Misc.

Seems all I do is bloody apologize here! But I am sorry: one measly posting saying I will post again soon, and then silence. Pathetic, I know. Let's just move on, shall we?

So, the AIDS Conference. Pretty mad, I'll tell you. Hard not to consider the extent of the expense: if all the delegates, with all their airfares and all their hotel costs and all their lunches and dinners and breakfasts, and all the exorbitant registration fees, and all the useless bloody crap, buttons and stickers and posters and pamphlets, and the entire local host budget, if all of this was converted to cash and bundled off to Africa or South America or South Asia, would there have been anything at all to discuss? And then again, if there's one thing I learned, it's that money is only a part of the problem. Not a very big part, actually...which is, frankly, why the Bills (Gates & Clinton) leave me rather unimpressed. The amount of hoopla and reverence and sheer star-worship that attends them, and really, for what? For having money and being generous with it? When the one promotes sex-worker "rescue programs" in South Asia, promising productive, moral lives in Nike sweatshops, and the other gives nice words of support for the Bush-driven U.S. AIDS programs where abstinence is valued over prevention and developing country governments are quietly "encouraged" not to request generic drugs from other developed countries that are willing to deliver them? A little bitter, me. I confess, I've always harboured one of the more ignoble traits of the socialist-minded: the resentment of money, or rather, the resentment that the money's not mine. Sigh.

What else is going on in my world? Our friends Karen and Shim are coming to visit next weekend, which should be a lot of fun. Thom and I have designed a full roster of proposed events for them, though I suspect they will reject all in favour of city walks and drinking patios - fine by me! I realize suddenly that I have about four weeks of vacation/off time that I need to use I think by the end of October...although I should confirm this. Hopefully I can carry some over, as I don't much relish the idea of taking time off in order to sit at home for three weeks, making hourly postings to my blog (you lucky devils). You'd think we'd arrange a trip somewhere, a "vacation," such as I've heard people do. We'd both like to, I know; I just can't bring myself to justify putting us into the poorhouse for a few idyllic weeks away. Help! I need middle-class intervention, fast!

Babies, babies, babies.... Lololololola (I fear there is one too many lo's there) is "big with child," as I feel they might say in eighteenth-century Nova Scotian fishing villages. Too, too thrilling! It has sent my own biological clock - already an erratic timepiece - into deranged clanging. I look at Thom and think what an amazing father he would be, and I think I would be an OK one too, and I practically itch to do it. Yet, circumspection rules the day: we must, at my insistence, come at it practically, considering pros and cons, inflows and outflows, facts and figures, blah and blah. Many, many children arrive unplanned, with no attendant strategy, and they are fine and happy and their parents, I suspect, delightedly surprised to find that things find a way even without planning. Of course, others grow into serial killers...but that's all part of the gamble, isn't it?

Manifold kisses and pets and wonderments to you, Lo(etc.)lola! I am proud and happy and so excited for that little person's extraordinary future.