Election '08

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I have been voting for about 10 years now. I have never voted for a candidate in the two major party's. The one exception to this has always been Senator Ted Kennedy. As a one time, and long time, resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts I have always had enormous respect for Senator Kennedy and all he has done for our nation and our state.

However, for the most part, I have stayed clear of the nastiness that goes on in the two major political parties.

In 2000 I voted for Ralph Nader. I did not see any real difference between George Bush and Al Gore. I stick to that decision today. I read Nader's book that he wrote afterwards. It only confirmed my convictions.

In 2004 I was so disgusted with the selection of John Kerry and his subsequent campaign that I voted for Ted Kennedy. If the nation was going to choose a Massachusetts Senator they might as well have chosen the one with a backbone. On a side note, it does seen that Senator Kerry has found his backbone as evidenced in his performance at the Democratic Convention this year. But that is neither here nor there.

For governor of Massachusetts I have voted for both Ted Kennedy and Fidel Castro.

I have not yet voted in Oregon. I will get my first crack at that this November.

This year, in the presidential election, I have decided to do something that I have never done before.

I am voting for a nominee of one of the two major political parties.

I am doing this because:

I believe that John McCain is an absolute threat to this country.
Obama has a far better tax plan.
My taxes would be lower under Obama.
Every single person I know personally would have lower taxes under Obama.
The many people that I know that are uninsured could get health insurance under an Obama administration.
Obama supports ways to make higher education more affordable for working class families.
This has been the number one issue in my life.
McCain had the audacity to propose a spending freeze during the debate.
I find this line of thinking incredibly dangerous.
McCain supports the Ronald Reagan economic philosophy of deregulation that got us into this mess in the first place.
McCain was wrong about Iraq and I do not trust him to be wrong about war again.
I believe that McCain would be much more likely to invade Iran, North Korea and even Russia.
I do not believe that any of these actions would make us safe.
McCain refuses to sit down and talk to hostile foreign nations without preconditions.
I find this policy to be sophomoric and have already seen it fail over the last 8 years.
I do not believe that Senator John McCain will be fit to serve for a full 8 years.
In his absence Alaskan Governor Sarah Pallin would take charge of the country.
She is not smart enough.
She is not educated enough.
She is not on top of the issues.
She is wrong on the issues that she does have some knowledge of.
She would, single handedly, destroy this country.
If McCain did not do it himself.
The only reason Obama might lose this election is because of his race.
I do not intend to see that happen.
The right wing television mediat has made it clear that Obama is 'black'.
I will vote for him because of that.
I respect him.
I respect his background.
As someone that grew up in a poor and broken home I understand.
I respect even more that he did this as a young black man.
I respect that he broke away from a life of drugs.
I respect that he was at the top of his class at Harvard Law.
I want a president that can compete with me intellectually.
I want a president that has one up on me intellectually.
I find John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin absolutely dangerous for this country.
I am engaged.
I am getting married.
I may children of my own one day.
I do not wish to let them into a world that John McCain and Sarah Palin will help shape.
They might destroy it all.

Random Thoughts Collected at The End

It is my last day of work.



I am bored.


I don't know how much I like the term 'fiance'. I am not sure what etiquette is in regards to an engagement. People that have always known Lauren as 'my girlfriend' now have to know her as 'my fiance'. I think.

How do I refer to her to people that I have known throughout the duration of our relationship? Two weeks ago she was my girlfriend. Now her title has changed.


And don't even get me started about 'Lauren Drury'.



I try to refer to her as simply 'lauren' to anyone that I know. It is more respectful. But the situation does come up.


The Red Sox are in the playoffs. It is nice to see the franchise doing so well lately. I am still very sad to see Manny go. Dustin Pedroia is turning out much more valuable than even his biggest supporters expected. I wonder what the future holds for Varitek. Our pitching staff could use some tweaking next year. I hope we keep Lowrie. It is a better option than spending big money on a Short Stop again. I wonder how our outfield will look next year.



The Bears are 1-2. They very well could be 3-0. A decent team.


I really enjoy sports.


I start my new job Monday. I love 4 day weekends. I am going to miss the bike ride to work. I will be carpooling with a friend for the time being. I might bike to the light rail station again next summer. I am hoping that the job opens up my free time more. I would like to get outside, exercise, ride my bike, go to market, go to church, go out to eat, etc. Before my time was always swallowed up trying to make ends meet. I can not count how many hours I spent applying for jobs over the past year. I can keep my second job working for unions from home. Bit I don't have to kill myself adding an additional 8 hrs on workday when projects come in.


