Happy new years! Me, my wife, her sister, are getting ready for a big old house party. We invited Merril, but this is party might end with gay sex in the hot tub (not that non-gays have to take part) and that makes him a little uncomfortable. Plus, he wants to give the two of us our space, as I was nice enough to let them have the house last night. I went over to my Mom's, too see her and also say goodby to our gay republican native american friend Malcolm, who has been living with her and is kind of her adopted kid, which in his culture is fairly common. It being a matriarchal culture and him being first born male, it is kind of an accepted way for him to get away from his family.

He's moving in with his wife. From what I understand, they met in the army, in Korea. They got married for the pay and tax benefits. I think they really like each other, as friends, but I haven't met her yet. That's an even better way of getting away from your family amongst the Dine or Navajo as we call them. His family are all pretty messed up. His mom is a university professor with a gambling problem, and the rest of them are in and out of jail all the time.

Merril and Jenny and I had a great conversation the other night. We're on the same page. This next phase is the make or break phase, where the infatuation fades and you start to be real with each other. It's definitely more than just sexual between her and Merril at this point. And we are all starting to feel safe to contemplate what the medium and long term might look like.

Merril and I still have a great geek connection. I talked his ear off the other night and then apologized, saying I was in my manic phase and he confided that he's actually bipolar. Ouch. He's on good medication, but I had a friend who was bipolar, and that's serious. Not a deal breaker by any means, especially with modern treatments, but a hard road nonetheless.

I'm quitting smoking tomorrow. It's easy, I've done it a million times. Fortunately, my wife has pretty much already quit, her sister smokes three cigarettes a day, outside, and Merril doesn't smoke except when he's drinking and smokes are around. Me, I'm an addict. I did quit for two years once, and only started because I was around smokers all the time. Wish me strength of will, I'll need it.

Deep breaths. The cravings will pass. Cravings always do, because the present moment provides plenty of other stimuli to engage other seeking-circuits if you just wait. It's a good lesson that doesn't just apply to drugs.

It also applies to sex. I've been trying to be very conscious of my desires there. I'm very sexual, not destructively so, but way more than average. But I don't like feeling desperate. And if I don't get it every day, I feel desperate. I mentioned this to my therapist and said it would be one of my goals to turn it down sometimes between then and the next session. I have, and I don't feel guilty because I know my wife is getting some of the hottest sex she's ever had from Merril.

I came home today and he was still here. I'd specifically invited him to stay fro dinner, but he felt like he was taking advantage. Sadly, he had a dead battery and needed a jump. Unlike Mr. Y., Merril has a moral center telling him what's fair and what isn't.

I have to wrap this up, my lovely wife who is watching me right now has reminded me that we have a party to go to.

It's my birthday and everyone pooled their money and got me a Wii! I told them not to bother, they'd never find one, but they did, after much searching and calling and running about. First thing I'm getting is a Wi-Fi USB connector.

Now I need to figure out what games to get. I'd like to get some good multi player games that my wife, a non-gamer, might like. She like puzzle, rhythm, and party games. I'd also like some good games for me, on consoles I like action (side scroller, platform, etc.) and RPG games.

Any ideas?

Interesting post in an interesting discussion. The reading list and suggested exercises is also a keeper.

First, let me apologize for my near incoherence. I'm quite drunk, but I've had a great night with my wife, her lover, and her sister tonight, and I have to get this down before I forget.

It started last night, with our plans for tonight. Merril was eager to apply some of the cooking lessons he'd learned from me on our previous nights together. Unfortunately, he is living in the house he's flipping right now, and it's in a sorry state. Even if we could make use of the dysfunctional kitchen, he's got no furniture, so we would be sitting on the floor and eating.

Therefore, we planned to cook and eat here, and Merril would go home with Jenny. But two hours before dinner time, Tawni called Jenny saying she had a free moment. Tawni is one of Jenny's acting disciples. She's a brilliant writer on her own regard, but she learned everything she knows about acting from my wife. She is also a tall, gorgeous amazon who would make any fan of Wonder Woman get a full on stiffy.

