Archive

March 10th, 2007

Miranda's Piano Performance


Miranda's first piece as performed at the 2007 Young Musicians Festival

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Fiona's Art Show



Fiona's Art Show, originally uploaded by Aldon.

Fiona poses next to a cutout tracing of herself that she painted for her first art show in Greenwich Connecticut. Her work was part of an exhibition of nursery school students from the Long Ridge School

View the whole set here.

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Fear and Excitement

My horoscope for Friday started off, “There is a very fine line between fear and excitement”. Perhaps that summed up the day pretty nicely. At around 12:30, I was riding down High Ridge Road with my eldest daughter, Mairead, at the wheel for the first time. She has just gotten her learner’s permit. There was a bit of fear and excitement as she made her way downtown.

Then, the telephone rang. It was my ex-wife Amy calling to let me know that my middle daughter, Miranda, had been accepted at Mary Baldwin College. I am so excited for her as well, and yet I have my personal fears. I’m having enough difficulties covering the mortgage right now. Having two daughters in college will really stretch things.

Back at home, another possible buyer was looking at the house. We live in an incredibly cool house, if I do say so myself. It is sad to face selling the house, but with the two oldest girls in college, it is probably time.

So, I look off into the abyss. Where will the funds come to cover college for both of them? Which opportunity in front of me will help pay my bills, and where will it lead us to move to?

Fear and excitement

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Twidget

This morning, Steve Rubel noted that John Edwards was one of his followers on Twitter. Sure enough, Sen. Edwards has over 500 friends and followers on Twitter and he’s also following me. I figured it was time to get a little more involved with Twitter.

March 9th

Returning from Iraq

On Monday, I participated in a conference call that Rep. Steve Rothman had with bloggers upon his return from a trip to Iraq, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Kuwait. It was a good conference call. We need more Congressmen doing more conference calls with bloggers. Yet we also need to think more about how we support our servicemen and women when they return.

Rep. Rothman described what he saw over there, admitting that it was all presented the eyes of the military, so it needs to be viewed with some skepticism. He said that it appears that various factions are coming to recognize that what they’ve been doing hasn’t been working and things need to change. The Kurds cannot expect to have their own country anytime soon. Such a development would most like start a major regional war, and the Kurds would end up worse off then they are now.

The Sunnis are recognizing that they are a minority and that regaining a majority position in the government just isn’t in the cards. Shiites are coming to understand that vengeance is a two handed sword.

Because of this, the various factions are trying to find ways to cooperate, and concrete results are happening, such as progress on an oil revenue sharing solution.

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