We are breaking our bondage to the cell phone industry. We currently pay a total of $80/month for two cell phones. We have ordered Vonage and will be paying only $14.99/month. Vonage has as many minutes as our cell phone plan and long distance. We will be canceling our cell phones later this week. It is amazing that so many people have become addicted to these things. They are expensive, require very long contracts and can cost alot of money on a per month basis. I survived 21 years without one. It took me along time to be convinced of their necessity even after I had one. I do not know if I was ever fully convinced.


Phone shopping was fun. We spent 20 minutes in Target 'practice answering' phones.



I think we are have friends over on Friday. We are becoming so very popular here in Portland. We are going to have food, White Russians, watch some of the debate and maybe the Big Lebowski.


Someone that Lauren knows from Pittsfield is moving here within the month.



See Stuff White People Like #111 (It is in the book but might not be posted online yet)




I am at work.




It is my last day.

Official Officiant

I like to take the idea of who will marry us seriously.

I do not want to just have some friend or a bum off the street become a certified officiant and perform the ceremony.



I know that this sort of thing, especially the friend option, has become popular as of late. I do not support it.



I have considered the idea of having a Justice of the Peace do it. The idea seems acceptable enough. They are, after all, agents of the state. It is through the state that we are married. It is through the state, or society, that we profess our union. It is through the state, or society, that we receive special benefits and designations that are reserved only for the married.

But I also like to think that there is more than that.


I am open to have a minister or some other member of the church marry us. However, I run into several logistical problems with this. Lauren's family is pretty staunchly Catholic. I do get the impression that the inclusion of other faiths, even Christian ones, would not be warmly accepted. I am not Catholic. I say this despite the fact that I was baptized in the Church as a small baby. It was my last real experience with the Catholic Church.

I can not say that I agree with the Catholic Church on everything. I can say that I disagree with them on much on the surface. Although I do openly admit my ignorance on much of the subject matter.


I do not know how comfortable I am being married in the Catholic Church. I am open to the idea of a Catholic Priest performing the ceremony outside of the Church. But I do not know if we would find a Priest willing.

It is hard because I do not live within 3000 miles of the place where we will be married. And our only familial ties with a church are through the Catholic Church.



It is a decision. That we will have to make.

Work Nervous Sad Funny

I am writing from the call center of Telelanguage, Inc. When I am done I am going to email this to Lauren. She is going to post it for me.

I do not have internet access here. I can use google, craigslist and the Oregon Department of Labor's website. That's about it. The google 'news' feature has saved me on more than one occasion. I can look at the cover page. If an article is from the associated press I can read it in it's entirety. I have Lauren email me articles on current political trends, fantasy sports or anything else that I might find even remotely stimulating.

I get the days edition of 'Pearls before Swine' and 'Get Fuzzy' emailed to me as well.


I answer and dial all day long. Clients, primarily, hospitals call to schedule interpreters. I enter the order in the database. I call the interpreters, independent contractors, and try to fill the appointments.

If an interpreter is late, lazy, stupid or not very good at life the call, and the blame, comes to me. I spend all day on the phone with people that do not want to talk to me. I am an intermediary. I am an intermediary for a task that many people resent. Some members of the hospital staff make no attempts to hide their contempt for non-English speaking patients.

Things I have been told on the phone:

'I would like a Hispanic Interpreter'
'I would like a Mexican Interpreter'
'I don't know what language they speak. Can't you tell by the name?'
'I would like Southeast Asian'
'You know, your oriental interpreters are very lazy'
'I don't know what language they speak. That's your job'
'I would like an African Interpreter'


You can often sense the resentment coming through the telephone line.



Not all are like this however. And I have learned to cope with it much better. I have gotten much better at what I do.



Today is my second to last day. I start at Yahoo! on Monday. I am going to be a Small Business Associate. Through email and incoming telephone calls I will be working with small business that want their company to appear on Yahoo! search results. I will be using Excel to sort data and provide them with keywords and advertising help.


Or something like that.


I will be working 18 miles from my house. I will be making a ton more money. I will have a really great benefits package. I can get Lauren health insurance immediately.




I always get nervous about starting a new job.




I have grand ideas about writing another blog about faith. We'll see how that goes. I need more time. I need to not be at work.


I came across a quote from Mother Theresa the other day declaring that abortion was the greatest evil in the world.


It made me sad. There are things I see on the streets of Portland that are far worse. There are things I see every day that I think would sadden god much more.


I think that the Christian community has gotten the abortion issue wrong. I think the same applies to gay marriage. I think that these two issues, and the position that many prominent Christians have taken on them have done much to damage the body of Christ.


I started thinking along these lines after I started reading the bible.


