Valentine's Day

My beau and I were lucky to get to spend Valentine's Day together. After his lovely present for my birthday (which I blogged about here) it was my turn to spoil him a bit. We got gussied up and had a wonderful dinner at Laurel. The atmosphere, the wine, the food, the time together was magical. After a two-hour dinner we bundled up and walked up the street to Top of the Park for a nightcap and one of the best views of downtown San Diego.

Today he texted me and thanked me for a wonderful evening. I told him that what made the night wonderful was that two people who love each other spent it together. I believe that with all my heart.

Weekend of Celebrations

My birthday weekend was wonderful and the fact that two dear friends shared their anniversary makes the it even more so (congratulations Cory and Elbert, may you have many more). Friday night Cory and Elbert took me to dinner at Cafe Bleu where we were joined by Heather for food, wine, and conversation (I'll critique the restaurant and wine on my other blog). My beau was unable to join but I was soon with him for the rest of the night where he presented me with a candle-topped carrot cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to me.

The next morning we bucked the trend of newly-found austerity, picked up our friend Sarah, and met Cory, Elbert, and Heather at Orfila Winery to start a day of wine tasting (I'll review the wines at the other blog). A stretch limo picked us up for a ride to and around Temecula to spend the day at various wineries (again, see other blog for details). After a day of drinking, er, tasting and laughing we had dinner at Buca di Beppo in Mira Mesa where we were joined by Gabe and filled out the evening with good food and embarrassment for your truly as I had to stand on a chair holding a candelabra while the place sang "Happy Birthday". After dropping Sarah off it was time for my beau and I to head home and relax (being the old men that we are).

Sunday was sunny and relaxing. After breakfast at Shades we saw Gran Torino where I had a good cry, then it was off to Hillcrest for lunch, walking around, and relaxing. Cory and Elbert celebrated their anniversary Sunday so we pretty much left them alone, content to spend our time together and talking about the future.

So thanks to everyone who made the weekend special for me. You will never truly know how much such friendship is valued.

46

46 is the largest even integer that can't be expressed as a sum of two abundant numbers.

46 is the 13th semiprime.

There are 46 human chromosomes.

The code for international direct dial phone calls to Sweden (ewwww... don't like this one).

Code 46 was a pretty bad cyperpunkish movie.

On this day, January 30, someone whose name is firmly entrenched in the annals of American history was born. A man whose name is being invoked more and more frequently in the media and the halls of power. Depending on your political persuasion it is a name spoke in deep reverence or with derision, made to be either the right hand of God or the left buttock of Lucifer. Yes ladies and gentlemen I am speaking of....


Franklin Delano Roosevelt.


Oh, yeah, today's my birthday too (sheesh, this year I am connect to both FDR * AND * Sweden, God help me).

A Tail Of Two Rings

You may have noticed that the last few weeks I have been wearing two rings, one on the left hand and one on the right hand. The ring on the left hand is the ring that my beau gave me to "seal the deal" as he likes to put it. The one on my right hand is my father's high school ring. When I was home for Thanksgiving he gave that ring to me. Dad didn't go to college, but he wanted me to have his academic ring. That ring just fits on my right hand. Now ever time I look at my hands I see symbols of the two men who love me unconditionally. Now when I look my hands I cannot help but smile and feel loved.

Painless Giving

When I travel I tend to fly American Airlines and have found a way to give painlessly every time I do so I thought I would pass it on. Here is the information from The Center in San Diego:

Flying somewhere?

Every time you book a ticket with American Airlines, remember to take The Center with you. When making your reservations, include The Center’s “Business ExtrAA Account#: 527593.” You will still receive all your AA miles and The Center will earn airline tickets used to create vacation packages for silent auctions at our major events or to send staff to important trainings in different cities.

Flip-Side To Oedipus

I'm not a fan of Freud and especially not of his proposed Oedipus Complex but in some form it seems to exist in contemporary psychology. The idea of competition of son with father for whatever reason and the "trauma" for both when the son comes into his own and finally succeeds/supersedes the father seems to continually appear in book after book on human relationships. Honestly I have never gone through this. I have never thought of myself in competition with my father in any way, shape, or form for anything.

