YAY VERMONT!!!!

Vermont Legalizes Gay Marriage, Overrides Governor's Veto

I've got goosebumps... for the first time, this didn't come from the courts, this came from the PEOPLE!

Thank you Vermont! Thank you!

POP QUIZ: Name 10 books you read in High School

1. Hirohima, by John Hersey
2. Dune, by Frank Herbert
3. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
4. Julius Ceasar, by William Shakespeare
5. Roots, by Alex Haley
6. All the Star Wars, Star Trek and Superman novelizations (Does this count as more than one?)
7. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
8. The Teenager's Realistic Guide to Astrology, by Gary Jennings
9. The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality
10 ...And a hell of a lot of comic books.

My smoking Quit Date is April 15th.

Ponder these words and shudder...
For the impossible is possible
(Just not always very likely).


So. I'm doing what I haven't tried in a couple of years: Quitting Smoking.

I've done it hundreds of times before, so I know I can successfully quit.

Staying quit, now that's the hard part.

Thanks to a gift from a friend, I have nicotine patches.

Thanks to the Washington Quit Line coach for the Quit Date. Let the stages of grief begin.

And Thanks to the SCHIP program for making cigarettes too fucking expensive for me to buy!!!!!!

AAAAAAARG! I Don't wanna quit! I don't wannaaaaa quit... waaaaah waaaah waaah

(*ahem*)

(OK, better. Apologies for the outburst of the Id.)

Now I need to go buy some straws to replace my oral fixation.

Fidel Castro wants to help Obama

Ahhh... is this just politeness, or actual thawing in U.S. - Cuban relations?

Fidel: How can we help President Obama?

The wing nuts' heads should be exploding, right... about... now.

Feather

Feather
Originally uploaded by kevynjacobs

I found this feather walking home from Haggens this afternoon. It was along Bill McDonald Parkway, lying on the grass.

I think it's a tail feather, about 25 cm long, possibly from a raptor, but I'm not sure. I looked on several web resources, and wasn't able to match it to any common raptors in the area.

We're right in the middle of bird migration season, and here on the Pacific Northwest coast we're right along one of the major North American migratory routes. We get all sorts of strange birds this time of year. I wonder if it's something exotic?

Any birders know what it is?

UPDATE: My downstairs neighbour Parker identified it for me as being a ring-necked pheasant. Bingo. And here's a similar bird. Darn, I was hoping it was a raptor.