Time flies when you're super busy--nothing but lab work, nitrogen isotopes, and taking care of the dog and wife all week. No time for updates, but I make up for this now:
Too funny--love seeing people make fun of the Obama-worship (but of course, I am a fan). You can get a big version of it here for your screensaver (I did!).
My friend, who happens to be married to my brother has this message for you:
Hello, my name is Kira Rafter. My son, Christian Rafter, is a soccer player with the Cape Express Soccer Club U-10 Boys Tsunami team. His grandmother, Marilyn Ciccarone, has been involved with a wonderful project which has linked the community of Cape May County, NJ with that of Cape May County Village in Bor de Mer, Haiti.
Part of the project involved the children of this community and Cape Express Soccer Club gathering over half a ton of soccer equipment and delivering it to the children of our namesake village in Haiti. The children were thrilled with the soccer equipment. They love soccer as do the children in this community. However, they do not have the luxury of manicured fields, state of the art equipment and professional trainers like our children do. They play in the dirt, with no goals.
My son and I have made a commitment to bring these children soccer goals. Our hope is that we will be able to deliver to these children 2 regulation size soccer goals. We are asking you for help in fulfilling this promise to the children of Haiti.
Anyone who is interested in helping may contact us at soccergoalproject (at sign) live.com
Donations will be gladly accepted at:
Cape May County Way attn: Goal Project
P.O. Box 711
Cape May Court House, NJ 08210
(Please make checks payable to OLA Village project )
There's this company called Sticker Guy and they make really cheap stickers... all kinds. I've gotten some stickers made by them and Willy Sions pretty much put their kids through college.
So, I got an email from them today thanking George Bush for inspiring so many people to make stickers. They have a gallery of all the anti-Bush stickers made over the years...
And, yes, there it is:
I think mine was the most direct (and prescient since we're talking late 2002 when I made them--about 4 years before this Rolling Stone cover story).
Alison Kazyjanski has this website she's been working on and now it's finally done. She didn't tell me it was done, I was cyber-stalking and found that it was up--here's a bit:
The (Nate) Kennedy family has had some good and bad news lately. First, they had a son (Dane), but unfortunately their dog Peanut went to doggie heaven. Congrats and condolences:
I'm still in love with these little houses, although they are expensive. I have a fantasy of living in one of these homes with my wifey and doggy, on the Nova Scotia east coast. Sweet.
Very slow here, but that is because I am actually progressing towards my Ph.D. Working hard in the lab, meeting with my thesis committee members, teaching classes... riding some fun waves. You know, life.
Scott Soens was just on the island of Tavarua, "working":
It appears that women and the young, new voters sent Obama over the top... and it's about time. The baby boomer generation has messed everything up and it's now time for us to fix it!
I guess Hope can overcome Fear.
Except that here in California, Fear overcame Hope and now certain people have had their rights ripped from them. The religious right (mostly the LDS "mormon" church) led the "Yes On Proposition 8" campaign to change our state constitution to remove the right (previously held) for gay couples to marry.
So, in my mind, it is a happy day--a very happy day--but it is tempered by frustration. What I would like my generation to understand is that this is our own civil rights movement--the fight to give equal rights to all people regardless of sexual orientation. It's about time that we all refuse to grant this form of discrimination any respectability.
But for most of the country--actually, nearly the entire world--it's a great new day. It's great to see the TV news commentators on my local station's finally let loose with what they really think (the women talking about choking up with joy, the men looking worried about the extra taxes they'll have to pay). By the way, don't listen to the talk of "tax and spend liberals"; only people making more than 250,000/year will get an increase and that will be less than they paid under Reagan.
Finally: YES WE DID!
PRafter, BSerwatka, and JSerwatka all support this message.
I've talked to a bunch of my friends today (I just had a vision of McCain's infamous, "My Friends..." lines) who had already voted and some of them asked me for my feelings about Obama. Unfortunately, I could not cheer them up with buoyant optimism (although I usually have no problem with that) and here's a great quote that perfectly expresses what I'm feeling:
I won't be half-drunk, but my jaw is beginning to firmly set itself in "Game Face" mode and if this thing isn't settled soon, I'm considering getting full-drunk.
Unbelievable, but it is finally that day. Brooke said it was like Christmas for her, but I am usually very relaxed on Christmas and I am not relaxed today...