Recent events have made me think though of a "flip-side" to Freud's idea. Again, it isn't anything new but I have not seen this type of comparison in the books I have read (perhaps because it is too folksy or too sentimental), but my flip-side is rather than thinking about competition between father and son, focus on the moment when the father expresses his joy for the type of man the son has become. Rather than traumatic and a source of familial tension this view creates bonding and strengthening of the familial unit.

OK, so why I am bringing this up? Today I received a card from my father. As some of you know (but most don't) modern medicine has pronounced my father's condition as terminal, metastasized cancer in several organs and lymph nodes. In the card is a very simple message. My father told me how much he loves me and how proud he is to have me for his son. Now this isn't the first time he has said it, but like most fathers the message had come when I have done something or if I was sad and full of self-hatred (a common condition of mine in the past). This time there was nothing I had done, nothing going on in my life which prompted him to take pen in hand and write that message to me. He wanted me to know, once more and under no special conditions or causes that he is proud to have me for his son. When I read that I felt like I had arrived, that while we disagree, while I have not been the "perfect son", even through the "gay thing", he loves me and he is proud to have me as his son (I know that has to sound redundant but I love writing it). Because someone I view as a real man said this to me I felt like a man.

Perhaps I am so happy to have this written confirmation because I love him and an proud to be his son, but I will save that for a later post.

Thank you Dad.

Comforting Angels

People talk a lot about guardian angels. I am lucky to have two special angels in my life right now. Given all the problems happening in my family it would be hard to carry on with my day-to-day work. I don't sleep well, my mind is filled with worry but I honestly believe that these two are in my life for a reason.

First I have Romeo. OK, go ahead and laugh, but Romeo just appeared in my life when I was going through some rough times and now, over nine years later he's still here. When I first heard about my father Romeo seemed to go into a comforting mode... when I am here by myself he hops up into bed and curls up near my pillow. When I am laying down he always comes and lays next to me. He follows me around and is always watching out for me (ok, sometimes it is because he wants food but not ALL the time). Just having someone in the house makes it much easier to come home these days.

The other is my beau. I needed someone in my life with a big heart and now I have someone who has chosen to be with me regardless of my faults and frailties. He always lets me know he loves me and cares for me but more importantly he backs up his words with his actions. Even though we don't live together he tells me every morning he loves me and every night he lets me know that he is there.

So, there you go. For all the crap that is happening, God makes his presence known through my two angels. I don't know how I would cope without them.

Not Laboring On Labor Day

What started out not so great turned out to be a fine weekend. Though my beau and I were separated in the early part, we were able to spend Sunday and Monday together. Sunday we met with our friend Sarah and headed to the Del Mar Racetrack (Sarah had purchased tickets through the UC-San Diego Retirement Association) and we spent about 4 hours having fun losing money (seems that we had to balance last year's winnings, but since none of us are big betters the losses were small). It was fun just spending time with a friend and getting caught up on life's events. We continued the camaraderie by heading to dinner and sharing more talks and laughs over pasta and Chianti. Monday was slow and lazy... sleep in late (almost 8 AM!), walk down to Shade's for breakfast, take in an early movie, and just be together. Spending such time with the one you love makes the reality of having to part all the more difficult, yet it fires the anticipation of our next time together.

A Year And A Day

According to Wikipedia a year and a day has noted:

The period of a year and a day was a convenient period to represent a significant amount of time. Its use was generally as a jubilee or a permanence.

Historically (England) the period that a couple must be married for a spouse to have claim to a share of inheritable property.

In mediaeval (sic) Europe, a runaway serf became free after a year and a day.

When a judgement (sic) has been reversed a fresh action may lodged within a year and a day, regardless of the statute of limitations. U.S.

Today I add one more item because today marks a year and day since I met my beau. I think this fall under the first bullet point. Last night we celebrated by doing all of the things we did on our first date. As he said last night... now we can start counting in years. :-)

More Vorlon Management

During our week of leadership training I was introduced to the idea of finding one's True North and in my reading of Bill George's wonderful book True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership I have started a "deep dive" into the topics we skimmed in class. One of the techniques to find your True North is that of using a life time-line to tell your story, to view the events that shaped you and motivate you. We did a shortened version of this in class but I have been working on a longer one and have hit upon something that I recognize as a source of my desire to lead (part of my answer to the Vorlon question of "Who am I?"). My vision of leadership is to provide an environment where people are free to work, to remove obstacles to their ability to work as they best can. Using the technique I saw some things that showed me where at least in part this passion comes from and why for me leadership is a moral issue and not simply a matter for business.