Too bad she's off limits. I had to clue Merril in to that fact when we went out to buy groceries for tonight's meal. No fucking Jenny's friends, anyone else is okay. Jenny and I put together a perfect Thai green curry chicken menu from memory and first principles tonight. Merril and I hunted down the ingredients, going to two different stores to find everything Jenny and I had decided to include.

The recipe was 3 pounds of chicken breast; 1/2 pound each of cherry tomatoes, green peppers, onions, and green beens; two cans of coconut milk; one tablespoons each of coriander, fish sauce, and Thai green curry paste; 1/4 cup of basil; and 1/2 cup of cilantro added at the end. It turned out fucking phenomenal. And Merril learned a lot.

Not the least of which was the value of compromise in relationships. Damn it, I wish they weren't so much like she and I were when we are first going out. I try to offer them both short cuts based on what I've learned, but that only works when people know what the hell you're talking about in the first place.

After buying all the ingredients, Merril and I were walking to my car and talking about relationships. His failed ones and ours with Jenny. I told him he was lucky, because he has a relationship on training wheels. First, he doesn't have to worry about being partner material for Jenny, she has me. Second, he has me to give him advice. He took it well, for all the audacity involved.

The dinner turned out great, but the meal was marred by strife. Jenny, still feeling like she had to assert her place, was a little bossy towards me. That pushed Merril's buttons, and he told her if she ever talked to him that way, he would break up with her. I ended up the go between for my wife and her lover. Thankfully, I really like them both, so it's not hard for me to engage empathy and act thoughtfully towards them both, even caught in middle.

To Jenny, I presented the remembrance of what I was like when we first met, and how much I've learned since then. To him, I merely said, "You can fight a woman for control, and then you are just fighting each other all the time; or, you can give in and let her win, then she will share control with you. Be a man, show a little weakness. It will pay off."

He heard me. She was so pissed she didn't even want to go home with him tonight, even though it was their night tonight. He admitted a little weakness, she softened right up, they went home together, and her sister and I ended up having a very nice conversation about family, Christianity, and the holidays.

I still think Rachael is a demanding pain in the ass, but I know she knows what family means, and that is what Christmas is all about, to agnostic old me. It seams like we'll all be going to Christmas mass this year, even though half of us aren't really Christians.

Is it weird to think that Christ would be proud of that? I'd say "Merry Christmas!" but I just know I'm going to have a few more things to blog about between now and then.

Did I mention that Jenny and Rachael's parents are coming out for the holidays? And did I mention that we're going to try to sneak Merril in to the Christmas diner & then the Mass with all of us, as my friend?

"Oh yes, parental units, this is my dear geeky friend Merril who would be all alone for the holidays were it not for our festively cheerful inclusiveness."

We learned with the whole Mr. Y. Disaster not to mention this sort of thing to Jenny's parents. My mom knows, but I was born into a three way marriage so Jenny and my polyamory has never been something to hide from her. Merril was raised Mormon, so this isn't too much of a stretch for him, though it might be for his family if he talked to them. But Jenny's family are all proper Protestants, so the whole concept makes them uncomfortable.

We're going to see how things progress before announcing anything this time. They both push each other's buttons like crazy, even as they turn each other on like crazy. Merril needs to shit or get off the pot. If he wants a fuck buddy, he doesn't have much time left. If he wants a relationship (on training wheels) then he needs to show some vulnerability, step up, and be real with her. Please, he can do it with me, girls are not THAT much more scary.

Oh brother. We've got our major in house application running on HP-UX. Apparently, the security team has port scanned this behemoth before, and crashed it. Port scans shouldn't crash a decent server, I know. It's behind multiple firewalls, so it never even gets seen by outsiders. Anyway, today the security team asked me for permission to port scan our IBM Bladecenter environment. I know there's nothing there they can crash with Nessus, so I said, "Fire away!"

