Eric Moseley operates a charming inn here...

Although he spells his name differently now...

Recent Photos

Busy busy on the campaign trail. Got some St. Pete photos up on Flickr now. Not a lot from work because I'm careful about that, but there are some nice mild scenes from life here.

Cat on a Leash

in Gulfport, Florida.

Onlookers are stunned as area man wrangles his leashed cat


"Let him through!....He's a sorcerer!!!"


A moment of calm belies the wizardry at play

Progress

As usual, the West is the Best: California Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban

And check out Josh in The Politico! He also is continually improving his site; check it out if you haven't been in awhile (and see new photos by me).

And as to my whereabouts...probably common knowledge by now but since I haven't updated the blog on awhile: Cali was huge but it will be there in the fall; I decided to take a campaign manager job in Florida for this election cycle. Darden Rice for Pinellas County Commission! (full site up in a few days) I have a great candidate, in a really complex swing district, and I get to spend 6 months living in St. Petersburg, about 80 yards from Tampa Bay! It will be a lot of hard, fun, interesting work, and I'll learn a lot too. All of this is happening already, in fact, from the first second I arrived here a couple of weeks ago.

Speaking of which...gotta get back to work. Our campaign kick-off party is tomorrow evening. Hope to see you there! Bring a check!

Update from Santa Monica

It's been a great, interesting, and informative trip to California. Some news from the past few weeks:

Josh had a great fundraising quarter - thanks to all of you who contributed - and has a redesigned website up. He's also gotten some good coverage in various blogs lately.

Looks like the Bush Administration is up to its usual tricks...using seemingly independent "military analysts" to spread propaganda about the war for the past 6 years so. Really, why aren't disgraced or censured or arrested by now?? Maybe next year...

As for what's happening here, it's been glorious to be back in the West, back visiting one of my best past lives. I've seen a bunch of friends, had great food and great coffee, had great moments on the beach or in the hills. I've also met interesting new people and contacts and have had some good meetings & job leads. California is, as always, the land of opportunity. I'm close to taking the next step on a new job/new location; news on that later.

One specific tale from recent days: last Saturday I joined Katie and some friends to compete in the 2008 Grilled Cheese Invitational. Bread. Butter. Cheese. Victory! It was a raucous night of hot cheesy goodness up in Griffith Park. See photos on my Flickr page.

Gotta run now. I'll leave you now with a couple more photos...

Esha's dog Mabel with me at Venice Beach.

Me & Esh on Santa Monica Beach.


Eli & Cheryl with Baby the stunt-parrot.

Home.

Current Events

Yesterday I ran my first Azalea Trail Run. It was fun. My official time wasn't great, 53-something because I started kinda far back, but my net (actual) was a respectable 52:28. I wish they would post that in the results. It wasn't my record, but close enough considering I hadn't been training real hard. Only saw a few familiar faces in the crowd but one...I was running along, somewhere between two and three miles, and heard "John!" I looked over, and it was Ryan Parker! He was chugging along at a good clip, we said hi, I said if he sees my lying in the road ahead to "just go over me", then I proceeded onward apace.

Here's something else that happened yesterday: BaconFest '08. I hate that I missed it.

I have new pictures up on Flickr. Scenes from life around here a few months ago, and I'm slowly uploading the photos from my great weekend in the Bay Area a few weeks ago for Eli's wedding.

And some big picture news: I'll be leaving my job in a few days and visiting LA for a week or so to follow some leads.

That's all for now. Have a good Sunday...

Ernice Kirkland in the News

To my fellow UMS-Wright alums: our favorite chalk-jerking earth science teacher was in the paper recently! (and under different variant of his name):

Read this doc on Scribd: Kirkland!

Go Russ

Bush's delusional speech, and Feingold's take.

In the News

Good article on Josh in the Brown Daily Herald.

I'm off to SF in a few hours for Eli's wedding! And Sunday night at the Silverboard house!

Segall for Congress Picking Up Speed

Josh was in the Washington Post yesterday. Like I've been saying, with good coattails and trade winds, he has a great shot at winning this campaign. He had a great public kickoff a few weeks ago, and with things like the Post article, it's clear that people are taking notice and seeing this as a winnable race.

Check out www.joshuasegall.com for more on Josh and the race (and admire my photography), and please join me in supporting him. Even if you can't vote in AL-3, a contribution would be a huge help. It takes a lot of money to beat an incumbent and the more we contribute, the better a campaign Josh can run, bringing in more attention and money and support, and it'll just snowball all the way to victory in November. Change always comes slowly to Alabama, but it's our generation's turn to step up, get involved, and make things happen for the betterment of the state and the country. Get on board, let's make a difference!

Early March Update

Been awhile. Howya doin'?

February was a bit slow for me after Mardi Gras (exciting photos here), but things are heating up a little now. Finally making a little headway on the job search. More on that as it develops. Other items:

Josh's campaign is picking up speed and gaining national notice. More on that in another post.

Also picking up speed is life at Dog River: Mom & Dad got an iMac! After being without computer for a few years, they finally got high-speed internet, wireless, and topped it off with a stunning 20" iMac. I've been helping them learn it, and Mom has become quite the video chatter!

I'm awaiting some Apple goodness of my own right now: my Time Capsule should be here in a few days, adding a second backup solution to the LaCie drive I clone my system to every week or so. Good peace of mind.

Next weekend I'm going out to Cali for the wedding of Eli, one of my LA friends. The wedding is up in Muir Beach, where he grew up. Just so happens that there was recently a great article in the NYT about the very area where the wedding will be, and there's going to be a wedding party hike Saturday morning on probably some of the same trails in the article. Check it out!

Northrup/EADS won the contract for the next Air Force tanker, which means Mobile is gonna build giant airplanes! This is huge for the city, region, and state. The steel mill was huge too, economically, but of course there are concurrent environmental and other issues with that. The tanker is much more exciting for me, because it's right in town, at Brookley, revitalizing that great old airfield; it brings a high-tech & high-skilled industry and workforce; furthers Mobile's development and modernization (hopefully it will be done smartly); and best of all, it's giant planes! That's one thing Mobile has always lacked that many great cities have - exciting air traffic!

And speaking of exciting air traffic, there go Branson and Virgin, kicking ass again.

And did you see this? Amigos de Obama. Fantastic song & video!

Otherwise, things have been pretty ho-hum here, just working, following the presidential race, and just trying to enjoy still being home but also working on my next move. The weather's been nice. And I can happily report that I've made jambalaya twice in the last week or so. That stuff's damn good!

Later...

Today in South Alabama

Funny: Firefighter fakes calls to ride truck

Stapleton Volunteer Firefighter Michael Salter Jr. liked to ride fire trucks so much that he called in false alarms to his own department -- twice in two days, Baldwin County authorities said today.

He's now charged with two counts of rendering a false alarm.

The Baldwin County Sheriff's Office said today that Salter admitted to calling in phony emergencies from his Stapleton residence.

When investigators asked him why, he said, he "just loved" to ride on the fire truck, according to sheriff's spokesman Maj. Anthony Lowery.

iPhone vs. 18-wheeler

Phone left on trunk...lands on highway...gets run over by a semi...and starts ringing! Awesome.

In related news, modern times come to Dog River: My parents' house, sans computer for a few years now, is about to have a new iMac and high-speed internet for the first time. And wireless of course, so now, next time Dad is out mowing the front yard... I can live blog that shit.

Bacon News

Last night I stumbled upon IHeartBacon.com and found a treasure trove of interesting bacon links. My love for bacon is no secret, and I've tried plenty of different kinds and had bacon tastings at my house, but somehow I've never really combed the interwebs for all things bacon. Last night was a good start. Here are some things I found:

- First, an IHeartBacon tasting of Wild Boar Bacon!
- A great blog called Bacon Unwrapped has recipes for Bacon-wrapped Tater Tots and Bacon-wrapped Corn Dogs!
- Another site, another delicious item: Eggs baked in bacon cups.

