Well, there’s a new addition to our family: Bryn Ealasaid Mikeal, born Spetember 12, 2003 at St. Joeseph’s Hospital in Bryan, TX. Pictures can be found at my family website (adammikeal.org); I’ll try to get more photos online shortly.
Well, after almost a month-long hiatus, I am returning to my neglected blog, and hopefully some updates will be following soon. However, Since I’m still fairly busy (new job, new baby, other ventures…), the updates will still be few and far-between, I’m afraid. Still, something’s better than nothing, right? … Right?
I don’t have time to comment on this topic right now, but I’m posting this here so I don’t forget about it (in case I sleep before I do have time to write 
. I have a good article about this, too (also another article about societal attitudes toward college…).
I feel as if I can breathe again, if only for a few moments. Between my last semester at A&M, a big project deadline at work, and an outside research project with a poli-sci prof, to say that I’ve been busy is definately an understatement. At the moment i have a slight reprieve, as I just finished a test in my math class, and there’s no class tomorrow. It’s pretty sad when a relaxing day still consists of a full day’s work and a wedding rehearsal, and several hours of research work. Well, one more month! After graduation on the 15th, I’ll be free of school for at least a year (until grad school, anyway).
So, I the site goes for the next month with nary an update, you’ll at least know why. If I have any time, I might post some info about my research project, which is actually quite interesting (but a topic for another post). Back to the grind…
I was finally given the opportunity to experience Guinness yesterday, and I found — much to my surprise — that I really liked it. To this point, I really hadn’t cared for any of the beers I had tried; Samuel Adams was about it, I think. The surprising thing about Guinness is that it looks so different from anything I’ve ever been exposed to (beer-wise, that is). It’s so dark and thick — the old joke that it’s a meal by itself has a lot of truth in it.
Now that the initial fear and trepidation has been conquered, and I’ve actually taken the first drink and discovered I like it, I am looking forward to trying more dark beers. My friend who introduced me to Guinness says that he’s going to get me to try his personal favorite, a Scottish beer, next. I’m really looking forward to it (those of you who know me realize that trying out tastes is a major accomplishment for me; I tend to get stuck in a rut sometimes. Well, OK. All the time. But I’m branching out!).
Well, it seems like the whole Dixie Chicks thing has finally blown over, and I say good riddance. I got so tired of hearing people berate the band and their music because of one off-hand comment made during a London concert. Granted, it was a really stupid thing to say, but the reaction was blown completely out of proportion.
Here’s why what Natalie Maines said really doesn’t matter: WHO CARES?!? Who really cares what Natalie Maines thinks about current events or world politics? What gave her opinion any credence? She’s a singer. Geez. You would probably hear a lot worse on any Washington, DC street corner.
Why is it that when someone makes a little money, and garners a bit of spotlight, suddenly America thinks that whatever their opinion is on anything, it’s worth listening to? Hollywood stars testifying before Congress? Pages and pages of news coverage over a singer’s off-hand comment? Everyone’s entitled to their opinion (I like mine; that’s why I have this blog , but are we as Americans incapable of showing any discrimination? Do we find it impossible to tell the difference between the opinions of, say, William Safire or George F. Will and Natalie Maines? That possibility scares me greatly.
The other side of this situation is that the Dixie Chicks thought their opinion mattered, too. They — like most popular singers, actors, etc today — view themselves as artists, with the whole misunderstood / tortured / apart from the world / not bound by normal rules image that goes along with that label. The fact is, they are not artists; they are a commodity. They may not like this fact, but that is the truth, and the sooner they accept it, the better off they’ll be (denying reality is never healthy).
By the way, I personally like the Dixie Chick’s music. Wide Open Spaces is one of my favorite country songs; I think it so aptly captures the feel of North and West Texas; both the lyrics and the music complement each other so well. Still, just because I like their music doesn’t mean I care about their politics.
Having an actively growing 2-year-old, I have been very interested in childhood mental and physical development lately. This fascination hasn’t digressed to the point that you’ll find me in the library reading medical journals (yet), but I have been observing her quite a bit. It’s really amazing; although she’s only 22 months old, she knows most of her letters, shapes and colors. she only has about a 30-40 word English vocabulary, but her ASL vocabulary is probably twice that, and she will frequently string together multiple signs into sentences.
