New York was way warmer than expected but I still didn't see much of it. In on Monday night, work, dinner at a place right next door to the hotel, try really hard to fall asleep and eventually succeed. Tuesday, walk to an early meeting at the client's office, breakfast at some shithole restaurant in the basement of Bloomingdale's, crash for a few hours because I got maybe four hours of sleep, more work, meet Phil and Mona for dinner at Mint (again, around the corner from the hotel), talk at the restaurant for four hours, home, bed, still can't sleep. Wednesday, wake up, pack, get breakfast with Phil, taxi, airport, upgrade (woo-hoo!), on the plane and home. I didn't leave the six-block radius around the hotel the entire time. How lame is that? Well, I'll be back in a few weeks and play more.

By the way, United upgraded their handheld video players for the flights between SFO and JFK. They use to be little DVD players with an assortment of discs. Now they're little Archos hard-drive media players that have movies, TV shows, and games. Pretty awesome. Oh, and the food's been getting better, too. I had sauteed sea scallops at 35,000 feet and they were pretty damn good. So was the strawberry ice cream. Yum!

Off to New York in a bit. Please keep the snow storms to a minimum, Manhattan.

Wow, I'm constantly amazed that Ticketmaster is able to get away with outrageous beyond belief fees. How is this legal?? For four $40.50 tickets to see The Police in July (yay!), I paid a $6 "building facility charge" and a $11 "convenience charge" per ticket! Plus, to add nicely to the insult, I paid a $5.15 "order processing fee" and a $2.50 delivery charge which is especially insulting since I opted to print the tickets from home. So that's $75.65 in fees to buy $162 in tickets.

Makes me want to burn their offices to the ground.

I'm reading The Nine, a book about the recent history of the Supreme Court, and it's been very enlightening. My respect for the court has grown so much. I especially intrigued by David Souter who is more or less an extremely thoughtful and intelligent luddite. (He moves his chair around his chambers so that he can read by sunlight rather than turning on a light and writes his briefs by fountain pen.) He was brought into the court as a conservative, and he is. But he's also so much more complex than the label "conservative" gives him credit.

One of the most troubling aspects of politics, especially in this country, is the "us versus them" mentality it promotes. We do not, in reality, fall into tidy little boxes of Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. More importantly, we are still part of a couple much larger boxes of Americans and "people". Divisive politics put me off and make me wonder if anyone in elected office knows how to work towards compromise instead of getting the big win. (Of course, they do but the appearance is often the opposite.)

Reading this book, I've grown a great deal of respect for the Supreme Court and (with one exception: Thomas) for each of the justices. They are generally highly-apolitical in their practice (though most definitely not always in their personal views), they are extremely thoughtful in their analysis and decisions, and their purpose, and the purpose of the court overall, is so interesting and important and unique. Great read.

Here's a quick except that I found particularly compelling. It relates to a case, Lawrence v. Texas, which had to do with a gay couple in Texas who were caught have sex in their apartment and we're arrested on an anti-sodomy law. (It was actually a law against "deviate sexual intercourse" which prohibits anal and oral sex.) The decision, read in June 2003, overturned a previous Supreme Court ruling in Browers v. Hardwick.

Read More...

I have gone apeshit with organizing. It started with the kitchen drawers -- they were a mess and now they're pretty -- followed by the rest of the kitchen, the office, and now Corinne's bathroom drawers.* (By the way, I have new respect for women after seeing the shear number of products that girl uses on a daily and weekly basis. I can get away with about three things, outside the shower, and that's only if I shave.) The beauty of a well organized drawer gives me a serious boner. Well, not an actual boner (that would be a little more sad that it already is) but more of a metaphysical one. A spiritual boner, if you will.

What's brought on this sudden rage? These. I am in love.

The problem with most drawer organizers is that they don't fit the drawer. They're either too shallow or too narrow (or both) and end up rattling around inside the drawer, leaving lots of space unused or full of unorganized junk. Lots of expandable drawer organizers exist but they look temporary and tend to fold back up a lot. And they make you use whatever set of compartments the designers think you should have. No good.

But these fabulous new discoveries are special. You can cut them to any size, create any set of dividers you can imagine! Gee! It truly brings me joy.

Also, I've come to realize what an organization nut I am. (See the above few paragraphs, especially the one about boners, for evidence.) Clean House is in my Top 10 of favorite shows, lately. Corinne had the idea that maybe I should get paid for my enthusiasm. Which is not a bad thought. I might try it out: Put an ad on craigslist.org, something about helping you get rid of your clutter, and charge a few dollars per room. Would you pay for that?

I'd approach it like this:

1. What do you have?
2. Do you need it? (This is a big one -- getting rid of stuff is the biggest step towards getting organized.)
3. How often do you use it?
4. Where do you use it? (A lot of people place things they need far from where they need it.)

We'll see if I actually follow through with the idea and, if I do, anyone actually invites me into their home. But you never know.

* For "after" pictures, check out this album. Unfortunately, I didn't take "before" pictures or you'd really get what a change it is.