It’s been a while since I posted any general non-political stuff (and more than ten days since I posted anything at all, natch), so here’s a quick run-down of what’s been going on lately.
- I had a good Christmas. I was feeling a bit under-the-weather on Christmas Eve and missed my family’s get-together (which raised my mother’s hackles, as usual), but I was feeling better by Christmas Day and had a wonderful time over at Jo & Eric’s house. We had our traditional Christmas breakfast (biscuits & gravy), opened presents and then played Wii and Trivial Pursuit until dinner time, when we feasted on turkey, ham and all the usual holiday treats. I made out like a bandit this year - people really hit my Amazon wishlist hard and I came away with a bag full of assorted books, DVDs and other goodies. I’m going to need a new bookshelf before long!
- New Year’s is shaping up to be pretty good. I’ve had some sort of sore throat / head cold thing since Sunday afternoon, but it’s finally lifted and I’m hoping I’ll be well enough to join my friends at Bravo! for dinner tonight and then for a pajama party over at Eric & Jo’s to ring in the New Year. Alcohol consumption, by necessity, will be light :(
- I’ve gotten some good traction on my personal vendetta against Indiana Code 31-11-1-1, although things are still in their infancy and will take a lot of help from people like those in my Facebook group and the good folks at the ACLU of Indiana (I’ve had some initial contact with them and I hope they can help me take the next steps to get things started for the 2010 legislative season…the general consensus is that it may be too late to get anything rolling for 2009). I want to thank everyone who has shown an interest, donated money or even just expressed their encouragement. I will need your help more and more in the coming months and years as we take this fight for equality in the Hoosier State to the legislature.
- Speaking of the above, I’ve got a quote inbound any day now for those Article XIV t-shirts. I hope to have final pricing available within the next week and the actual t-shirts available for sale within the next two to three weeks. The tentative plan is to have them avialable for $10.00 (USD) above whatever the production cost is from the supplier. $5.00 of that will go to the Indiana Civil Liberties Union Foundation for efforts in Indiana and $5.00 will go to the Human Rights Campaign for efforts nation-wide. Shipping will be done at my expense.
- My younger brother upgraded to a 16GB iPhone 3G yesterday and I inherited his 8GB iPhone. I had played with various iPhones before, obviously (and used my brother’s on occasion), but with my only extensive smartphone experience being with the BlackBerry 8703e that I carry for work, I can heartily say that the iPhone blows it away in almost every respect. And as annoying as it is to carry two smartphones a lot of the time (at least until we officially support Exchange-on-iPhone), the iPhone is slim enough that it’s not much more cumbersome than the beat-up old Samsung SGH-A226 that it’s replacing (which was gimp from the beginning after I cracked the front display the day after I got it). I know I’m a little late to the iPhone party, and I’m arriving with a used model at that - but I really am quite pleased with it. Never again will I be stuck at a bar, accusing someone of looking like the reincarnation of the ex-SA member who plotted to kill Hitler (I guess only Porter knows what I’m talking about here) without being able to hit up Wikipedia and prove my case. Hurrah!
That’s about it. I’m spending my time these days working, recovering from a seemingly never-ending string of head colds, reading all my new books and trying to not blow a blood vessel in my head thinking about all of the illegal and immoral crap the Bush Administration is going to get away with when they leave office in January :)
I hope everyone else has had / is having a pleasant holiday season!
