jtnt://life/unedited

Happy thirty-frphreth birthday to my beautiful bride.

Sorry for not calling first thing this morning.

Sma.

We buried my grandmother in Arlington National Cemetery today. Somewhat anti-climactic, to be honest.

It was filmed by a crew from National Geographic doing a piece on the cemetery. It will air the day before Veteran’s Day on PBS. Check your local listings.

Farewell, Grandma. I love you.

ESPN.com really needs to include an “I don’t give a damn” option on all their polls, especially baseball-related ones.

On a walk around my neighborhood this morning I noticed that I was checking out the houses like they were hot women. I was crossing the street to check out their backyards, craning my neck to see through the front door, and generally scoping out them out.

I turned thirty a few weeks ago, but that’s not what makes me old. My behavior this morning makes me old. No, looking at houses doesn’t make you old, you say. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’ve been hawking houses for years.

I decided to take a solo stroll through my neighborhood for the exercise and joy of it. This is what makes me old. I saw no one except yard sale managers, church ladies, and small children.

When I do this before 8am, call me “elderly.”

I am one of fourteen people between the ages of 22 and 38 not watching the last episode of Friends tonight. I’ve had enough heartfelt and touching good-byes in my real life, thank you.

Plus, I really hate the sappy FINAL EPISODE business sit-coms pull these days. They completely change what everyone loved about the show for the finale. That just doesn’t make sense.

They are always way too sappy and way too preoccupied with trying to make things neat and tidy, but at the same time they are compelled to leave those poor saps who are addicted to the show with the feeling that the characters who they know better than their own parents and spend more time with than their real friends will carry on and grow old with them after the show is long gone.

It’s like they feel like they are breaking up with a sensitive girlfriend (or millions of them, I guess) and have to be all soft and caring all of a sudden. I would be much happier if they’d just continue doing what they did well all the way up until the end, then just said, “See ya!” and were never heard from again.

I pity you all, the jilted and lonely ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends of Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Chandler, Joey, and Ross - the one that has been sappy from the start. Don’t worry, though, you’ll be able to relive your time together every weekday on Fox at 7 and 11p.m.

In the last week the following has transpired in my life:

• My grandmother died.
• I got engaged.
• I turned 30.

Whew.

A quote in a recent interview Eric Meyer (CSS guru in the truest sense of the word) is so prescient and taut it applies to virtually anything. I think it bears repeating:

Any time a person tells you that there is one and only one way to size fonts for all sites, they’re trying to hand you a philosophy, not a solution.

This reminds me of a quote from the movie The Big Kahuna:

…As soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And you’re not a human being; you’re a marketing rep.

Again, I find myself in the unusual mood to talk politics.

It’s a total pipe dream, but I would love to see John Kerry pick John McCain to be his vice-presidential running mate.

I’m sure it would alienate some democrats, but not enough, I wouldn’t think, to balance the number of republicans that would jump on board. And in an election year like this one, where the vote is largely to just “beat Bush”, hardcore democrats that didn’t like it would have no choice but to vote for this ticket anyway.

Dare to dream.

Not that I have tracked Spalding Gray on this blog or at all really, but after my original post, I feel an update is in order.

News outlets are reporting that Gray’s body was found in the East River off Manhattan on Sunday. He was wearing only a pair of black corduroy pants when found. There was no wallet or cash in his pockets, as expected.