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The Gienna Club is growing

One of my favorite old college professors has a blog ... She left a comment for me the other day, saying that I was the only Gienna she knew, so it must be me (and she was right--it is me).

But there are an increasing number of Giennas out there ... I could be the Gienna in this Thanksgiving story in the Healdsburg Tribune (third photo down, the girl on the far right). I could also be the surly Gienna in the back row center of this Midwestern Girl Scout troup group photo. I could also be the amateur model named Gienna who posed nude in a pool some years back (sorry, I couldn't find any photos of her). Or I could be the subject of the poem, "Gienna Waits," that was written by an English prof whose name I forget (also no longer online).

If all goes well (fingers crossed) we'll soon be welcoming the newest member of the Gienna Club. I recently got a nice e-mail from a couple who are planning to adopt a baby -- they were thinking of naming her Gienna and wanted to know how to pronounce it. (It's like Vienna, with a soft G.)

I didn't tell them about the nude pool Gienna.

Thanks to everyone who wished me happy birthday and left their funny and friendly comments ... Surprisingly few photos (just wasn't in the mood, I guess) to come sometime in the next day or so.

Related(ish):
I'm not just the president, I'm also a member
A post from my old site, in which I talk in a very nerdy way about verbs and admit to Googling myself
And another in which I admit that I Technorati myself, too
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A few notes before I'm gone fishin'

You know what freaks me out? People dressing up for Halloween in outfits that I actually wore in real life. That's my funny work-mate, Marta, on the left. She's single, too. Can you believe it?

Speaking of feeling old, today is my birthday. A. sent me a hilarious card--but it was unusual in that it was not a "sorry it's late" card.

I have updates on two continuing sagas ... The first is that the upstairs condo has been sold ... Apparently the bank had an auction but the auctioneer didn't advertise it, so no one showed up (I didn't even know about it until after the fact). So the bank bought it from themselves and now they're going to fix it up and try to sell it. At $213K I think they paid themselves more than they should have, so it'll be interesting to see how long it takes to sell and what it ends up going for.

The second update is that as of last week at Weight Watchers I have lost a total of 30 pounds. That seems like a lot, right? I'm fitting into clothes that last fit me in the 1990s, people. Pretty soon I'll be back in the ripped flashdance sweatshirt I wore in high school!

That's it for a while ... I am on vacation for the next week. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Related reading while I am gone:
80s clothes make their ugly comeback.
Shopping for a completely normal Thanksgiving turkey.
Why I didn't post any pictures after Thanksgiving last year.
And, just for fun, Robert DiNiro sells my mom a pumpkin.

Stand by your man ...

Which surprised you most--that Bush dumped Rumsfeld or that Britney Spears dumped Kevin Federline?

Just for the fun of it ...

Which surprised you most?
George Bush dumping Donald Rumsfeld
Britney Spears dumping Kevin Federline
Free polls from Pollhost.com

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Voting by process of elimination

I've read stories about undecideds making up their mind in the voting booth, but I never really believed them until last night. I honestly had no idea who I would vote for when I walked into the booth with my paper ballot. And it's not just because I was distracted by a shiny object.

In fact, I was so undecided that I voted for all of the other offices on the ballot--as well as the three ballot questions--before filling in the little arrow for the Massachusetts governor's race.

I'm registered "unenrolled" so that I can vote as a Republican or Democrat in the primary. Theoretically, anyway--the truth is I always vote Democrat. And if forced to choose, I guess I would have to say that I am, in fact, a Democrat. But when it comes to local politics, I'm what you'd call a Weld Democrat--socially liberal but fiscally conservative. I have voted for Republican governors in the past because I think they do a better job of keeping the books balanced and because I like the balance of power that comes with a Democratic legislature and a Republican in the corner office.

As I worked my way through the ballot, I realized I was voting Democrat in every single race.

Martha Coakley? Love her. Dem.
Ted Kennedy? I votTED Dem.
Fence viewer, dog catcher, clerk of the courts? Dem, Dem, Dem.

After voting for all those Dems, my pen did in fact hover momentarily over Republican Kerry Healey's broken arrow last night. But I just couldn't bring myself to fill it in. And despite the fact that negative campaigns are often effective (see the results of Question 1 for proof), hers was so disgusting that even if I agreed with her politics 100%, I would have had a hard time voting for her.

She ran ads that basically said if you vote for the black guy, white women are going to get raped.

It sounds crazy, but it's true. The worst of them was the so-called parking garage ad. The Washington Post called it vicious (scroll down to item 4), and the Christian Science Monitor mentions it in an Oct. 31 story, "Attack ads sometimes backfire."

Anyway, of course it's more complicated than that, but in the end, that's what pushed my last-minute decision not to vote for Healey. I only hope that since I'm not the only one, politicians will learn a lesson from it. But I'm guessing they probably won't.

Anyway, I flirted with voting for the fat lesbian, who impressed me with her passion and her grasp of the issues, but she and I don't see eye to eye on the First Amendment. And plus, you know, she's basically a communist. I almost voted for the guy that Berto calls "everybody's favorite crazy uncle," just for the fun of seeing what he might say or do next, but I have a strange aversion to wasting my vote on candidates who don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

So that left Democrat Deval Patrick. I'm not with him 100% on the issues. I feel like he talks real pretty but doesn't say much. But I also figure he's got to do a good job here if he wants to run for President. And he isn't, you know, crazy. Or a communist. Or an asshole.

That seems like a good enough reason to vote for someone, right?
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Elections and things and stuff

Tidal Marsh 2  10X20I've added some updates to my mom's blog, including upcoming art shows and sales in Lynn and in Concord and images of four new paintings.

OK, who is hogging the Internets and making them go so slowly today? Sometimes when you're typing a post in Blogger what you are writing doesn't show up on the screen for several seconds ... The first sentence shows up while you are typing the second sentence, etc. It's kind of fun, like a cross between taking a typing test while blindfolded and writing in invisible ink.

It's early evening on election day in Massachusetts, and I still have no idea who I am going to vote for in the Governor's race. I do know for sure and for certain that I am voting yes on question one, because if there is one thing I can get behind, it's "more wine!"

I have a little red, white, and blue pin somewhere that says I voTED. Get it? voTED? I love the lead from this story in today's Globe by Michael Levenson, by the way. Actually, the whole story is great. The picture sucks, though.

I forgot to mark the two year anniversary of this blog, which would have been in August. And I didn't notice when I wrote my 100th post. Or my 300th post, for that matter. But I did notice that, if you count the posts at my old blog, I have almost reached the 500 post milestone. (Edit: Actually, I just looked again, and if you count the other blog's posts, this is my 501st post.) Sometimes I look back through my archives. I have posted some pretty stupid stuff. And quite a lot of it about the dog.

I noticed that word verification on comments is acting screwy. If you want to leave a comment but you can't see the little letters you type in to prove you are not a robot, try hitting publish without entering anything ... sometimes it comes up after that. I know that makes very little sense to the handful of people who read my blog (hi, mom!) .... But I really like getting comments.
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