When I was growing up my parents ran several very small businesses in an extremely poor part of the country (hence we were poor too, just a little different level of poor). They constantly had to battle the government with its nit-picky rules just to survive, often feeling frustrated over having to invest what was for us large amounts of our meager funds just to stay up to code even on things that really were not important to our businesses. When they would turn to their elected government officials for help they were far more often than not turned away. I can recall many times when just trying to comply kept us on the edge of going under financially and my folks would take outsides jobs from time-to-time just to stay afloat because it seemed no one was on their side who had any authority to help. Yet, through all of that, I also saw my parents go far out of their way to help those even less fortunate. My mother spent many hours filling out state and federal papers for our customers who were functionally illiterate just so they could get the assistance that was due them according to the existing laws and statutes (interesting for a bunch of Republicans, eh?). My dad would help pitch in when local millers and farmers had problems. When other people came on hard times their past-due notes to us suddenly became not so past due. These events helped shape my view of leadership, the view that people who lead are also servants, ready to help those around then.

This is part of my life story, part of my attempt to answer the Vorlon question and hopefully become a stronger leader.

Randy Pausch - Rest In Peach

Obit

"We don't beat the reaper by living longer, we beat the reaper by living well and living fully,"
- Randy Pausch

Vorlon Leadership

I was honored by being selected as one of a small number employees identified as having the potential to become a true leader within my company and last week was sent to a leadership intensive held at company HQ. One of the early focal points was the concept of authentic leadership whose central idea is that of self-awareness. After a brief introduction to the concept I raised my hand and said "So you're siding with the Vorlons?" Dead silence in the room. I then explained that the main arc from a sci-fi series named Babylon 5 was a war of philosophy between (essentially) the Vorlons and the Shadows. Glossing over a lot of detail, the Vorlons believed the prime question a being should answer is "Who are you?" while the Shadows focused on that of "What do you want?" Authentic leadership has at its core (like the Vorlons) the idea that to be a leader you have to first understand yourself, your own principles, your motivations, your values, before you can become a credible leader. I happen to agree. This is not to negate the Shadow question, but without answering the Vorlon question first trying to answer the Shadow question leads to disharmony and discordant requests that will only confuse those who answer to you. In short, I spent last week learning I am a Vorlon... now if I can just glow in the dark and fly :-)

Two-Way Biological Metacrisis (Dr. Who Spoilers)

*** SPOILER ALERT ***






OK, I have to say, for all the holes in them the last two episodes of Doctor Who Series 4 (The Stolen Earth and Journey's End) were great to watch... action filled, good special effects (for the BBC), nice writing, conclusion of a large story arc, and very bittersweet. I will miss Catherine Tate as companion Donna Noble. So far of all of the new companions Donna truly represented the "everyman" (or "everyperson") literary character. Donna began as a vacuous, loud, somewhat lazy, somewhat obnoxious person (why, almost American) who becomes the tether to The Doctor's high-flying antics. Donna is the companion who speaks for the viewer, who in the face of The Doctor's "we can't meddle about with time" tells The Doctor that they must do something, that just because they can't save everyone they can at least save someone (see for example the episode The Fires of Pompeii). Like many of us, Donna doesn't see herself as special, doesn't think she has anything of value to contribute, scream out at the universe because she thinks no one will listen to her. And yet, the "best temp in Chiswick", grounded in everyday human experience, shows her worth. Donna like many of us fall prey to what the existentialists warned against... defining yourself by what you do. People think of themselves as important based on what they do, their job, their standing in a community, how other perceive them. In truth that is not what makes you special. You are special because, simply, you are. You should not define yourself simply as the things you do, yet when you meet someone new isn't the first question (certainly one of the first three) "What do you do?" A better question might be to ask "Who are you?" If you are a sci-fi fan as I am you will see this as a twist on the Shadow question ("What do you want?") as opposed to the Vorlon question ("Who are you?") from Babylon 5 (there are actually four questions eventually asked. I'll save the other two for a future post).

At the finale of Journey's End Donna learns that she really is unique, that it is her "human-ness" that takes her even beyond what The Doctor is capable of... not because she was a scientist, a political leader, or even because she was "the best temp in Chiswick", but because she was human.

Donna is gone from the show and I will miss her. Let's hope that the next companion can retain some that good "everyman" character that she injected into the show.