It saddens me.


But more of that later.



In other news....


Check out www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com

Funniest stuff I have seen in a while.

This is both an art and a fortunate accident

I decided long ago that Lauren was the woman that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  I had to reavaluate my whole idea of realationships to come to this realization.  It happened quickly.  But happened it did.  I had previously only known the passion, love, interest or whatever you choose to call it that is typical at the beginning of all too many relationships.  I knew, from experience, that these feelings peek and die out fairly consistently.  I was pretty jaded about the whole idea of relationships.

Something happened almost from the beginning of our relationship that I was quite unaccostumed to.  The intense feelings of newness and freshness, lust and desire that you would expect in a new relationship were there.  But there was also something that I had never experienced before.  Riding undernearth the surface of these wild and crazy emotions that I was experiencing was something much more subtle and much more powerful.  We were lovers and best friends and everything else that you would expect out of someone in a relationship.  We were all of that.  We were also, and this was actually much more important, we were partners.  I know of no other way to describe our relationship than that.  Where she is weak I am a rock.  Where I am weak she is a rock.  Where I stumble she strides.  I do the same for her.  We have different intersts and passions.  But, at our core, we were lost without eachother.  We would surely go back to that state if ever we were to separate.

I knew all of this long ago.  We started dating about 2 years ago.  I told her that I loved her only a month into the relationship.  I was in no mood for mincing words.  She had purchased the box set of the X-Men movies for me.  We were in the middle of watching the 3rd movie.  I told her that I loved her.  I will never forget her response.  She buried her head in my shoulder and said "Oh thank god!".  

Lauren and I first discussed the idea of marriage while on vacation in Big Sur in April 2007.  I was young and idealistic at the time.  I thought that we should wait for such a matter until we were settled.  We had already decided that it was the right decision for us.  But we wanted things to be 'perfect'.  In all honesty, I think that we let ideas of popular culture get into our way.  We had not been dating long enough.  We were not settled into our careers.  I could go on forever in this path.

We decided to move out to the west coast together.  We had many conversations about moving out here, supporting eachother, being partners in forging this new path, etc.  Shortly after we got out here the whole marriage issue pressed on me rather harshly.  I decided that time was only wasting and that I should act quickly.  Yet I decided that I should wait until I got a better job.  The Portland job market was much tougher than I expected.    I started out working very part time as a cook/caterer.  Evenutally I took a job at a call center as a scheduler.  I thought I would only work there for a few weeks.  I ended up working there for almost a full year.

The idea of proposing was always on my mind.  But I decided that I would wait until I got a better job and we were more settled.  I applied for job after job and had interview after interview.  Nothing happened.  I have a Masters degree and many years of experience in a multitude of fields.  Yet I could not land a job out here that required only a high school diploma and one years experience.  I underestimated how many over educated 20 somethings were moving to the area.

Several months ago I took up the idea of finding religion once again.  I read the bible.  I prayed.  I do not know if I did it right.  I was not sure who I was supposed to be talking too or what I was supposed to be saying.  But I did it none the less.  I sat on the question of whether or not I should just ask Lauren to marry me or I should wait.  

The answer that I came up with was a resounding "Yes, do it now you fool!".  I do not to say that it was god that told me this.  But I do not want to say that it was not either.

My mother and sister visited me over the winter and I had arranged for them to bring my grandmothers ring for me.  She had offered it to me just in case I had wanted to ask Lauren to marry me before we left.  The urgency of the issue was not pressed upon me at that point and I foolishly refused.   I changed my mind shortly after moving out here.  She brought the ring out and I sat on it and waited.

Lauren had no idea.

About a month and a half ago I decided that the time was ripe for me to propose to Lauren.  I could no longer wait for external forces that I had no influence over to fall into place.  I loved this woman.  I had a feeling much much deeper and stronger than that.  I wanted to declare before all of our family and friends that I was ready to pledge myself to her and a life with her.  

Lauren likes Platinum and silver.  My grandmothers diamond is set in gold.  I decided to have the diamond taken out and placed in a platinum setting.  I cleared the idea with my grandmother beforehand, of course.

I went to a local jewelry store about a month and a half ago that I had read rave reviews about.  I showed them the diamond and we started discussing a handmade ring that I thought Lauren would love.  The diamond that I had was not large but it was absolutley brilliant in its color and clarity.  They let me look at it through a microscope to truly see it.   Also, the price of platinum has skyrocketed since September 11th, 2001.  However, jewelers have recently developed a technique to work with a medal that is almost identical to platinum.  The metal is paladium. Even a good jeweler can often not tell the difference between paladium and platinum. For many many years jewelers did not use the metal for jewelry.  There was an issue with the boiling point that they could not work out.  But they recently figured it out.  Paladium sells at a price slightly more than gold.  Currently, platinum goes for about 3X that.  I had the setting of the ring in paladium.  I had 2 dark saphires on the side of it.  Underneath the 3 stones I had the jeweler design several tear shaped carvings.  Picures posted to the side.

