Month: January 2008

It’s good to have the two of them back

We just finished watching the first strike editions of A Daily Show and The Colbert Report. It was good to have Jon and Stephen back, and I was very glad that Stephen had a non-strike-related guest. I’m already tired of the strike jokes and strike analysis — give me some real politics!

Better yet, settle the damn strike.

Home again

I guess we picked a good long weekend to be in Tucson instead of here — we missed the winds, rain, thunder, power outages, and general havoc. Instead, we had temperatures in the 60s and low 70s, gentle rain one evening, and way too much food.

We also had a steady stream of messages from our house sitter telling us what we were missing, including photos of our late TV antenna. We’re supposed to have DirecTV come out next week and install a new dish; I was going to try very hard to get them to bring out a receiver with OTA capability (and still might) but it’ll need a new antenna, too. This one is beyond repair.

The high point of our touristing in Tucson was the afternoon we spent at the Pima County Air and Space Museum — we were lucky enough to get onto a Boneyard tour as soon as we arrived, and afterwards, wandered around the museum proper for several hours. Photos are on Flickr.

But most of the time was spent with Diane’s relatives, talking and enjoying their company.

Restaurants worth mentioning:

  • El Charro Cafe (on Broadway) — as always, tasty authentic Mexican food
  • The Good Egg — as always, good, filling, reasonably-priced breakfasts in a pleasant environment
  • Viro’s Italian Bakery — an Italian deli with decent food, decent gelato, and very reasonable prices
  • New Delhi Palace Cuisine India — they make a good Chicken Tikka, and their “Karhai” (wokked) vegetables were a nice change compared to normal Indian restaurant fare

But despite the good food and company, it’s good to be home again!

Primary Twittering

We didn’t realize how quickly caucus results were going to start coming in, so we were in a restaurant when we should have been in front of the TV. Fortunately, I had my iPhone with me (gee, what a surprise!), and I thought to check on @podcastmama’s updates, since I knew she was actually running a caucus.

Caucuses have different rules than elections, clearly, because she was giving live updates via Twitter. And then I noticed that @LenEdgerly was channeling CNN — and that was just what we needed in our isolation. (Well, we were having a tasty meal in a restaurant which was getting steadily busier, but in terms of current events, we were isolated.)

So I turned on SMS notification for updates from @podcastmama and @LenEdgerly. Every few minutes, the phone would beep, we’d read the update, and then go back to dinner. In fact, it worked so well that we drove over to a gelato place before going back to our hotel, where we turned on CNN and the laptop — and then I was able to add my share of tweets (typing on the iPhone is challenging and slow).

It was great fun to be able to chat with friends all over the continent (at least) as events were coming in — I’m looking forward to doing it again next Tuesday for New Hampshire. But I think we’ll have dinner at home that night.