You may (or not?!) have noticed there wasn't a blog entry yesterday. I said awhile back that I wasn't going to push/force writing here, but I have to say it still feels a bit weird to let the day go by without writing at least a little something out. That said, just a little this and that stream of consciousness today...
But alas, even if there is no entry here you can usually see a twitter or two (or three or four) in the upper left hand corner or elsewhere (like... ummm... Twitter perhaps?!). I have to admit that status updates are cannibalizing my blog entries (as I suspect they have for many, many others). I guess some things can (or should) be said in 140 characters or less... or else it's just blogging for the lazy... "I would have written more, but gosh darnit... out of characters!" I don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing. A big part of me thinks it is just adding/increasing the attention-deficit of our nation, but it is still a nice little outlet.
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The Twilight craze is fully underway, with the movie primed for a midnight opening tonight. Just in case, you have been living under a rock, the Twilight series (written by local - and Mormon! - author Stephenie Meyer) is the latest publishing phenomenon (quickly filling the Harry Potter vacuum) about a high school girl and her first love, who just happens to be a 180-year old vampire (though if the movie version is accurate, can pass for Zac Efron's cousin). I will admit - out of curiosity and this odd attraction to the vampire genre - to reading the first novel, even though if today's newspaper is to be be believed I am in a minority since this is only something for daughters and their moms.
As you may recall, I wasn't terribly impressed with the book... and re-iterated to Todd this morning that I wish, given all the hysteria, that it was a better written book. Alas, he reminded me to stop being a snob.. and again, I will say that whatever gets people, especially young folk, reading is a very good thing. I pretty much had the same reaction to Harry Potter... reading the first book and pretty much wondering what all the fuss was about (and you can see how my opinion affected future sales in that series!). That said, I may give the 2nd book in the series a try ... and once we finish watching True Blood, the first book in Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire series as well... like I said, I'm a sucker (ha!) for vampires!
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It's been interesting watching all this post-election/cabinet post stuff with Obama. In particular, I have been amused by all the criticism about stuff like Joe Lieberman keeping his chairmanships in the Senate or the consideration of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Given what we already know about Obama and now having finished reading The Audacity of Hope, these kind of things are soooooo Obama. As you may recall, I didn't get on the Obama train to fairly late... all that hope, change, "red state - blue state, no the United States" stuff didn't penetrate into my cynical bones. But once I let that go... drank the kool-aid (I'll give you that)... you either have to be stratospherically cynical that Obama has been planning all this each and every day for the last decade or more... or else come around to thinking this guy is incredibly sincere and really believes/intends to govern in a post-partisan environment.
I have found the whole Clinton/Secretary of State thing pretty interesting. I expected there would be some kind of offer... again, this is typical Obama (though this "team of rivals" knee-jerks are getting out of hand), but I didn't expect interest on Clinton's part... and apparently she does, otherwise I don't think it would be buzzing for these many days. Now, if she would have been the very first female SoS, I think she would have jumped at it... but it's pretty amazing to think - and just in the past two administrations - that she would be the third woman (and continue the decade+ trend of a non-white man) to fill the post. But given how long this has dragged on, I suspect she will head the State Department.
And likely by the time this entry gets posted, we will have lost our Democratic Governor here in Arizona as it appears that Janet Napolitano will be the Secretary-Elect of Homeland Security. Napolitano was also rumored to be under consideration for Attorney General, but that fell through earlier this week.
While I have no real basis/logic for this thought, I kinda sorta would have been okay letting Janet go for the AG slot... but Homeland Security, well... just seems like a disaster waiting to happen... literally! But the more troubling aspect is that her departure would leave AZ totally Republican run... with the current Secretary of State Jan Brewer moving to the top spot (the third woman to do so in AZ's recent/20-ish year history - though this time at least with the governor not leaving in disgrace)... so while I am happy for Napolitano, it still leaves me a little sad that our little (but important!) bit of "blue" is leaving our red state.