The HP-UX server isn't even on that network segment, but we gave them a list of 'off limits' IP addresses anyway. Here's a tip: don't give scan monkeys a list in two columns, such as "primary interface" and "secondary interface." They may not look at the second column. They scanned the secondary interface, which all 2,500 fricken' clients in the state connect through, and crashed it, hosing the IP stack. And bringing a big Sybase server down and back up is not quick. We're talking an hour, multiplied by 2,500 people. And they lost everything they were working on at the moment.

Between 9 Ultrium-3 tapes going bad all at the same time (maybe heat stress from the cooling failure a month ago) and this, it's been a stressful week.

Merril and I have really hit it off. We just started learning Ruby together. I want to do some scripting of Sketchup, maybe make a program to generate random town and village maps for RPGs. He wants to get up to speed fast and then we'd write a book about it. It's so new, there aren't really that many books out yet.

Jenny is a little miffed at him. He's a little misogynistic. Or rather, he's afraid of women and a bit insecure. He can't stand the fact that she can beat him at games like Rummikub. I think smart women attract but frighten him at the same time. He's also a little bit bigoted. We had to let him know that he can't go around assuming people are less intelligent based on their race, at least not if he wants to hang out with us.

Jenny is at the point where she wants the relationship to be about more than just sex. He's still getting his mind blown every time. She really is the best I've ever had. It's very rewarding having sex with a girl who can have internal vaginal orgasms in less than ten minutes, pretty much every time. Plus, she knows how to move, how to show you that she really, really likes it. And she's a screamer, which is great if you like aural sex.

But she's at the point where she wants him to open up to her a little bit, or at least give some token that he likes her for more than just sex. I tried to tell him that he's on a little bit shaky ground on Monday. I didn't tell her, just went over at lunch and said, "You know, she's a little sad. Maybe It's just PMS, but she could use some cheering up. I think she'd like to know that you like her for more than just sex. Maybe some flowers? $5.99 at Albertson's, it's on the way."

Did he show up with flowers? Of course not. If he had, I wouldn't have told her, but we were processing the next day and she brought up her fears and insecurities again, so I felt I had to give her that additional data point. Now, if it was me, I'd be in big trouble for treating her like he does. But he's got a big dick, and evidently that is a "get out of the doghouse, free" card. Sigh.

So, a little bigoted, a little misogynistic, and scared of real intimacy. Another fixer-upper. A friend of ours told us that some friends of his who had started up a polyamory group here were trying to get it back together. We're definitely going to check that out. Sure, there are messed up people in poly circles, too. But in the ones I've been involved with, there was always a core group of really solid, open, honest, and fun people without too many problems or hangups.

But Merril is definitely worth a little effort. You can't change other people, but you can give them both incentive and help in changing themselves. I think Merril wants to change, I mean, who really wants to be scared of intimacy? Connecting with other humans on a heart to heart level is, to me, one of the very best things in life.

I'm working on a GURPS fantasy campaign set in an alternate Earth, Elizabethan era. I've done quite a bit of cartography with the Profantasy suite. It's quite nice, I've got the Fractal Terrains program, and the Campaign Cartographer with dungeon and city add ons. Some months ago I discovered Google Sketchup, a great free version of the Sketchup 3D modeling program used to create buildings in Google Earth. I've got a bunch of models uploaded to the 3D Warehouse site, including some very nice ship and castle models with detailed interiors.

The gist of the campaign is Harry Potter meets Master and Commander. I think the background I've developed is quite ingenious. Basically, Elves, who are more like the Tuatha De Danann than Tolkien's friendly, helpful Elves, invaded from faerie around 1400 years previously; conquered all the advanced races on the planet; instituted religious reform saying that all Gods were mere reflections of the Real, elven Gods; and taught a new system of magic while demonizing the old, spirit based magic. Then they mysteriously disappeared about four hundred years after their conquest was complete, leaving the world to fall into a dark age.

