Team Dresch lives!

It is true, that every once in a great while something good that has ended can be reborn, just as it was before. In this case, it is Team Dresch, with the original lesbionic rock action lineup! who has risen from the dead. OMG! as the kids say. John is going to see them tonight in Seattle. So far they are just playing the northwest, Brooklyn, and Chicago. OMG! My young rock sensibilities were nurtured on the albums "Personal Best" and "Captain My Captain" - "She's Amazing" is one of the best love songs I've ever heard, I found out who Phranc was by listening to the tribute song, "Uncle Phranc," and my hair was blown back and my eyes opened to the world of political punk rock possibility by "Hate the Christian Right."
OMG!

Good thing #594...ending

Continuing with the rather morbid theme my blog seems to be taking every now and then, I submit the latest thing to bite the dust. Our lovely, quiet, secret cove where we live with a view of downtown.

The demolition crew came and razed the 60+ year old house that used to stand across the yard from us, to make way for two houses that will completely block our view. The new owner/developer "Mike" is hereby designated as public enemy #1 around here. Extra irritating is that he can't be a day over 30. It bothers me when people that young have that much money AND have a corresponding air of entitlement AND decide to build two McMansions in a historic Austin neighborhood.

The chickens of the world need your help!

Listening to KUT on the way to work today, I found out that today is International Respect for Chickens Day. The purpose of Respect for Chickens Day is to "celebrate the dignity, beauty and life of chickens and to protest against the bleakness of their lives in farming operations." Chickens represent something like 90% of the animals killed for meat in this country, and the conditions they live in are comparatively much worse than what cows are subjected to (we're talking relative levels of horror, here, of course). A non-profit called United Poultry Concerns, the impetus behind Respect for Chickens Day, does great policy work on behalf of chickens, like supporting a Delaware bill to give egg-laying hens more space to live in. Their website is full of interesting chicken activist resources, and pictures and stories of nice chickens who have been rescued. Also of note is the section called Think Like a Chicken, with poems and stories written from a chicken's point of view. I am a big fan of chickens, and stopped eating them almost completely a few years ago. Did you know that some types of chickens are endangered, and that they can make nice companions? I really enjoy our neighbor's little flock of chickens (and rooster)...they were peacefully pecking around the grass this morning as I pulled out of our driveway.
So for my chicken-eating buddies out there, maybe just today you can abstain from eating chicken or eggs out of Respect for Chickens Day!

TV, job, vacation - in that order

A lot of stuff is going on right now, and it's all jumbled up in my head so I'm just going to start with whatever I think of first....

First off, I want to say for the record that I would totally watch another season of West Wing with the new, incoming Santos administration. How awesome would it be to watch these characters navigate their first term? Santos (Jimmy Smits), VP Baker (the guy who played Al Bundy on Married w/ Children), Secretary of State Vinnick (Alan Alda), of course Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), an as-yet-unknown position for Donna Moss (Janel Moloney-I'm so glad the writers finally got those two together in the last half of the final season), Mary Louise Parker (my fave!) as chief of legislative affairs, Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) as Deputy Chief of Staff, and Lou (Janeanne Garafolo) as Director of Communications. I would TOTALLY watch. But, good thing #593 coming to an end is, alas, The West Wing.

In other television news, I realized the other day while accidentally pausing on The Real Housewives of Orange County on Bravo that the infamously sexist/50s throwback husband "Slade" went to my high school in Anchorage. He was two years ahead of me, in the class of '87. Gross.

Veronica Mars still kicks ass. As does the character Chloe on "24," who is managing to simultaneously help save the country from domestic terrorists while evading the authorities (who are in league with the terrorists) AND having to periodically taser a dude who is harassing her in a hotel lobby while she hacks into top-secret government computer systems.

I will be changing jobs at the end of the summer - I got a starvation-wage gig at a university-based philanthropy and public policy research center for next school year. I will be a po graduate student again but much happier, I hope. One note of caution is that the dude I will work for is a bit snooty in that Chicago - Harvard school way (he was altogether nonplussed by the string of state universities on my vitae). I'll continue to do consulting for a local non-profit, which is my favoritist job. In the meantime, M. and I are going on vacation! Later this summer we're headed to Seattle for 4 days, and continuing up to Anchorage for 6 days to visit my buddy and her family (especially my new godkid). More on the vacation plans later, but we are taking applications for a dog-sitter for our little angel, Frankie: