More mish-mash

Spring seems to have sprung a little early around here, and I am totally OK with that. The weather folks are telling us that we are in for pretty consistent 60's all week, with only maybe a very little bit of rain and a couple of clouds. Coming on the heels of our absurdly mild winter, that is more good news! (Note: this does not at all preclude the arrival of a massive April snowstorm...)

I don't have a whole lot today, but I felt like blogging (just like old times!). We did a little house hunting yesterday without much success...the good news is that it is a busy time of year, so a lot of stuff is coming onto the market. The bad news is that it all remains way too expensive. ("Oh, but AM, you could get such an awesome house in [insert leafy suburb]!" you say. "Yea? Shut it!")

Ever seen a baby bloody nose? I have! You really shouldn't let them play in places where they are likely to fall on their face:-) I would post pictures, but it would likely get me a call from DSS...

(Moving right along...)

The Boy and I are going to see Les Miserables on Friday night, which I am pretty excited about...the tickets were a Christmas present from his parents. His sister (who appears to have been in cahoots with his Mom) gave us a gift card to this place, which I haven't been to, and which should make for a good night. Babysitting services were included as a part of the gift:-).

Munchkin and her friend leave for Paris on Friday evening, too. I definitely wish I was going with her. Because really, who doesn't? I still feel like I need to spend a lot more time in Paris...despite having been there a couple of times, I haven't really seen much.

Before that, though, we have more primaries tomorrow and...oh, crap...you know what? I just can't bring myself to care that much. Santorum may win tomorrow, which may make Gingrich drop out, which still won't have much of an effect on the race. I honestly want to grab the collective GOP by the shoulders, shake them and shout "Rick fucking Santorum?!?!?!"

I still haven't heard anyone come up with a parallel to his status as a legitimate GOP candidate at this stage...

My blogger of the week

So, if I wasn't so lazy, I would have done this five days ago...and in fact should have. I think most of my readers also read Nilsa at Somi Speaks, but if you don't...go and visit her today while you still have a chance.

She has been running a contest all week in celebration of her blogiversary, soliciting suggestions for charitable organizations to which she will make some donation (out of her own pocket) based on the level of participation. Now, this is not an invitation to bombard her with ideas and send her to the poor house:-) (I suppose there is an off chance that this ends up with me writing her an "apology check") but it is worth stopping by to check it out.

Obviously, it is quite generous of her, and she should be applauded...despite not asking for any applause. It is a wonderful, selfless idea, and I may very well steal it from her later this year:-)

The other Decision 2012

Today is Super Tuesday, including the primary here in Massachusetts. It is nice to be able to go back to 2008 and see what I wrote about that day...and to see how much more I wrote about Politics as a whole that year. Really, it is kind of interesting how much more discussion there seemed to be in 2008 across the whole of the blogosphere, which is probably due to a couple of obvious things (bloggers on average are pretty liberal, and therefore don't care about the Republican primaries as much; the 2008 Democratic fight was a pretty unusually big one, etc.)

But I did promise to tell you who I am going to vote for, and LaurWilk hit my rationale pretty soundly in her comment last week...I am gonna vote for Ron Paul (disclaimer: Romney will win the state by a mile, and whoever wins today will lose by a mile in November. Ergo, my vote is not really cast with the idea that it has some input into the outcome.

So let's start with Romney, who Republicans seem to very begrudgingly choosing as their nominee. He just seems like a guy who's whole is less than the sum of his parts. Because on the surface, the resume is all there: he is unquestionably smart and hardworking and successful at a bunch of things. His private sector background is outstanding (despite the nonsense that his opponents have tried to play in the last couple of months). His quasi-government role at the Olympics earned raves from everyone who was involved on any level, and his time as the Governor here was basically successful as well (the one BIG mark against him is that he really only did it for about three years...he didn't seek re-election and largely disengaged for at least the last year of his term).

Yet for some reason, he seems to constantly want to apologize for who he is, and he has a very long (and disconcerting) habit of saying what it seems like people want to hear. I almost feel like his campaign advisers told him early on that he needs to come across as likeable, and he has been vainly trying and looking incredibly phony in the process. You know what, Mitt? You are rich and smart and handsome and successful...just go ahead and be arrogant about it! Most of us will never be able to identify with someone like you, so stop apologizing for it and just embrace who you are. We don't want to hire you because you are just like us...we want to hire you because you are capable.

