Jason Raven

Same as it ever was

I've been busy lately with boring meetings and boring work and fun Call of Duty 4 lately, so this will probably be a relatively brief update.

Saturday morning, I took the kids up to my parents' camp for a couple of days. My plans for the weekend were 1) catching up on the 2 weeks worth of Howard Stern that was recorded on my Sirius Stiletto, 2) taking the girls out to eat at our favorite restaurant-within-a-bookstore in Belfast, 3) visiting some relatives and 4) doing some turkey hunting on Monday morning.

If you're bored then you're boring

Very boring weekend. I took the girls shopping both days to get them out of the house, but shopping just for the sake of getting out of the house coupled with the desire to NOT spend much money is... boring! It may have been a very normal weekend, but suffered when compared to the clamoring fervor that greeted me as I got out of the car on Friday evening. The girls were justifiably excited about being on TV on Friday. They both seemed downright apathetic in contrast to their mother, though, who is now on my stage-mom-in-waiting watch list!

We can dance if we want to

I'm sure everyone else records the Sharing Show from 3-6pm EST on the PBS Sprout channel, so this is probably old news to all of you, but our resident ballerinas made their television debuts on Friday.

No appeal on the docket today

I had a fairly quiet week after a crappy Monday. My court date didn't go great, but I learned a little bit about how the process works. As I sat in the courtroom at 9am on Monday morning, I looked around at the 50 other people there and had a sinking feeling that I was going to pick up at least one parking ticket that day to go along with my speeding ticket. When the judge entered the chambers, he took attendance and asked everyone to say "No Contest" (guilty), "Discussion" or "Trial". I hadn't been familiar with the "Discussion" option before, but the judge really, really wants you to say "Discussion". In doing so, you opt to speak to a representative from the police department that issued your ticket in hopes of avoiding an actual trial. In fact, even when someone said "Trial", the judge ended up talking them into having a discussion first. The judge also mentioned that these were all civil cases, not criminal cases, and that the State has a much lower burden of proof. In other words, if you were there for speeding and were caught on radar: you are screwed.

I'll show you my dark secret

Maybe it's not one of my most closely guarded secrets (stay tuned - I may be divulging one of those in the next few months), but I am a Republican. I haven't been all that proud of it lately, which is a shame. I was a fan of George W Bush's promises of limited government and "humble foreign policy" back in 2000. However, like Ronald Reagan before him, Bush's foreign policy has been a great disappointment to Constitution-loving, liberty-minded Republicans like the late Barry Goldwater and Ron Paul - my two political heroes.