Lincolnite

Welcome to the new America.

The Cornhusker Council of the Boy Scouts of America won't be hosting Lincoln Lights this year. The annual holiday lights display at Mahoney Park was cancelled due to declining interest and rising costs. It's sad to see Lincoln Lights go, but I can't say I'm all that surprised. The cost per vehicle was fairly high, and the displays were too sparse throughout the park. A holiday lights display needs to be "dense" to be exciting enough to draw crowds year after year. How long will it be before we see the predictable letters to the editor in the Journal Star blaming the demise of the display on those dang "atheists" and "gay-lovers" who hate the Boy Scouts? I've got my money on Thursday.

Good morning, oh cheery Lincolnites! There's nothing better than going back to work on the Monday following a four-day weekend, eh? Yeah right. I don't know about you, but I had a pretty decent weekend. I survived the in-laws and the in-laws survived me. I consumed about as many calories as I've ever consumed over a Thanksgiving weekend. The Husker football team made Colorado look awful. The only real downer of the weekend was the Husker volleyball team's five-game heart-breaker to Texas. Now here we are in a fresh week with December breathing down our necks. December. That's ridiculous. Where did December come from? How about last night's weather? I thought for sure we were going to end up with a little thundersnow, but no such luck. We will, however, be blessed with 50 -- 50! -- mile per hour gusts of wind today. Good ol' Nebraska. I know we have a few readers out in central Nebraska. How's that blizzard treating you folks out there? I'm a little jealous, to be honest. I love a good blizzard. We don't get enough of those here in Lincoln. It's easy for me to say that, though, since I make Star Tran deal with the roads. The Missus, with her 30 mile commute, isn't such a big fan. Tonight The Missus and I will be visited at home by our case worker. Tonight's home visit is the last big step before we are officially approved to proceed with the adoption process. The case worker will check out the house to make sure we can offer a child a safe home environment. She will probably also ask us some questions to follow up on our autobiographies, questionnaires, and financial records. Which reminds me: I need to send our case worker directions to our house. I suppose I should begin my work day. I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. Mr. T, I'd like some follow-up on the Jell-O and carrots salad, preferably with photos. And D.M.B., I hope your potatoes weren't too lumpy.

Ahh, another successful Thanksgiving. The in-laws made it to Lincoln safely, the weather was decent, the food was fantastic. All in all, a great day. Why, though, did I have to finish off the remaining mashed potatoes and stuffing, and then top that off with The Missus' famous sugar-shock-on-a-plate peanut butter pie? I had to have passed the 5,000 calorie barrier. Even Daisy got into the act, with several carrots and some chicken on top of her normal food allotment. I'm not sure what everybody's plans are today, but I think "not much" applies to most of the crew. We'll probably end up having Valentino's for dinner, which will be a real trick since half the city of Lincoln is probably thinking the same thing. We may try Runza for lunch, since my sister-in-law's boyfriend has never had what I described to him as a "German calzone". Right now I'd better go take Daisy for a walk. She's beginning to get antsy and I'm afraid she'll start barking at me if we don't go soon. I don't want her waking up everybody else. Which begs the question: Why am I the one who gets up with her every morning and takes her for a walk? Oh yeah, it's because I'm a pathetic dog person and Daisy has me wrapped around her little finger.

Three morons have been arrested for a BB shooting spree that caused over $100,000 damage earlier this month. Wait, let me correct that: three adult morons have been arrested. Chad Renker, Zachary Collier, and Eric Chambers, ages 21, 19, and 19, were picked up at their homes on Monday. The trio is suspected of involvement in as many as 205 individual vandalism incidents in a single weekend. What's an appropriate punishment for damage on that scale? I think a $100 fine for each offense and six months in jail is appropriate. Or better yet, if they're found guilty in all 205 incidents, how about one day per incident? What would you suggest?