Good job Catherine, thanks.

The Women In My Family...

When I saw this I thought how fortunate I was to have a mother and two grandmothers like this:

Blog Splitting

Well, I have finally decided to start another blog on a special topic that I have come to appreciate over the years. I will continue writing on this blog talking about politics, technology, culture, etc. so don't go away. What I have decided to do is write more on wine. Yes, there are hundreds if not thousands of blogs out there talking about wine but this one will be different, it will be mine. This blog will not be written from the view point of a professional wine person or of someone to whom money is no object or to play the part of "wine snob" and try to show off what (little) I know about wine. This will truly be the work of an amateur, someone who does something because they like it.

Catching Up

It seems like it has been a while since I posted on here so this is an attempt to catch up on the personal side. First, Mr. Beau and I took a little trip up to the Santa Barbara area for some wine tasting. This was in part to just get out of town for a couple of days and in part to provide a wide selection of wines for Mr. Beau to taste and help me gauge where his wine preferences lay. Over a three-day weekend we traveled to and tasted wines at the following wonderful wineries:

Brander Winery (excellent all around offerings)

Gainey Winery (very good wines, nice chardonnays this year)

Kalyra Winery (a fun winery with some excellent lighter and dessert wines)

Beckman winery (top-notch Syrahs and and tasty Grenache... and the hottest pourers)

Bridlewood Winery (they seem to have come up a notch in their offerings since the Gallo buy-out)

Firestone winery (Good wines, nice Riesling)

Fess Parker Winery (Davy Crockett knows his wines, but watch the alcohol content on the new Syrahs)

Curtis Winery (wonderful Rhone-style wines)

Zaca Mesa Winery (a new one for me, great offering, don't pass up the Z Cuvée or the Z Three from them)

We dined at the consistently great Hitching Post and discovered another fantastic place to dine at the local casino Willows.

As usual the trip was too short but it was relaxing and wonderful to get away from "the real world" for a couple of days.

For the Fourth we spent a lot of time together taking turns taking care of each other. On the Fourth we went to the San Diego Zoo, saw a movie, took a walk along the beach talking about what the day meant to us (and how we both tend to say "Independence Day" instead of "Fourth of July" when mentioning the holiday), had dinner at a local cantina and sat on the beach while watching one of the best fireworks presentations I can remember. On Saturday we used my San Diego Art Museum membership and took our friend Sarah to "get some culture" and then spent time relaxing at The Prado having appetizers and drinks and enjoying each person's company. I can think of very few ways of passing time than just being with friends and loved ones and I hope that you had the same privilege this weekend.

Classification

Of course the questions were loaded, multipart and philosophically flawed but what do you expect from a simple online quiz? Personally, I am not much surprised at the results as in many ways I am quite difficult to pin down with simple labels.

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal Social Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal Personal Responsibility: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal Ethics: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

How Liberal Or Conservative Are You?

Dobson, Obama and "The Speech"

Funny how today we hear James Dobson, a man with whom on many issues I agree, attack Senator Obama on a speech he made two years ago at the liberal Christian conference Call to Renewal. In reading the text of this speech I bristled at the comments Dobson made about Senator Obama and his exegetical prowess. Now don't get me wrong, if the Senator and I were to sit down and "talk Bible" I would probably disagree with him on quite a bit, but with regards to this speech there wasn't much I had trouble with.

Obama makes some good points (which obviously are those I agree with *snicker*). In fact, most of what I disagree with is not so much his interpretation but rather his typical liberal way of thinking. I agree with much of what Obama says on the role of personal religion in politics, that the word personal means "private, individual". If you are going to thrust religion into the political spotlight and in a democratic-republic try to declare one of them as "the truth" then Obama is right to ask which one are we going to pick? In truth, if we are going to go with denominational lines, we should embrace some type of Catholicism as that is where the plurality resides. Going protestant causes a lot of headaches, for though non-Catholic Christians are the majority, Episcopal beliefs differ somewhat from Southern Baptist, UCC is in places radically different from Presbyterian. So who do you hold up the as "the standard"? And then there is the messy issue of the existence of agnostics and atheists. I had this discussion with a fellow conservative at work today when I declared I didn't want to know all of the details of a person's personal faith. I kinda like my Christianity minimal but deep and strong, not shallow and public (kinda like prayer, I prefer to pray in my closet rather than on the street corner wearing bells and covered with ashes). And as for Dobson taking Obama to task over his mixing Old Testament with New Testament, while I agree with him as a good Dispensationaist he should know there is a small sect within Christianity that wants us to go back to Old Testament laws even though we are "no longer under Law but Grace" (I would hope that if he considers himself as a spokesman for Christianity Dr. Dobson has heard of these Theonomists, a scary lot).

Now where do I think Obama went off track? Let me put your gray cells to work. Consider this:

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

First off, it sounds good, but Senator Obama seems to ignore the fact that most conservatives who engage in public debate do try to "translate their concerns into universal... values... amenable to reason". The problem is he disagrees (or seems to) with many of the stronger philosophical arguments against abortion on demand (among other things, but most arguments against abortion do not introduce god into the discussion). Most liberals do this and think they are the rational ones when what they often do is take a knee-jerk reaction to anything that could have some tie back to religion (and seem to turn secularism into its own type of "religion"). In the following example he does it again. Notice how nothing is said of the individual as a possible causative agent in the situation, instead they are always at the whim of external forces around them:

After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man

Why are the problems of the uninsured and the unemployed rooted in societal indifference? I hate when people talk about slippery slopes but honestly here I think we are one one... if the roots are societal then what are our options? What must change to kill this weed in the human garden? Like almost everything in his campaign, Senator Obama doesn't tell us, doesn't seem to want to do more than point fingers and if I take this last quote of his along with other things he has said what I see is that he thinks a Socialist/Marxist society would be of the greatest benefit. In this Obama seems to have missed some portions of Scripture too... about the worker deserving his wages (in context of getting what he is given for his work) and the example (and rule) given in 2 Thessalonians 3:9-11 ("... If a man will not work he shall not eat"). No one is owed anything in this life. At some point we have to take some responsibility for what we do. Perhaps the Right take this too far, but if he was honest in his speech Senator Obama should have admitted that the Left tend to veer off track in the own direction just the same.

Surprised?

In working on a project in my Leadership and Creativity class for my MBA I took a test to see if I was left brain (logical and analytical) or right brain (artistic and creative). The results:

You are a right brain dominant student!

You probably get bored during long lectures and prefer to take classes with a lot of freedom of movement and thought. You like to write stories and even tell stories about your funny experiences. You might be a little suspicious of other people's motives sometimes, but that's only because you can usually tell whenever someone is lying or when they're up to no good. You are a little on the dreamy side--or a lot. You plan books or movie plots but you don't always follow through on things you think about. You should work on that. You are fun and spontaneous. Your feelings run deep, and it shows. You have strong instincts, and you solve problems on hunches and feelings. You are artistic in some way. You can believe in things based on experience, without seeing scientific proof. You might be a finalist on Survivor some day, since you know how to read people so well, and you have great survival instincts.

A Gem In Temecula

Mr. Beau has been showing an interest in wines so last Saturday we took a little trip up the 15 to Temecula. In earlier posts you read of my trip with Elbert and some of the places we visited. On this trip I thought I would do two things: introduce Mr. Beau to more wines and find perhaps another place where I could get local wines that I would not be afraid of offering to my friends. As luck would have it I hit the jackpot on both with our first stop, Leonesse Cellars. In fact, I liked it so much I joined their wine club. After a couple of samplings together (a good representative Pinot Grigio, stainless-steel fermented so you get the melon and light green apple notes and their not overly oaked Chardonnay showing some traits of malolactic fermentation) I turned Mr. Beau loose on the whites (his palate tended towards the sweeter white Merlot and their rather good Riesling with very nice fresh fruit aromas) while I went off into red land. Their Melange de Reves is a nice medium bodied Rhone blend of Syrah, Cinsault, and Grenache with good berry tastes and just a hint of smokiness. Their 2004 Syrah is a good representation of a smooth Syrah, almost seductive with layers of black fruit, pepper, and a hit of smokiness. A big surprise was their Zinfandel which, given the current trend of overly alcoholed concotions was very smooth with good blackberry, pepper, and hints of clove with soft tannins. To top it off we had a fantastic lunch at their recently opened Block 5 restaurant. I really do recommend spending the extra time there sipping wine in the outdoor environment and enjoying their wonderfully prepared food.

So, Temecula is showing promise. I look forward to seeing how the area develops over time.