Coffee Talk

My parents are in town until Tuesday, so that explains the calm in my blogging storm. I'll tell you what, if you're ever feeling old, the quickest cure is to either visit your parents, or have your parents visit you. I'll be 43 in December, but my parents still treat me like I'm 14 (or younger). I don't feel comfortable having a beer in front of them. I feel bad if a profanity falls from my lips near them. In spite of the fact that I'm married, I'm a homeowner, and I have some money in the bank, I still have a hard time shaking the feeling that my parents feel I'm barely keeping my head above water. I had hoped that surviving six months of unemployment would've created more confidence in them regarding me, but if anything, the reverse is true.

Anyway, the plan today is to gamble, eat, and take them over to Mamma Mia. I got two -for -one tickets. No doubt they're proud of me for that.

EXTRA: Watching coverage of the "day after" Ike. Again, you can't help but feel that the news networks are disappointed at the lack of destruction. In fact, it could be argued that the train crash in Los Angeles was a bigger news story (CNN was covering that while Fox was all about Ike. Advantage CNN). The pictures that I'm seeing look like Florida on a typical summer day when storms fire up in the late afternoon. Or, for that matter, Las Vegas during monsoon season. Post Katrina hysteria has made the networks proclaim every hurricane that hits the mainland as the potential "storm of the century". Ike hit land as a Category Two, and since the storms are measured on a scale of one to five, claiming it as "storm of the century" only works (slightly) because the century is only nine years in. Remember though, Katrina and Rita were both only three years ago, and it's going to be tough for them to be dethroned. Still, you know the networks are rooting for it to happen. Maybe next time. Anything that distracts attention away from politics is fine by me.

Hurricane coverage has just been interrupted for...a political ad. Damn it.