I figure that there will be some of my friends (and others) wanting good web resources to check on the results. Here's what I will be watching:
It's a very up-to-date nation-wide map of all the races (not the propositions in CA though). It's really fun and you can also click and see how the 2004 and 2006 races went for all the states.
For what it's worth, I will be very sad if the campaign of hope is defeated by the campaign of fear, but I will still have hope that this country can get on the right course.
Personal stuff:
Lately, I have been having strange desires to ride a skateboard. It's probably been 7 years since I voluntarily rode a skateboard... in that time period, I've skated because I wanted to hang out with my friends and that's what they were doing. Seth is always making me go skate with him. Bob sometimes too (ramps mostly). I think Johnny even made me go skate the Sea Isle park with him, but that might have been Seth too (I remember playing tennis afterward??? That sounds like something Seth would make me do). Whitey seems to have some skate-stoke in him lately, also.
All these previous sessions, I'm just going through the motions. I've had this idea in my head that if I'm going to get hurt, it better be when I'm riding my surfboard. But I've been watching these video/interview/documentaries on VBS.tv of skate pros from my generation and it's bringing up something from those deep, dark, and green areas of my brain.
The Reptile Brain.
That doesn't make much sense, but... maybe it does...?
"If you skate, you can leave skateboarding... but it's like you're always going to come back to it, one way or another, you know? You might leave it and just be old and look at a ledge and say, 'Damn, you could or somebody could tail slide that... that's just what skateboarding does to you.'"
I'm always thinking that. I love the part where they talk about putting on 5 Champion sweatshirts and skating all night in the freezing cold (he's from Long Island). So many kids can relate to that... that's just what we did. We didn't wait for the weekend so we could go drink in the woods with all the kids we didn't like in high school. We met at the 96th street basketball courts and skated until the lights were turned off (usually around 11pm). Parents would drop car-loads of kids off for the night. All sorts of skill levels were welcome. We would have contests too... S.K.A.T.E. or who could manual the farthest. Sometimes, other kids would try to play basketball and we would start with them. Kris Zuccato almost always brought a boom box for music. Always thinking ahead, that guy.
To warm up, we'd skate down to WaWa and get hot chocolate. Those were pretty amazing days now that I think about it. And I was bummed when some of the kids started going to those lame high school parties instead of skating with us. It's not like we didn't have girls there, there were some cuties.
While I like riding a surfboard, I have to admit that most of my formative years were spent on a skateboard. Nostalgia. It's thick on an old man's heart. Especially when some of your friends aren't around anymore. Damn, that's still hard to write. It's still hard to even think it.
Personal stuff: I attended an excellent Halloween Rock 'N Roll show last night led by The Night Marchers while Brooke cleaned up dog poop. Fair? No, probably not. But it was awesome. Special thanks to my sponsor Dan Deeds for making the night out possible. No photos, sorry, but it was pretty radical.
This video describing the "Why Can't Us?" Phillies phenomenon is so classic. I love the English teacher at the end saying, "It's incorrect because 'Us' is a proe-naown (pronoun) used in the objective case..."
Help out A Wish from a Fish: A fundraising event for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation I hear that it went well, Click here! Get me a poster...
PRafterDotCom Top 5 (20080930):
(1) Glory Days - book about the Boss. What else do you want?
(2) Storm Clouds - Jeff Soto's second art book
(3) Blueberries. I luv 'em.
(4) Shallow, sandy, tubulars that unfortunately buckle your surfboard (wait, is that top 5 material?)
(5) Wait, did I just get a nearly brand new Merrick for $125? Gotta love Craigs List these days...
PRafterDotCom Playlist (20080930):
(1) Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series Vol.1-7: Somehow I never checked out volumes 2-7. There's some amazine stuff in there! While I'm at it, I'm listening to volume 1 again (so good). Incredibly sad song, "He was a friend of mine." (2) The Notwist- The Devil, You, + Me. Really catchy. Better than their last. (3) Sigur Ros - Me >.... I'd say it's my favorite album by them yet. In heavy rotation when bad things happened and now all the songs make me sad. (4) Converge - All. For some reason this stuff is making me feel better. (5) C.S.S - Donkey. Also better than their last album.
--------------------------------------------- LINKS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH PRAFTERDOTCOM (what I do when I'm cruising the internets)... --------------------------------------------
Officer Dangle Herron
I don't know what these people are. 
Galapagos/Mexico Trip