I had decided all of this about 6 or 7 weeks ago.  Anyone that knows me knows that I am not one to wait patiently on these matters.  I have always taken the philosophy that there is no point in mincing words or dilly dallying over crucial issues.  But I told no one.  I went to the jeweler the day that I decided I was a fool in waiting to ask her to marry me.  I found out that having a ring custom made takes much longer than I expected.  We talked extensively about different settings, different metals, saphires and other rocks and many others things.  Eventually we came away with an idea.  I waited for a plastic molding to be made.  This took weeks.  I made suggestions to the moldings.  Again I waited.  

Last friday I received a phone call at about 4pm informing me that the ring was ready.  I stopped into the jeweler right after work.  I looked at the ring,  paid and left.  I thought the ring was nice but I was much too excited to sit around and appreciate it.  I darted off on my bike and got home as quickly as possible.  I had had many different grand ideas of how I would propose.  Now that I had the ring I decided that the best thing to do was just to do it.  We did not need bells and whistles.

I got home and asked Lauren if she wanted to go for a walk up Mt. Tabor.  Tabor is a 700 ft extinct valcano.  It is a favorite park of ours.  Going up there is nothing out of the ordinary.  I slyly got home and took a shower and got the ring in my cargo pocket so she would not notice it.  We walked around the park as we normally do.  We got to the top of the park and stopped at a favorite spot of ours.  There is a park bench that faces west over downtown.  Around 6-7, when we were there, the sun sets over the city and the view is absolutely stunning.  We had a very casual conversation.  We discussed life, happiness, the casual and the mundane.  It was a good conversation.  It was deep.  But it was nothing out of the ordinary.  At a lull in the conversation I got down on one knee pulled out the box, opened it and said, "Lauren, I love you will you marry me".  She laughed and said "are you joking".  I stood kneeling there with the ring in hand.  She asked again if I was joking.  Again I stood there.  She said yes.  And that was that.

The ring is absolutely stunning.  I am very thankful to my grandmother for giving me the diamond.  It saved us alot of money.  But, more than that, it is a family heirloom.  It is something that Lauren can wear for many many years and pass on to her grandchildren one day.  You can not put a price tag on that.  I designed the majority of it myself.  I tried to create the ring that I thought Lauren would like the best while working within our very limited budget.  I agonized over it.  I discussed ideas in length with the jeweler.  The result was, in my humble opinion, absolutely stunning.

Only a few days after I proposed I finally got the 'good' job offer that I had been waiting for.

Funny how things turn out.

I am getting married.

I have never made a better decision.

Our House (Redux)

Considering...

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.


I am waiting on something big. I am waiting and anticipating. I am nervous and losing sleep. I am wishing that I had more faith.

I am in the midst of a 4 day weekend. I had Monday off for labor day. Tuesdays are my regular day off. I worked from home some. But really, I just relaxed.

We had some friends over for dinner on Sunday night. We had deep fried tofu with barbecue sauce and cheese, creamed lima beans with thyme, slow cooked beets in a sour cream and horse radish sauce, zucchini au gratin and corn bread muffins.

We hung out, had a few beers, talked and watched Hot Fuzz. It was a good night.

We also went out over the weekend and got some plants for our house. Our new place has a back 'patio' area. Our living room has two very large sliding glass doors that opens up to an area large enough to house some patio furniture and not much more. The area has a tree and is surrounded by a fence. We put several different plants and pots out there and cleaned the area up pretty good. We also got a few plants for our home. Total cost: $78.

I went for a run. We went for a 6 mile hike in forest park. We cleaned out our old apartment. We got pizza and burritos.

We have been pretty busy with the move. We wrapped that up pretty good this weekend. We left the old place looking immaculate. The new place is completely done. I have been working at my second job more lately. I had not been working there as much over the past month. The extra hours are very welcome indeed.

There are some things of greater import that I mean to write about. But the time is never right or I am too busy. It pains me to post something on here that I find superfluous or a waste of time. I do not wish to waste anyone's time.

I am really digging Pandora right now. I am particularly attached to the Jerry Garcia, Jorma, Elvis and Coltrane stations. In that order. For the most part.


I am waiting on something. I hope to know more soon.

I will keep you posted.