What really intrigues me, though, is seeing her make connections between diverse facts that we haven’t showed her. We were in a toy shop last week, and Fiona found a top on one of the shelves. It was one of the old-fashioned metal kind, with a large corkscrew shaft that you push to get the top spinning. On her own, Fiona took the top off the shelf, set it right side up (how did she know which end was up?), and proceeded to pump the top to set it spinning.
How did she know what to do with that? To our knowledge, she’s never even seen a top like this before. We didn’t show her how to work it. What individual bits of information did she already possess that she strung together to figure this out? Nearly every day she’ll do something like this that takes me aback — “How did she know that?” I have a feeling that this period of accelerated development is only going to speed up as she continues to grow… Perhaps I had better get to the library after all…
Cascading Style Sheets are incredible. If you’re using a modern browser, you should see a pretty page, mostly blue, white and grey, with a menu of links down the right side. If you have an old (or standards-incompatable) browser, you should just see a plain-text page, free of markup and semantically accurate.
It gets even better: if you have one of the aforementioned modern browsers, select your “Print Preview” option on the “File” menu. Ta-da! Through the magic of CSS, an automatic print version of this site, with extraneous menu items and graphic markup removed, and the links even displayed in brackets following the link text (If you have IE5/6 you will see the print-pretty version, but no link URLs).
For all it’s magic, CSS still has spotty implementation across all browsers. For example, the menu to the right works in Mozilla, Netscape, Safari, and IE5 Mac but for some reason breaks in IE5/6 Windows. For some reason, IE Win want to put extra space in between the headings and their menu items. The grey bar above the top item should be flush with the bottom of the heading, creating a box around the headings. Additionally, when your mouse hovers over one of the items, you should see a blue box to the left of the item, indicating where you are in the list; IE Win ignores this completely. Why IE Win alone persists in this broken interpretation, I don’t know, but it is frustrating. I’m just about to give up on it, and say if you’re using a broken browser, you get broken results. Sigh.
I love to watch my daughter walk. Being not quite two years old, she is — understandably — short. Of course, given the fact that neither my wife nor myself are tall people, she’s at a further disadvantage. On top of this sad state of affairs, she has inherited my build: long torso and short little legs. The end result is a comic scurrying about the house when she’s excited, or in a hurry, or, well, her walk is somewhat comic just about all the time.
For some reason, the effect is heightened when she’s wearing some particularly cute outfit, like one of the little dresses that come to just above her knees that my wife likes. I think that my tiny, running 2-year-old is one of the memories of Fiona’s childhood I’ll remember a long time.
I went to said goodbye to a friend today. Joe Dennis was my pastor for almost 20 years, he officiated at my wedding, and I considered him a dear friend. His death at 59 was not something I was really prepared for. He contracted cancer a year and a half ago, and although I realized the inevitability of this day, I still wasn’t prepared for it. I don’t think I have absorbed the reality of it even now.
The funeral was … different. Surreal was the first word that came to mind, but I don’t think that’s quite right. I think I just felt disconnected to the whole thing. The funeral was happening, and I was watching it happen, but I was watching myself watch it. That sounds crazy. I think I just put myself somewhere else to avoid dealing with the reality of the situation. Denial is a good thing.
Joe was a man that was impossible to dislike. I think someone at the funeral expressed it this way: he genuinely cared about everyone he came into contact with. I have come to realize that a man like Joe is a rare find; a man that truly cares for others. Selflessness; that was Joe’s legacy - at least it was one of them.
I’m sure as a man ages, he begins to think about his legacy — what will people remember about me after I’m gone, what have I done that will last — I’m sure Joe was no different. To an extent, this question can be beneficial, insofar as it helps up realize priorities, and what’s really important. At this moment, a lot of what occupies most of my time every day seems profoundly trivial. I interact with people at work every day, but the interaction is completely surficial, and the context of these meetings seems pointless. How long will anything I produce at my job really last? Five years? Ten if I’m lucky? Joe’s interactions mattered. When you talked with Joe, you knew that you mattered. Joe had a legacy.
You will be missed, Joe. You already are.
In memoriam: Joe Dennis
19 Sept 1943 - 4 June 2003