The Missus works in Crete with several relatively recent immigrants and their families. My wife asked one woman if she planned to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving. The woman replied in her heavy accent: "No! I said to my sisters, who work at [a meatpacking plant], 'What is the point of coming to America, finally getting a day off, and spending the whole day cooking? No, we are going to Lincoln to eat at a real restaurant." And lo, a new family tradition is born. Priceless.

My apologies to those of you who subscribe to Lincolnite's RSS and Atom feeds. The server's PHP software was upgraded recently, and that caused a couple minor incompatibilities with a few plugins I use. All the problems should have been fixed by now, but if you run across any strange hiccups, let me know by leaving a comment.

The Lincoln Board of Education wants voters to decide in February whether to fund the construction of four new school buildings and the renovation of many others. I disagree. A February special election is a bad idea. The Board's decision is based, primarily, on financial concerns. The sooner the bond issue passes, the sooner construction can begin and, ultimately, the cheaper the project will be. I appreciate that the Board wants to proceed as inexpensively as possible, and I trust that they believe this move is in the best interests of the school district and its students. But. The special election is too soon. The Board is rushing, and the public will pick up on that. Public support for LPS is fairly strong right now, but that support should not be taken for granted. Remember how a mere decade ago public confidence in the School Board was so low? How several bond issues failed because the voters were unhappy with the Board? There is no free money for schools from this electorate. If the voters are scared, or uncertain, or if they feel the least bit unfairly pressured, they will revolt. They will vote no. I agree with the items the Board wants to fund. I am inclined to support more funding for school infrastructure improvements rather than less, and I'm no fan of greater government spending. I think Lincolnites, as a whole, recognize the need to spruce up our school buildings. But that recognition isn't enough. You know who votes at February special elections? Old people. Retirees. People who don't have school-age kids. People who tend to vote against government spending, not for it. People who resent their tax dollars funding a single-issue special election in February. Parents of school-age children don't vote in special elections b ecause it's not worth the hassle. It's too difficult to break out of the routine to go to the voting booth, fill in one little bubble, and then try to resume the daily routine. If the School Board goes through with this, they'd better pray for snow and ice to keep the old folks away from the polls. The School Board's argument that it's more financially responsible to rush the vote than to wait for the May primary is off target. That's not to say the bond issue is doomed to fail. My crystal ball is still foggy on that point. But public opinion is mixed on this topic. Unless the Board is able to put together one heckuva marketing campaign in the short time between now and February, I think the undecideds will remain undecided at the time of the vote. That may work out well for the Board, since few of the undecideds will bother to go to the polls at all. But among those who do, a no vote is more likely than a yes vote.

What a strange feeling. On the one hand I feel like crap. I have a vicious sore throat, I only slept about two hours last night, and my body generally feels like it's been run over by a truck. I can't wait to pop a couple Tylenol Cold PM and spend the night in a deep state of unconsciousness. On the other hand, I am absolutely ecstatic right now. Why? Because I friggin' rule! Think I'm exaggerating? Well, I am. But you'd exaggerate too if you had just finished coding, using two computer languages you barely understand, a neato user interface for a nifty module that will help make Lincolnite a really unique community resource. It took me all weekend to beat JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL into submission, but I finally prevailed. I even threw in a few AJAX goodies to spice up the coolness factor. For now the module will mainly help me while I do behind-the-scenes work. Once I get some more content in the Articles, Directory, and Events sections I'll probably post something describing how the module benefits site users. I'm going to go eat a nice big bowl of ice cream, watch a little TV, and then hit the sack early. Nighty night, boys and girls.

Overheard on 14th Street today, near Homer's: Man (holding a cigarette): ... because smoking makes you cool! Woman: Really? Smoking makes you cool? Man: Yes, and by hanging out with me, you're becoming second-hand cool.