Then, of course, there is Rick Santorum...oy. It is one of the great marvels of my memory that he is considered a contender in this race. He comes from a key swing state where, six years ago, voters took the really unusual step of throwing him out as a very powerful incumbent, and doing it by SEVENTEEN PERCENTAGE POINTS!!! If that has ever happened before, I have never heard of it. And yet here, six years later, preaching the same message, the national party thinks he might be a good candidate for President? How on Earth did that happen? (Actually, that is an easy question to answer...have you seen his opponents?)

More specifically, my problem with Santorum is that he is the natural successor to George W. Bush. It was never McCain, and it won't be Romney, and it's not even Jeb Bush...but Santorum is the exact kind of "compassionate Conservative" that Bush was. Socially, he seems to be stuck somewhere between 1885 and 1902...forget about abortion, he wants to talk about contraception. Really? What fucking planet are we on? And he is from the very worst school of unsustainable spenders that Bush is from...huge tax cuts for everyone and huge benefits for everyone and let the children pay for it in 40 years when the bill comes due. We are all blessed that he is such a colossal idiot, because he is unquestionably the most dangerous person in this race.

Newt Gingrich is just too much of an asshole to be President, and while Romney takes the blame (because he runs most of the ads), Gingrich is really the one most responsible for the tone of this race. He is the one who started on the intellectually dishonest attack ads, and the rest simply reacted...or over-reacted if you think so. Newt's legislative record as Speaker of the House was actually not that bad...he and Bill Clinton ran a fiscally sound state (or, at least as sound as anyone else has...but for the love of God, can we learn what it means to actually balance a budget? Because they didn't do it, despite claiming it incessantly for 15 years), and they put together at least one signature achievement: welfare reform. But then he got off track on a blow job infused witch hunt and destroyed himself and a lot more else in the process.

Which brings us to Ron Paul, who for some reason never gets treated like a "real" candidate. Which makes no sense...he raises tons of money, has a huge organization and draws the biggest crowds. He is also the spiritual father of so many of the current deficit hawks... And unquestionably the most intellectually consistent and honest of the bunch.

I think he is off base with his insistence on the gold standard, which wouldn't really accomplish anything near the trouble it would cause, and he is probably overly isolationist. He also remains a pretty staunch social conservative (although I will give him this: I disagree with him, but he makes one of the most eloquent pro-Life arguments I have heard), and I think he underestimates the need to maintain an energy policy as a part of foreign policy.

But he is just so right about so much else...he is the only one of the bunch (including the President) who is even remotely serious about deficit reduction, let alone balancing the budget. He is the only one who talks sincerely about shrinking Government (the others say so, but don't actually propose to do it). And he is alone among Republicans...and, this week, Democrats, too...in acknowledging the lives, money and resources that we are wasting overseas.

So, I am going to vote for him and feel pretty good about it. I expect Romney to win the nomination, and unless something really dramatic changes, I will vote for Obama in November (and expect him to win handily). He may be a crappy President, but save for actually starting a war with Iran, it is hard to see what he could do to make me think one of the other guys would be better at it.

Decision 2012

No, not the election, which I will try to write about tomorrow, but a big decision for Munchkin that she has to make after she gets back from France in a couple of weeks.

First, some back story, which I have written about before but which you may not recall. When Munchkin moved here, she repeated fourth grade. She was coming from a not-great public school to a super-advanced private school and was also dealing with the loss of her second parent, moving to a new city, etc. It seemed like an awful lot to throw at a kid who might also be trying to catch up in school, so the administrators and I agreed that it made sense for her to just do fourth grade a second time. That made her one of the oldest kids in her class, but that seemed OK.

In hindsight, it was unnecessary. Academically, she thrived from day one, and she has always been socially much more developed than her classmates. Most of her best friends have always been older than her, although she has plenty of friends in her own class, too. So, starting a couple of years ago, her counselors began to ask if she wanted to skip a grade to get back on to her original schedule. And while it always seemed intriguing, she never officially committed to it...but always sort of left the option open.

