It certainly was a nice gesture for the city of Minneapolis to have a massive fireworks display in honor of my birthday. Er, wait, it was Aquatennial, wasn’t it? I guess I’ll just have to keep writing letters to Congress about making July 23rd a national holiday.
Some pictures from yesterday’s party:

My friends Adam (who wrote the article about me for Law & Politics), Libby (another Humphrey Fellow), and her husband Kevin.

My friend Jess, who made me a very cool mixtape, and her friend Janean.

I nearly singed my eyebrows here. That’s my sister, Crystal, holding the cake.

From the right, Carrie, Nicole, Linda, and Traci. Nicole and Linda are both good friends and people well-known in the local disability community. Carrie and Traci are their respective personal care attendants.
The party was successful enough that I think I might try to make this an annual event. I saw friends I hadn’t seen in forever and it was good to reconnect with them. And I managed not to get blindingly drunk, but only because my nurse stopped pouring. She said something about not embarrassing myself, but my memory is kinda fuzzy on the details.

Windows Vista? Is Microsoft trying to sell an operating system or a minivan? i suppose it’s catchier than Windows XP, but it still sounds rather bland. At least Apple uses cool-sounding animal names like Tiger and Panther for its OS. Couldn’t M$ come up with something similar. Like, I don’t know, Windows Platypus. Or Windows Emu. At least people would remember the brand.
I just returned from the store with copious amounts of alcohol for tomorrow’s party. Since Wisconsin blood still runs in my veins, I had to buy a case of Leinie’s. You know, I still have never gotten property drunk. Do you think I’d be a mean drunk or a friendly-bordering-on-inappropriate drunk?

James Doohan, who played Scotty on Star Trek, is dead. Let us bow our heads as we remember episode #22, in which Scotty saved the Enterprise from certain destruction by reversing the warp engines’ polarity through a clever diversion of power from the forward shield generator, all the while proclaiming “Captain, she canna take much more of this!” Or maybe it was episode #23. Godspeed, Mr. Doohan.
I have a feeling I bought way too much food for my party on Saturday. If you’re looking for a free meal on Saturday, feel free to drop by. You can e-mail me at mcsiegel19@gmail.com for directions and other details. Because if there’s lots of leftovers, I’m going to have to figure out a way to blend it all up so I can dump it down my g-tube. And that just sounds nasty.

I’ve refrained from commenting on l’affaire de Rove because there are so many other bloggers following every twist in this story. But I think it’s important to reiterate, as many have, that this story isn’t really about who leaked a name to a reporter. In the final analysis, this is about the Administration’s attempts to discredit anyone who questioned its rationale for going to war in Iraq. Whether or not a reasonable person could believe that Iraq possessed WMDs is a matter that will never be completely settled. What seems to be increasingly clear, however, is that Administration had no interest in allowing debate on the issue. It was determined to have this war and it was not going to tolerate any dissension that might lead to a further examination of the Administration’s true agenda. This is what is so disheartening about Bush’s leadership. He makes decisions that feel right to him on a gut level and then looks for the facts to support those decisions. That’s fine if you’re making draft picks for a football team, but not when you’re sending people off to war.

Sixty years ago, a top secret experiment in the New Mexico desert ushered in the Atomic Age. Today, the Doomsday Clock stands at seven minutes to midnight. 16,000 nuclear warheads remain operationally deployed, most of them still targeted at the U.S. or Russia. More than a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, our respective nuclear forces are still on alert. I don’t quite get the strategic reasoning for continuing to aim our missiles at each other. I’m pretty sure the Russians aren’t planning on invading anytime soon.
Speaking of, remember that movie Red Dawn? Remember when that dad imprisoned in a labor camp yells out “AVENGE ME!” to his sons from behind a chain link fence? Man, that was bad. I’m gonna add it to my Netflx queue right now.