Now, it's a time of enlightenment. A new age of exploration begins, and the people of the island nation of Ghent are determined to outdo their continental neighbors, who currently have more colonies overseas, and a bigger navy. But the Ghentians have a secret weapon: ancient Elven ship building techniques have recently been recovered, and a new type of ship is being built in secret.

The campaign covers three chapters, and in each, players can keep their old characters or play new ones. The first chapter details the finding of the plans in an ancient elven citadel, intrigue in the secret ship yard where the first small prototype is being constructed, exploration of a forbidden Elven island, defeating the guardians and reactivating the old Elven technology found there, and finally, the building of the ship that will be the first to carry humans around the world. The players are a band of adventurers hired by a high placed agent of the Crown to help carry out these endeavors. They go on to help the agent enact the desires of the Queen on the voyage of discovery.

The second chapter involves the voyage itself, discovering new lands and new races, and gradually piecing together the mystery of the elves. The players can keep playing their old characters, or take on the role of midshipmen, mage's apprentices, rangers, or marines. The final chapter begins when the first voyage is complete, as a small fleet is launched to carry out diplomacy and open up trade with the newly discovered civilizations, the mystery is solved at last, and a major excursion into faerie is undertaken to break the last hold the Elves have over the world.

As the Elves were androgynous, assuming whatever form they desired at a whim, they never understood sexual roles in humans or other races and treated them all the same. They tended to use other races more like domesticated animals and never showed empathy or remorse, though they did show lust and possessiveness. They used the other races as fireball fodder in their wars of conquest.

They did not understand other races emotions, and used them sexually, leading to some very great societal differences between our world and that one. For one thing, the sexes are still equal, even after the disappearance of the Elves. For another, sexuality is quite a bit more open, but some strange and disturbing attitudes remain from the days of Elven subjugation.

Anyway, if you are into either RPGs or naval history you might want to download some of the ship models I've made and take a look. Some are realistic, others more fantastical. There are also some nice models of castles and towns.

Sketchup is free, and one of the most intuitive modeling programs I've used. Definitely worth the download. Some of my later hulls were designed using the free version of Delftship, with only the interiors and details added in Sketchup. Delftship is amazing, using subdivision surfaces which allow you to define most hulls using only a few control points, and then subdivide it into as many or as few polygons as you like. And it calculates all the important hydrodynamics, so you can figure out how well your hull would function.

I'll be putting up a site with more world background, maps, models, and pictures a bit later.

Merril (that, I find out, is how it is spelled) was over again tonight, and I wanted to write about it, but then I reread Friday's entry, and this was a repeat of that. Except that Jenny tried much harder to give us our space to connect.

When I said that the geek connection is as powerful as a sexual connection, that wasn't hyperbole. I've felt it many times in my life. There's something very intense about finding another person with whom you can share certain intellectual parts of your self. Merril and my conversation tonight ranged over mathematics, quantum physics, game theory, Perl programming, object oriented programming, hydrodynamics, war history, and artificial intelligence. Among other things.

Whenever the conversation veered towards topics that Jenny couldn't take part in, she would excuse herself to let us talk. I could tell it was a strain on her. Sometimes she would sit and listen, but with her arms crossed, obviously feeling defensive.

Jenny is incredibly intelligent, but in a different way from Merril and I. Her intelligence is primarily social and emotional, and where it is logical, it encompasses a totally different knowledge base than ours. She can analyze the hell out of any artistic endeavor, in a way that makes the lit-crit pomo liberal arts types seem like the punters they really are.

The thing is, her emotional and social intelligence get short circuited when she feels threatened. She can look at any situation not involving herself, and break down everyone's true motivations in a way that seems obvious, but that most people never would have thought of if she hadn't mentioned it. She can do that with her own motivations, after the fact, and so can I. That has been the main thing that has kept our relationship working over the years.