She did this by doubling up subjects at times...so, for example in seventh grade, she would take both seventh and eighth grade English. Then in eighth grade, she would take ninth grade English, along with eighth and ninth grade Math, etc. Combined with her two languages, that made for a very heavy workload...but she still tore through it with very, very few marks below an A. I think she has had like three A-'s.

Which gets her to now...her sophomore year of high school. She now has to decide definitively whether she wants to graduate in 2013 or 2014. To finish next year, she would need to take two double classes, which would get her through her Senior year in everything she needs to. But if she wants to continue with the grade she has always been in, she would end up taking a handful of college-level classes that would probably get her done with some of her credits when she finally starts college.

It is completely up to her...she already basically knows where she wants to go to college and should have no trouble getting in. She already took the PSAT last fall (and killed it, of course) and would need to register for the Spring SAT by sometime in April, I think. So, I think that my first inclination is that she should do it, and that I should immediately prepare for the absolutely ridiculous idea that I will have a SENIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL in the house, and then very shortly a college student. But, she loves school, and loves her friends and she may just not feel the need to rush anything.

There are a couple of social factors, too - one that pulls her towards 2014, and one towards 2013. First, her best friend is in her class, and this would mean skipping ahead and graduating a year ahead of her. Given the timing of the decision, I am not sure that Munchkin wants to do that (even if her friend should be completely better by then). Second, there is the ever-present Frenchie factor...he will finish high school in 2013 and I would be pretty surprised if he didn't come to college in the States. I will have much more on this later on, but the appeal of being on the same timeline as him has to be appealing as well.

So, I don't really know what she will decide. I can be pretty sure that she will sit down at least me and Smoking Hot Roommate, and probably Big Sis and The Boy and Papa Bear as well, and talk about it in great detail. That is how she makes big decisions...she assembles her advisers and talks our ears off:-)

Odds and Ends

Three weeks in a row now, Modern Family has totally killed me...it's like they are pulling plot lines out of my old diaries (that I never wrote, but still).
-----
We actually got a little bit of snow yesterday, which should be a non-story, but it stands as the only snow we have seen here since...oh, October? And even that was questionable (at least around here, further west it was a real storm.) The snow is gone, which leaves us today with just a really cold, rainy day, reminding us that our pleasant winter still has a LONG way to go.
-----
Tuesday election recap: good night for Romney, obviously. I know there have been stories about Democrats voting for Santorum, but I always question how much things like that really impact an election. However, it is a good thing that Santorum didn't win by less than 1% or else there would have been a revolt. Now we look forward to next Tuesday...although right now it doesn't look like that is going to solve anything definitively. Romney will win a couple, Santorum will win a couple, Gingrich will win Georgia (maybe Tennessee?) and they will all probably live to fight another day...except maybe Newt, this may be it for him.

Watch Ohio, which is a big delegate prize (other than Georgia, which is Newt's home state), and a tremendously important November state. It is also unclear who is going to win, I think Romney is up in some polls, but it is really close...and Santorum's brand of conservatism (I love Jesus and I love labor unions!) may resonate with the GOP voters there.

Also, I get to vote Tuesday...I can almost promise you that I will vote for someone else in November...but I am still voting now. Would anyone care to take a guess...? I will tell you Tuesday if you care...
-----
Spring break is in a couple of weeks, and Munchkin is headed to Paris. Poor kid, huh? She and a friend are headed to visit Frenchie, which I am once again jealous of. If I stop and think about it, the whole thing remains as completely absurd as ever...but I stopped worrying about that years ago.
-----
Poor LK got sick while she was asleep last night and didn't really even wake up:-( She threw up just a little bit, but it was only on her blanket, so I didn't have to change her. But a little bit got in her hair, and my efforts to clean it without waking her up didn't quite prevent it from kinda smelling this morning.
-----
Seems like very little shows up in my Reader these days...do I need some new blogs to put in the rotation? Or is this just a temporary slowdown?
-----
Holy shit, when did March happen?!?!?