Three guys are in a jail cell. They start to talking and find out that they're all gas station owners. The first one says, "I set my prices at a couple of cents higher than my competitors. I'm in here for price-gouging." The second one says "I set my prices at a couple of cents lower than my competitors. I'm in here for predatory practices." The third one says "I set my prices at the same price as my competitors. I'm in here for collusion!" [Hat tip: The Agitator]

38 bucks. That's all I have to pay for my hotel room each night in downtown San Antonio. As a bonus, the place is neither a roach motel nor a drug den (my parents have stayed there before). The last time I stayed in a hotel in a major city's downtown, my employer had to pay $160 per night. Hotel room supply must be far outstripping demand in San Antonio these days.

How do you know when you have taken fertility treatments too far? Is there a "too far"? Interesting questions, aren't they? The Missus brought them up, although in a different way, just a few minutes ago. She was talking about how some women go to incredible lengths to have biological children, only to give birth to children with severe mental and physical handicaps. She mentioned that now that she has come to terms with the fertility issues underlying our decision to adopt, she has become very judgmental of women who go "too far" to give birth. Is there really a "too far"? I think there is. Giving birth ought to be a means to an end, not an end in itself. But my understanding is that, for many women, there's a strong psychological pull to deny that notion. That is, many women, whether they want to or not, think giving birth is the goal. They are wrong on several different levels, but they don't necessarily have the capacity to realize it. How is a woman supposed to know when she is approaching the "too far" barrier, or even when she has crossed the line? Is the line in different places for different people? I think it probably is. Fine then: how do you know where your line is? Even if it were possible to know when you've gone "too far", we all know that being too close to a situation can make us blind to the realities that others see so clearly. Add in all the hormones a woman will have pumping through her body when she's trying to make these decisions, and you quickly realize that making the "too far" determination is going to be very difficult indeed. I don't believe The Missus and I went "too far". We called it quits somewhere between "urging" the biological process to cooperate and "forcing" it to cooperate. Perhaps that's where the line lies, somewhere in the gray area between helping nature do her thing and sticking a gun to nature's head. (If you pull th e proverbial trigger on mother nature you've really taken things too far.) That gray area is, not coincidentally, where the financial costs really start increasing, which indicates to me that the medical community knows they are playing with forces they cannot quite control. As risk increases so does cost. It's basic economics. The Missus and I judged at that point that the benefits of adoption outweighed the benefits of giving birth, when taking into account the relative risks associated with each. I feel very little regret about not trying "just one more time". I think that means we made the right decision at the right time. What about the morality and ethics of taking fertility treatments "too far"? Is it moral to wager that much risk against the quality of life of a potential child? Is it ever immoral to go to great lengths to bring life into being? So many questions to think about as I wind down my evening.

I'm impressed. Newsweek managed to fill several pages of its latest issue with an analysis of energy costs and "alternative" energy solutions, and not once was nuclear power mentioned. Nuclear power is incredibly cheap and remarkably clean, yet it is so maligned that it didn't merit a single mention in Newsweek's articles. That ought to tell you just how much news there really is in "News"week. While I'm griping, I should also get this off my chest: if you own a 6-bedroom, 5.5-bathroom house with a "cavernous" basement and a pool, you are not middle class, and you have very little room to moan about your energy woes. Seriously, Newsweek, that's your poster child for the "victims" of high energy prices? Give me a friggin' break. There's a word for Newsweek's miserable display: pandering. Pandering to the audience that brings in the big money advertisers. There is no journalistic integrity in making a victim out of the owner of a $500,000 house. It drives me nuts that The Missus subscribes to Newsweek. It's a horrible, terrible, awful weekly. She says she knows it's not a good magazine, but that she needs it to keep up with what's going on in the world. Considering the dearth of national and international news in the Journal Star I see her point. But Newsweek? It pains me to see it in my mailbox every week.

It's now official: I am leaving Wednesday, December 14th to drive to San Antonio to watch my very first Final Four. Get your tickets and head down with me! I'll probably check out regional action at the Qwest Center in Omaha on December 9 and 10 as well. I figure if I'm only going to watch a few volleyball matches this season, they may as well be the most exciting matches of the year!