admittedly, one of my favorite gifts to receive are borders or barnes and noble gift certificates. yes. i’m a bit geeky and a bit odd. i like shopping (not just buying) new books and new music.and for my recently past birthday, i received a couple such excellent gifts. i’ve already used one:

narrow stairs by death cab for cutie
saturday nights & sunday mornings by counting crows
the people speak: american voices, some famous, some little known, from columbus to the present by howard zinn

i’ve finished the book, it was quite short, but good. narrow stairs is good, more of the death cab i’ve come to know and love. saturday nights, is alright. at least so far. i should say i still think august and everything after is still my favorite album and so far this new one is my least favorite, but maybe it’ll grow on me as i listen more. that’s what happened with recovering the satellites.

the next music to purchase? i’m not sure yet, but i definitely have books to purchase: a biography (of sorts) on the first amendment as well as another by zinn on just war and a couple of good study guides for the lsat.

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that’s right, ladies and germs, i’m officially 30 years old. that’s 3 decades, or 360 months, or roughly 782 fortnights (what the hell is a fortnight?), or roughly 1,564 weeks, or 10,950 days, or 262,800 hours, 15,768,000 minutes, or 946,080,000 seconds. i’m a geek….

to celebrate the momentous occasion, my mother requested i returned to the town of my upbringing, the place that, for better and worse, shaped the person i am today. she wanted to celebrate with me this milestone anniversary, which to me seemed a completely reasonable request, given the three decade marker and given the fact it’s been years since i last celebrated a birthday in the house in which i grew up.

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with the 2008 democratic party of hawaii state convention a few days behind me, i want to take this time to reflect on the experience. i’ve been thinking about this post since i left the hilton sunday afternoon and i’m still not quite sure how to put all my jumbled thoughts and feelings into some coherent structure, but here i go nonetheless….

after a long, but somewhat restless sleep thursday night, i arose bright and early friday morning to attend to last minute errands and tasks before arriving at the convention hall before 10am. i started to setup the registration and credentials stations in preparation for the opening of registration at 1pm. in the frenzy of preparation and the with the stress of a first-timer, the 1 o’clock hour passed as volunteers and delegates began to arrive, without being thoroughly prepared.

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for those of you not in the know, that’s State Central Committee.  communist party?  not so much….  the state central committee is the, some days more than others, the governing body of the party.  by a very rough count, it’s comprised of 80, or so people: two from every state senate district.

who cares?  i do.

eight years ago, i got a fix, a high.  and not from drugs, at least not in this context.  i watched, transfixed, as the results came in from the presidential contest between george w. bush and al gore.  gore won, technically, but the debacle and media circus that ensued got me interested in politics.  admittedly, it was a casual interest.  it came along at a time in my life when i wasn’t quite prepared to be interested in anything but myself.  then i read the people’s history of the united states, by howard zinn, and my eyes were opened.

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