Merril is a typical guy in that regard. Not nearly as hurt and dysfunctional as Mr. Y., but like most guys, uncomfortable with the illogical complexity of human feelings. He's divorced, and is obviously uncomfortable dealing with "women's issues." He had a strong, overbearing mother and a wife who "nagged the hell out of him." When Jenny and I brought up the fact that we were in couple's counseling, he said, "That's all I need, two bitches in the room yelling at me." Ouch.

Now, one of the things about the way Jenny and I do polyamory: we share everything. When she has a crush, I can be like a big sister to her. Well, maybe like an older cousin who has a crush on you. Anyway, we talk about things, including the emotional state of said crush.

You better be sharp if you get involved with us, because your mental, emotional, and situational state will be analyzed to the umpteenth degree. We may make mistakes, like we did with Mr. Y., but it isn't out of malice. We really want everyone in the world to be intimate with everyone else. That's our strength as a species, our ability to share our experiences with others. You can't share if you are too afraid to be honest, and after seven years and too many close calls to dwell on, I think we are finally there.

While Jenny was in the bathroom, I took the opportunity to tell Merril that he should engage Jenny where she is at, intellectually. There was an interesting Slashdot article recently on early attitudes towards intelligence recently. Basically, if you tie self worth to intelligence early on, you cripple it. If you teach that intelligence is malleable, and that anyone can become smarter through hard study, you enhance it.

All three of us got that bad first message, but Jenny got it far worse than Merril or I. The two of us can still approach intellectual challenges as an opportunity to broaden ourselves, while she sees them as an affront to her self worth. So she has a harder time discussing things that are new to her. So he should meet her where she is at, and talk about directing, acting, art history, cinematography, design, politics, sociology, philosophy, ethics, and human nature.

Now I personally am a true renaissance man. I can discuss mathematics and the intangibles of human feelings, the history of combat and the history of pacifism, art and science: my left and right brain are pretty well integrated. I've had a lot of positive experiences dealing with logical and intuitive types of thinking. So I can see both sides.

This is one reason that Jenny really loves me. It's one of the reasons I'm not afraid to let her have experiences where she is infatuated with another guy. We've been together for seven years, and we were partners above all else from almost the very beginning. Not counting our having sex within fifteen minutes of meeting at the Rainbow Gathering in Oregon, because we were barely ever in the same state for the next two years. But now, we trust each other, that we have each other's back.

Unless you were born rich and privileged, when you find someone that you know has your back, stick with that person. I discount the privileged because they are taught never to trust anyone and to take advantage wherever they can, so they need to work through that before they can be interdependent. I was raised middle class, and Jenny was raised working class, so at least we don't have that hanging over our heads.

Mr. Y. challenged us when we were at a real low point, but we made our peace with being apart and then came back together with a renewed sense of why we wanted to be partners in the first place. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My story now is that, although Merril rocks her world sexually that is only one part of a complete relationship, and he is not capable of being a real partner. Honestly, if I thought that out of fear or malice, one would think I'd try to use it against him. Instead, I try to tell him what he needs to do to develop an even more intimate relationship with her. Because I want that for her, and I think he needs to experience a relationship with a woman who can be a real partner, not just a ball buster.

One of the many things Jenny and I have in common is that we look at the motivations, psyche, and situation of the people around us and try to figure out how to increase the net happiness of the world. Purely selfishly, I might add: we just happen to like looking at happy, free, and self actualized people more than we like looking at sad and desperate people.

So this is good. A rare win-win-win situation. She gets more affirmation that she is sexually attractive, and that she is desirable as a partner. He and I get a geek friend. He gets some positive experiences working though relationship issues, and a role model, nay advocate, to show him how it's done. I get another opportunity to see where I'm still weak.

Weak? Okay, I'm jealous. And envious. She's getting some of the best sex of her life! How can I not be a little of both envious and jealous? Yes, she and I have had whole weekends together where all we did was fuck, maybe ten or fifteen orgasms for me, and who knows how many dozens for her. And I have had numerous incredibly hot sexual experiences before we got married, unlike her. But the primal feelings are still there.

