Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

POST 464

Just thought I'd let all of my faithful readers know the latest: on Friday, August 6, I asked Molly A. Lawless to marry me.

She said no. We broke up.

No wait, she said yes! I think the hunk of worthless glass I put on her finger may have helped her come to this decision. Silly girl, she can't stop looking at it. No, we have not set a date, and probably won't even talk about doing so for at least a few months. But congratulations are definitely in order.

It's funny to write about this here, because this blog was instrumental in winning fair lady's heart. If I have the story right, it goes like this: Molly and I met at the end of September, 2002. At that time, she was in a skittish period with men in general, and some er, questionable parts of my own reputation had drifed in her direction (oh, the perils of friends-of-friends!). Not being an idiot, I was definitely interested in her, but she was not so sure. She considered sending me on my way, giving me the Heisman, blowing me off, whatever. Still, I seemed nice enough -- but it was a very close question.

Being a fully self-actualized and tech-savvy single woman of the twenty-first century, she took logical steps. She Googled me. This page turned up. She read it. All of it.

It was, in her words, "a gold mine" of information. I'd have to agree, although I certainly never wrote anything with the idea that a romantic interest would find it -- which is the point, I guess. What better way to get an honest feel for someone's personality than to read their little pointless missives on various topics over the course of a year or two? Other than actually talking to them, of course, which she was -- to repeat -- skittish of doing.

She read it, and she liked what she read, and she consented to my company. And last Friday, nearly two years later, she further consented to marry me.

Of course, this does bring up the little story about how she didn't TELL me that she was reading my blog, and pretended that she had never even heard of blogs and had me explain to her what they were, until SOME TIME after we were actually dating . . .

But that is another story.



posted by Carlton at 1:07 PM

JUDGE NOT

I see in my local paper that former new Hampshire Supreme Court Justice W. Stephen Thayer III has been appointed to be deputy chief of something called the Transportation Security Administration's Office of National Risk Assessment.

I had Judge Thayer as a professor in law school. During the semester I was in his class, he had to resign from the New Hampshire bench as a result of, among other things, tampering with the proceedings of his own divorce case (which was in New Hampshire state court, naturally). He was a sorry sack at that time, and he talked about drinking a lot.

Don't you feel safer? posted by Carlton at 7:39 AM

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST

John Kerry is going to win in November, and win big.

That is all. posted by Carlton at 7:38 AM

IN THE FLEET CENTER OR, DEALING WITH DISAPPOINTMENT

Molly, who is both good and smart, managed to get us two "Special Guest" passes for the Convention on Thursday night. This made me happy, since Thursday was supposed to be the big night, after all, and the speech had been built up to be the new big thing. (I privately feared that Kerry was going to lay a big stinky rotten egg -- I've heard his speeches before -- but that's not important.) Molly found out about the passes at about one o'clock, we got together for dinner at six and arrived at the Fleet Center at seven, which was more or less when we were supposed to be there.

Needless to say, "Special Guest" was about the lowest rung on the credentialed totem pole, behind "Honored Guest," "Alternate Delegate," "Delegate," "Backstage" and "Podium." As it turned out, the powers in charge of the event had printed and distributed about twice as many of each kind of "Guest" pass as there were seats in the Fleet Center. The result was as follows: those who arrived super early got seats. Those who arrived early to on time (like us) gained access to the Fleet Center but were unable to get into the seating area, and were stuck circling the mezzanine areas endlessly. Those who arrived any time after "on time" couldn't get into the Fleet Center at all. As time went by, the Fleet authorities began to close down access to the various areas of the Center, starting with the sky boxes. (We ran into Molly's boss, who is a close advisor to Kerry, who had come down from one of the skyboxes to look for his daughter and was unable to return. He decided to leave and loaned us his backstage pass, which we found would not get us anywhere.)

Groups of people were sitting in the concrete hallways and on exit stairwells. People who left their seats to go to the bathroom were not let back into the auditorium. It was pretty terrible. People who had come from far and wide were getting angry at asking the same questions and getting the wrong answers: "Any seats? I can't get back in? Can I just look? Can I just go in for a second?" No.

On the bright side, we ran into a friend of Molly's who happened to be working the podium (and who had helped us out with info and tickets throughout the week -- thanks Tom!). He took pity on us and pulled us onto the podium while Joe Lieberman was speaking. That was cool -- Joe Biden was having his picture taken a few steps away from us. That was one big room, I tell you -- a sea of people with their signs, flashing lights, the whole thing.

After that, Molly and I decided to leave and catch the speech at a bar. On our way out, a cop asked me to hold a closet door open for him while he removed several identical canvas black bags.

"Is that your gear?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said.

As we left the Fleet Center, we passed a crowd of people pressed against a barricade, still trying to get in. Just as we walked out of the glass doors, a line of cops filed into the building. It didn't look good.

On the sidewalk outside was another crowd of people talking on cell phones about how pissed they were about not getting in. Further away were people trying to figure out what they might do instead, and finally there were those on the move. It was like passing through the stages of grief.

We finally made it to a bar where they were playing the television at an audible volume, and a plucky Irish waitress was happy to bring us drinks. That's where we watched the speech, which was pretty good, I say.

Upon reflection, I think it worked out for the best. We actually made it to the Fleet Center for the hubbub and commotion, got to go to the supersecret special podium area, saw some famous people (add Howard Dean and Charlie Rose to the list, and Molly saw some guy who used to be a model and is now married to, you know, that famous actress), but didn't have to fight the crowd and pinch our bladders closed for the whole evening. Also, it was probably better to watch the speech on television than in the Fleet, I think. Apparently there was no disturbance with the police.

Let's call it a win.
posted by Carlton at 1:34 PM

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Let me summarize the remainder of my convention week:

On Wednesday, I attended a roundtable discussion on the topic of "New Energy for America" and the state of alternative (non-fossil) energy sources in America. The panel was composed of a group of political figures -- two senators, a handful of congressmen, the heads of the AFL-CIO and the SEIU and the governor of Pennsylvania -- who have a particular interest in this topic. It was an interesting dicussion, although less about nuts and bolts than about firing up the room about alternative energy.

Currently, this is a B-list issue, and the panelists tended to be people that I hadn't heard of. That's not a crack at them, however, since I do believe that this will be an A-list issue before too long, and those who are involved with it now will only profit form their involvement. Kerry has brought up alternative energy in his campaign, giving it more rhetorical play than it has gotten for the past few years.

While the individual speakers had their own axes to grind, the main gist of the program was as follows: four more years of Bush will be a disaster on this front. Not only will our dependance on foreign oil increase, but the U.S. will fall behind Europe and Japan, which are already on the alternative fuels love train.

On Thursday, I got up early and hustled downtown to see if I could get into a forum chaired by Senator Kennedy on health care, at which Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and other notables were probable attendees. I couldn't get in, predictably (though I think I might have been able to score a ticket if I had planned ahead a bit better). Instead, I biked over to Cambridge and attended another panel on "progressive organizing in the 21st Century" which was interesting. Al Gore was supposed to attend but didn't. Same with the senior Jesse Jackson. Donna Brazile was also supposed to attend and I believe she may have arrived after I left. I was encouraged about the state of the left -- strong and getting stronger.

posted by Carlton at 10:54 AM