amazon” theme next year. Lots of bones, pith helmets, and cauldrons.

steampunk computer



steampunk keyboard

Ok so what’s “steampunk” you ask. Very basically, it’s an aesthetic derrived from a literary genre: Victorian SciFi/Fantasy. Think HG Wells and Jules Verne (or for you comic geeks Girl Genius). It fantasizes what technology would look like if developed by adventurist-scientists in the late 1800s and its icons feature brass, wood, knobs, and, of course, steam.

It being Halloween, a lot of steampunk costume ideas are popping up in the stuff (blogs) I read. (I love the mechanical style of it and in my fantasy where Orange County Choppers builds me a bike, it’s steampunk.) That got me thinking about Steampunk Workshop (featured in Wired this year) and Greg at Petch House. I think these 2 entities might be a match made in heaven and this modified monitor and keyboard totally looks like a piece of awesomeness Greg would build.

So while this is in no way meant to pressure Big G, or any other of you Victorian restorers, I just want to say that it’ll rain or snow soon; or just get too cold to work on your siding; or your house projects will end altogether. When that happens, steampunk!!

Yes well, we’ve been on vacation. Lovely, relaxing, non-working vacation. How relaxing? Oh, just hot-tub-every-day, pool, creekside, gourmet-food, TWO-MASSAGES relaxing. That’s how relaxing. But now we are back.

Oh yeah, and we had to stop being productive briefly to read the new Harry Potter. Because, come on. HARRY POTTER. Oh, and Beth read the thing start to finish in seven hours, stopping only briefly to eat. She’s a machine! It took me a few days because I like to relish my fantasy-novel finale and this slow pace drove her crazy.

But I digress. So things are getting back to normal and that means back to productive! Hopefully we’ll finish up the paneling in the dining room this weekend and then I–because I, like everyone else, love photos–will post a slew of pictures. More pictures than you want. A freakin’ Richard Scarry book worth of pictures.

project killer

Meet the nemesis of all house projects. The Nintendo Wii. Yes, it’s just that awesome. We are crazy. We stood in line at Circuit City in the freezing cold fog and rain on the slim hope that they’d get a shipment of consoles. We were number two in line. They got nine. You’d have thought we won the lottery.

We play CONSTANTLY. We played so much the first weekend we got it that we were too sore to DIY. Later that week, I made my shoulder so sore with Wii tennis that I couldn’t put our stick-shift in reverse. It was sad. I really have no idea when we’ll start working on the house again. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe when we’re both “professional level” (according to the Wii ranking system) at all fake sports. You never can tell.