On the 11th Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me

A front room all full of pine

Needles, that is. And I expect they will keep turning up until September. As is the way of pine needles.

Did you happen to see Michael Chertoff on the news the other day? There was a ranking of major cities according to their preparedness for an emergency. Seattle is right smack in the middle. I don't usually agree with anything that comes out of the current administration but I can't argue with this one. Unless it's to suggest that we should have ranked lower. Apparently our key areas of weakness are in not having a comprehensive plan and lack of communication. Ya think? With the sting of the Big Blow still fresh in our minds, I'd agree that the utter inability of city agencies and utilities to talk to each other would be a huge problem. Apparently we have to clean up our act if we expect a lot of homeland security money. Get on it, people.

Last night I was flipping through channels and found C-Span just after my homegirl, Maria Cantwell had been sworn into the 110th Congress. I did a little happy dance. Then I got to see good old Dick Cheney swearing in the next group of senators, which included Hillary Clinton. Must have been a tough day for the old boy. Not that feeling sorry for Dick Cheney is something I'm wont to do, either.

What else? Oh. Right. Tomorrow is the big inaugural launch of Here's the 80s, JP's and my new blog. "Inaugural" might seem like a strong word for something we've been posting on for a week. But this week we've just been trying to get up all the videos I posted through November and December. Tomorrow we start with all new videos, all new commentary and all new fun. Be a part of it, won't you? It's going to be huge and you'll want to say you were there. Tell all your friends. In the meantime, a big shout out to Evangeline, Red7Eric, Barista Brat, Sling and The Spouse for being so faithful already. (We had something like 80 hits yesterday so there are other people reading and we appreciate you, too. But those are the folks who've been commenting). And for those of you who might have been put off by my pissy little rules about what I would and wouldn't play, fear not. Hair metal is definitely being played. And yes, Iwanski, there will even be rap. (You might want to make some requests, since we don't really know the genre).

Anyhoo, putting the blog together has been a ton o' fun. Although last night we hit our first glitch. Turns out Blogger has an algorithm that alerts them to blogs with lots of daily posts. It's how they snoop out spammers. So we've been blacklisted until they can look at our blog and see that we're not trying to sell penile implants and pharmaceuticals. But every once in a while we manage to post new stuff so we're going to keep trying until our own personal McCarthy era comes to an end. Where is Edward R. Murrow when you need him?

Also in Blogtopian news, the 2007 Bloggies will be awarded soon. Nominations are now being accepted. Go check it out and nominate your favorite blogs. I love a good awards show. I wonder if they can get Jon Stewart to host.