For all his six foot sevenish masculinity, and his impressive girth if not length (it's far more important!), he hasn't had nearly the depth and breadth of sexual experience I've had. Also, I'll admit that Jenny is the best fuck I've ever had, but some of the things he's impressed by just lead me to believe that he has been with some pretty boring girls, overall. So intellectually I don't begrudge them their fun. But on a primal level it challenges me more then her relationship with poor can't get hard, average sized Mr. Y. ever did.

However, I think I mentioned before that I thought Merril would make a great wingman? All three of us talked about it, and we may all go out soon and try to get me someone new. Last time we were out at a bar together, he was a little pissed off because Jenny was feeling in third place intellectually, so he started pointing out all the girls who were checking us out. "Oh, look at that one, she's totally looking at you, dude, and her friend has been scoping me out! What do you think?"

So he obviously has wingman skills, and if a girl asked about my ring I could say, yeah, ask my wife if it's okay. She's over there with her boyfriend.

P.S. I just reread this JE, and yes, I'm a little drunk and that's why it rambles as it does. Sorry.

So Merrel was over tonight. I don't think he would mind me using his real name, and it is less awkward than the whole "Mr. M." convention. He's not skittish and weird like Mr. Y. He and I hit it off great. In fact, that's the problem.

Jenny is jealous of our intellectual connection. There's more to it than just that, of course. She lived as a fag-hag in San Francisco for so long, and has had so many guys stolen from her by other guys, that she's a little wary when two guys she likes connect.

We were just geeking out, and I have been hit on by enough guys to know the difference, but she felt threatened. Part of it is the fact that, intelligent as she is, her main thrust of intelligence lies in areas different from those traditionally respected as such. You know. Liberal Arts. There, I said it. Get a liberal arts type in a group with science types and they are all like, "No really, my knowledge has relevance!" I tried to mollify the situation, but he's one of those guys who has obviously been hurt by women almost one too many times. So he's nervous because she is acting a little weird.

I say "almost" because if a guy has been hurt too many times by women, it really can turn him "gay." Some guys are born wanting cock. Some guys are thrust into it. Everyone is a little bi, I think, and just like in prison, if you can't get what you need from a preferred source for whatever reason, you'll get it from the next best place.

He's not gay at all. He likes the same things about Jenny that I like. She's got curves like a woman, not like a prepubescent boy. So he listens to Abba and likes musicals, he can't be the only straight guy to do so.

I have real reason to try to make all this work. I like Merrel. I don't know that many geeks who have a surfeit of other geeks in their lives and that kind of intellectual connection is as fun as sex. So I don't want to make my wife jealous of me and the 6'7", hung like a horse guy she's fucking. That's more ironic than a black fly in your chardonnay.

Well, everyone predicting this Mr. Y. thing wouldn't work out, you were right. He turned out to be a lost cause. But, wouldn't you know, something better turned up: Mr. M. Six foot six, built like a linebacker and hung like a horse. He and Jenny have GREAT sex, from what I hear. And he's not weird, in fact, he and I hit it off perfectly on first meeting. He's very respectful, not very needy, and potentially a great wingman for me getting some strange of my own. He's brilliant, and a great big nerd to boot, a mathematician to be exact. Funny coincidence, my first polyamorous experience was with my girlfriend of the time, Jenny (different Jenny) and a mathematician named Lee.

Jenny and I have been going to individual therapy and couples counseling. Our relationship has never been stronger, and our sex has never been better. Work is going great, got a great review and a raise. About the only thing stressing me out is Jenny's sister. She's still living with us and shows no signs of looking for another place. She's demanding and selfish and expects everyone around her to entertain her. And she is always there, so Jenny and I have a hard time finding the time or privacy to really connect. Well, it's time to have a talk with Rachael.