If you're not hungry but you still want some bacon love, you can go to Archie McPhee's and get some bacon-themed items. I have the wallet, band-aids, and packing tape (thanks Josh).

These items are useful, but I'm really thinking, what with Carnival season here and the chance of going to a ball, that I would be wise to go on and get a Bacon Tuxedo. Have you ever seen better formalwear?!

While I'm at it, it might be a good time to get a Bacon Robot.

And of course, there's The Grateful Palate's bacon pages, including the Bacon of the Month Club.

Once all of this has whetted your appetite, and you've tried some creative bacon recipes, I invite you to put on your bacon tux and come on over to my house for a serious tasting, not unlike the one these chefs and writers recently had.

Who said my dream of a bacon restaurant was silly? It would work in New York. I have a whole vision...

I finally meet John Hafner!

Some of you may be aware that there has long been another fellow in town with my name, except he spells it with only one F. He is a professor at Spring Hill College, and though we know many people in common, and I've been frequently asked about him or gotten his phone calls, we had never met. But it's been an ever-present curiosity for years. I mean, just the other day I called somebody and they were bewildered that I wasn't him. So while living here this time around, I'd really been meaning to call him and finally make the connection.

Well a serendipitous moment befell me a few days ago! I walked over to Oakleigh to visit Marilyn (Culpepper, my saucy friend who runs the Historic Mobile Preservation Society and Oakleigh), and she said, lo and behold, John Hafner was upstairs in the parlor giving a reading! (He's a lit professor). So when that was over, I went right up to him and said "John Hafner?"
"Yes?"
"John Haffner!"
"Hello!"

And we had a great chat about what it's like to be us, and how we'd finally met after all these years, how he's my real dad, etc. He seems like a great guy (how could he not be? But what if he weren't; imagine meeting your namesake and he's a bum...) and we talked about meeting up again soon. I have a lot to learn from the wise professor who precedes me...

And so, at long last, John Hafner and I finally met. And it was Glorious.

Here we are on that riotous day, along with Marilyn in her Oakleigh garb...



PS... No word yet on whether he is secretly a member of Haffner Wind.

Cut Back, Be Frugal, Have Less Stuff

Good, important NYT piece:

Op-Ed Contributor: What's Your Consumption Factor?
By Jared Diamond
The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.

This is something everybody should be thinking about, and everybody can do their part, whether it's pushing for macro solutions by government and business, or micro solutions by individuals. We need both.

And in addition to the world, reducing consumption is good for your wallet, mind, body, etc. I've made good strides, as many of you know...eating less and better, walking more & driving less (fewer calories + more movement = more fit), spending less money, and just living simpler. It's been good for me and good for the world!

Llaima Erupts!

Exciting news from Araucania, the region in southern Chile I visited in May. A big volcano I saw when I was there, Llaima, erupted a couple of days ago! The main volcano I went to was Villarrica, but Llaima is its neighbor to the north, which I saw from the bus on way down. I wish I'd seen this! I love volcanoes! Check out some good video here.

Beach Boy

I had Foster with me for Christmas. For 9 days! It was glorious. Here he is at Dauphin Island...



So, we had a nice Christmas, saw a handful of friends in town, spent some good time at Callaghan's, and walked and played a lot. He's back in Montgomery now and I'm back to trying to get my life moving forward...

It is 78 degrees right now

New York: 31 degrees and snowy.
Mobile: 78 degrees and sunny.

Winter here is always mild, but this is just crazy! Too bad the days are too short to get out there and enjoy it. I'd love to be in a kayak right now (or walking through Central Park with some hot chocolate; the lack of winter here has always bothered me).
Maybe I'll take some work and sit out on the sidewalk in front of the office...

Old Man River

A little fog last night down by the Ol' Mississip...