once timely thoughts from the week that was:

	… just thought about Shel Silverstein’s “Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back” for 1st time in 20 years. now i want a marshmallow palace. 3:53 PM Oct 29th from web
	… screw the World Series, the Boston Celtics just raised championship banner #17. 10:49 PM Oct 28th
	… was just told that i would be “Gonzo” if my office was casted for a Muppet Movie. words can’t describe how happy that made me. 5:41 PM Oct 28th
	… say it ain’t so, ted: http://ping.fm/59puK 10:54 PM Oct 27th
	… open letter to idiot: don’t run on Wilson blvd, after dark, in the rain, wearing black, even if ur in the bike lane. just sayin’. 7:05 PM Oct 27th
	… first two coke day in, well, forever. not a good sign. 2:42 PM Oct 27th
	… settling in for the last 20 hours of the (TiVo-ed) Summer Olympics. who’s with me? 6:43 PM Oct 25th
	… fifty-nine percent of registered voters believe McCain will favor the wealthy. just 11% believe he will favor the middle class. 10:50 PM Oct 24th

well, i’m officially old now. interestingly enough, this realization didn’t come from a mortgage, or a life insurance that gives the lady sparkler financial incentive for my death, or from friends having wedding after wedding after wedding, or from going to a party and being the only one there without kids.

it came, instead, from pottery barn.

last week, we went anniversary present shopping and settled on a 33%-off console table to replace a piece of crap we bought at Ikea five years ago. it wasn’t in stock, but they had extras at the big, bad warehouse in the sky, and promised to ship one over to a store-near-us as soon as they could.

well, we got the call yesterday, crossed the bridge into rural Arlington to go pick it up. when we pulled up front, a very nice boy wheeled the box out to our car … and that’s when all hell broke loose.

the box was enormous. like really big. like “size of a piece of furniture” big.

there are apparently places in the world where you can buy furniture that doesn’t require assembly. more importantly, there are apparently places in the world where you can buy furniture which requires something bigger that a Volkswagen Jetta.

now, don’t get me wrong … i had heard rumors of such extravagance, but bushed them aide as if tales of the fortress of Atlantis, or a land filled with Unicorns, or a country of people who’d reelect some one from the Bush family. i mean, really … would would have thought such a place existed?!?

after getting a grip on our new found alternate reality, “very nice boy pottery barn boy” led us to the conclusion that the Jetta just wasn’t going to cut it (and we galloped off to rent a pick up truck from ZipCar).

but, let this serve as a cautionary tale for the youth of america. there comes a time when you will be allowed to vote, sent to war, drink, and afford to buy furniture that comes assembled — assuming that you catch a really good sale.

so, excercise your rights (responsibilities?) with caution …

after a lovely Saturday of belated anniversary present shopping (we settled on a one-third off console table from pottery barn) the lady sparkler and I settled in for a long evening at home … watching two-month stale coverage of the Beijing Summer Olympics.

a couple things, looking back two months:

• it’s been at least a week since I had heard any one say “michael phelps,” which made me wonder if he had fired his agent considering his best post-Olympic gig has been for Rosetta Stone.

• It seems like (back then) John McCain actually ran ads that weren’t entirely focused on trashing Barack Obama. heck, August was so long ago that I didn’t even know that MILF had a political context.

• I once again contemplated changing my celebrity exception clause to be U.S. Olympic indoor volleyball team silver medalist Logan Tom, but quickly realized I am already married to some one who can kick my @$& so what would the point be?

• Whichever Olympic scheduler put synchronized swimming, canoeing, water polo, and rhythmic gymnastics in the same four hour block should be fired … or shot.

• I got to thinking about politics, the economy and my 401k, and actually got nostalgic for a minute, thinking “wow. that was a simpler time, wasn’t it?!?”. yeah, way back in august.

so, back to the present. much of our weekend was spent on the couch watching soccer.

the taped USA vs. Brazil woman’s gold medal match was one of the best this year. goalie hope solo (I heard she is Han Solo’s niece) pitched a shut out over 120 minutes, making her world cup benching last year — and USA’s subsequent 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Brazil — that much more inexplicable.

but perhaps the best news of the weekend came from the English premier league, where my team (Tottenham Hotspur) finally won their first game after nine attempts (that, and the midnight firing of the entire management structure.) while the win wasn’t enough to get them out of last place, they are now just one win away from a once unthinkably-good 15th place. (weeee!)

to be fair, Tottenham could have actually been the second best news of the weekend … the best may have been the news that the Anchorage Daily News endorsed *Obama,* saying something about “putting her one … heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.”

in the words of conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, the Anchorage Daily News editorial board is obviously filled with “goddamn East Coast elitist hippies.”

once timely thoughts from the week that was:

	… at 3:30 am, 10 lbs of cat on your stomach feels more like fifty. 4:11 AM Oct 23rd
	… feeling fat and happy. 10:58 PM Oct 22nd
	… wishing anyone could differentiate between “normal race tightening,” “yet another comeback,” and “dead cat bounce.” 10:32 PM Oct 21st
	… back home after the *beautiful* Hutchins/Kazi wedding. (photos @ http://ping.fm/kr1Gn) 10:25 PM Oct 19th
	… weary. beautiful wedding, but weeeeeary. 11:59 AM Oct 19th
	… my wife got her hands henna-ed, and I’m too tired to come up with a worthy punchline. 1:27 AM Oct 18th
	… in a rental car without power locks or windows. truley, this is the third world. 11:59 AM Oct 17th
	… Texas, it’s like a whole ‘nuther planet. 12:08 AM Oct 17th
	… going back to Texas for yet another wedding of the century. (see #1 @ http://ping.fm/Pabqp) 10:09 AM Oct 16th

mmmmmm, beeer.

hung out with a great group of greens tonight, drinking beer and otherwise promoting “good will” among eco-tweeting hippies (jcolman, starfocus, KSuzJ, and salsus … with special appearances by beautifulthangs and holdie1).

all of this camaraderie should have amped me up to go to work tomorrow morning (and it did), but it mostly reminded me that i need to polish-up a presentation on engagement for the d.m.a. conference the first week of november.

got pleeeeeanty of material, just need the time to put it all together … and work on my jokes. (”if you’re like me, and i am ….”)

we spent the weekend in Dallas for a dutch-indo-pakistani-mexican-middle eastern-american wedding … oh, where to begin.

the weekend began with a traditional ceremony where the families exchange gifts, the groom is forced to pay-off the brides cousins (they hypothetically hold the groom down and demand money in small unmarked bills, though in this case the pressure seemed to be more mental than physical) and the ladies get henna tattoos applied (the lady sparkler included).

saturday saw two events, the “big one” early in the afternoon and then a formal dinner later that night. the bride had two spectacular dresses (see below), the first reception had a Mariachi band (which rocked the hiz-house), and the rest of the day saw us hanging out with one of the most spectacularly great groups of people ever assembled.

i always forget that good friends typically have good friends, but this was a special bunch.

explore the photoset:
hutchins/kazi wedding, dallas, texas