18th October, 2007, we lost a dear old friend, a (mostly) Siamese cat yclept "Gwai-loh." Gwai was quite vocal, as are many Siamese; he also had some strange characteristics, for instance you could hold him upside-down on the ceiling and he would walk around - inverted - for as long as you were willing to hold him up there. For years, we kept him around the office, and he had a habit of coming up for affection when whoever he was approaching was on the phone. So he'd come up to you, get right up to your face (and the phone) and let loose with a really loud meow. Which you would then have to explain to the customer. One time I was on the phone with a rather famous Hollywood special effects dude when Gwai let loose with this, we had a good laugh over it. Eventually, we put up a web page on our site with a .wav of Gwai's signature meow, and a picture of him staring at a screensaver on a ginormous (for the time) monitor. A surprising amount of the code in WinImages was written with Gwai warm and settled either in my lap or across my arms.

Well, eventually, the old boy's liver failed, and I put out a rather startling amount of money to see if we could get around that, and amazingly enough, it worked. We got two more years of Gwai, all of it of quite high quality, before he finally laid down for the last time. His last couple of days were spent purring and head bumping while all the while refusing to eat or drink... finally, he just didn't wake up.

I miss him terribly. Sometimes it hits me right between the eyes and I can't even think straight. I can't dig over a decade and a half of unconditional love and affection out of my system with any amount of rationalization or any other flavor of self-bullshittery. Here's to my grizzled old friend. I only hope he knew how much I loved him in return.

Is anyone else as annoyed as I am by words and phrases in web articles that pop up boxes because my mouse pointer happened to cross them, temporarily hiding the content I was reading in the first place? I didn't click on anything, and consequently, I don't want a context change. I find these annoying to the point of noting what the site is and not going back. Anyone else feel the same? Anyone have a defense of the practice?

I went to this article today to read it in response to a slashdot posting, and managed to accidentally activate the wireless mouseover / popup as I was reading. Bam. Content hidden, thought stream interrupted. Isn't this essentially popups, revisited?

So I wake up this morning, and Putin has dissolved his government.

Then, same morning, Russia announces a bomb with nuclear-level destructive capability. But they say they're not escalating.

Then, later the same day, the US announces they have a matter-antimatter (proton/positron) annihilation laser, which, they say, is to normal lasers as nuclear weapons are to normal bombs.

At the same time, Bush, old "We'll never pull 'em out", is about to announce a troop pullback in Iraq.

Oil's hovering around $80 a barrel. The dollar is in the outhouse, and we've basically had many of our civil rights eliminated or made irrelevant.

Did I miss something here?

Okay, if I don't mention the whole polyamory thing, just assume it's going well. I've got a ton of other stuff I've been wanting to write here, so enough about all that for now.

Jenny's sister is getting in to town tonight. She's going to be living with us for a while. She just graduated college with a double major in Journalism and Political Science. Now Albuquerque may not be a hotbed of journalistic action, but it's better than Bloomington, Indiana.

I doubt she's going to get a very good journalism job here, but that's not the point. The point is she needs to get the hell out of Indiana and see some of the rest of the country. Jenny and I have been thinking about moving to Seattle in a year or two, and Rachel could actually do pretty well there, journalism-wise. For now, she's got some web design skills that can pay the bills, and she can do some freelance work.

It will be nice having another smart, free thinking, well educated person to talk to. Rachel used to be a bit of an annoying know-it-all, but she's calmed down a bit after graduating and having to live in the real world for a while.

I've said she should start blogging, but she's very old-school. I've tried to tell her that traditional journalism is dead, but of course being young, she thinks she'll be the one to single handedly rescue the field from ignominy. The problem is that there are no real outlets for investigative journalism these days. News is entertainment, a way to sell eyeballs to advertisers. It doesn't matter how good a journalist you are if the owners and editors are all bent on ladling out pablum to the masses.

Poor kid, I wish her luck.