Dolphin’s Dock

• Thought I'd splurge a bit and drive all the way out to the best Mexican place in town for lunch. Uncharateristically NOT GOOD today. #
• QOTD: "If only people got as excited about the good things as they get angry about the bad. What would that world look like?" -Benjamin #
• Ahhh, nice to leave the office 10 minutes early today (making up for some of the extra I've worked this week). #
• This has got to be one of the most misleading headlines ever: "GOP's new youth ambassador: Lady Gaga?" http://bit.ly/aJCQQ #
• I got a swimsuit from malestromonline.com so now I get occassional email ads of male models in their undies. I could think of worse spam… #
• I h8 it win ppl rite lik dis. wut r u sayn? plz spek english. #
• Hmmm… I think I might go scavenge the snack counter… #
• ok, yeah, this microwaveable popcorn has pepper on it. ??????? #
• It's not fun to know you hurt somebody you care about, even when it was the right thing to do. #
• RT @AuntB @jimvoorhies I'm showing an audience how quickly a message can spread on Twitter. Would you please RT? #watchitspread in reply to AuntB #
• Helping Ben's grandmother get moved. #

• It had been too long since I enjoyed sushi. #
• woo hoo, I actually remembered to take out the trash this week! #
• There is a cat running circles around my head. Across the back of the chair, around my neck, across my chest and back around to the chair. #
• Bed early. Meetings from 9-5 tomorrow. #
• It's a day of practically nothing but meetings…. #
• Finally out of meetings for the day #
• wow, office dinner that lasted WAY too long #
• I so need to do laundry. This work dinner thing really threw off my plans for the nite. But then I sure wasn't gonna turn down free food. #
• It's been a long day, off to bed #
• So I just dreamed that Marky Mark died after having his hand chopped off with a machete, and I had to go explain death to his robotic dog :/ #
• QOTD: "See my Facebook profile? Yep, I'm exactly that hot everyday, thankyouverymuch." cr:http://ping.fm/NIzrX #
• Owww. I totally hurt my toe in Jiu-Jitsu class tonight. Didn't hurt too bad in class but now it's making me limp #
• I'm saddened the mother at Kroger calling her young child a "f*cking *sshole." I should try to look at it as job security for Ben #
• Can't believe it's only Wednesday. At least it's a Pay Day. #
• Miss breakfast this morning. So hungry. #
• There were leftovers from yesterday's lunch meetings. Another day of free lunch for me! #
• I wish there were a way to turn off FB email notifications for only individual elements. #
• QOTD: "He noticed that his debt exceeded the world GDP while making a routine balance inquiry on his online BoA account." http://s7y.us/10f7 #
• Mmmmm…. Freshly picked wild raspberrys for making a raspberry cheesecake tonight! #
• My cheesecake turned out DELICIOUS tonight. #
• Everyday this week since Tuesday has felt like it should have been a Friday. #
• Half hour longer, then I get to take a break to go see the mortgage lender. #
• All I can say is TGIF #
• Met the new (future) neighbor yesterday. She seemed really friendly if a bit TOO talkative. #
• Based on what I'm overhearing from the development office, I'm really glad I'm not a programmer today… #
• If military recruitment numbers are so low that we have to sneak austistic child pornographers in, why are we still prohibiting gays? ht … #
• Wow, BrandsOfTheWorld.com completely redesigned their site. Still not visually my favorite, but 100x better than it was. #
• Hello weekend! #
• My hair is cut, my belly is full and another cheesecakes is in the works! #
• So THAT'S how you put a spring-form pan together. Next time I'll know BEFORE I bake the cake in it… Oh well, should still taste good… #

Sorry to get your hopes up. This isn’t the post I’d most like to be writing under that title, but I found it amusing all the same. Yesterday, TheBoyfriend™ and I went to submit our official loan application (for our already pre-approved loan). One of the forms we had to sign (I’m seriously considering getting a signature stamp made…) was a form that really was meaningless except in the instance of a random IRS audit, at which point it would serve as proof that we had gotten credit jointly.

The funny part was the label on the line I signed on. It was labeled “Spouse.” So there you have it, I’ve signed my name as TheBoyfriend™’s spouse, and I kinda liked it.

Those following on Twitter already know that our closing date on the new house has been pushed back two weeks. As I mentioned in a previous post, there’s an anti-flip provision for FHA loans that indicates that we cannot buy a house that the current seller has not owned for 90 days. We’d been told by the sellers that they purchased the home on May 7th, so we’d be able to close on August 7th. Accepting their word for it, we scheduled our plans around that date. Unfortunately, now that the bank has informed us that, while the sellers may indeed have purchased the home on May 7th, the deed change was not processed until the 22nd, so we can’t actually close until Aug 22nd!

The plus side is that our current rental office doesn’t pro-rate leases so our lease there doesn’t actually end until August 31st (Yay! we won’t be homeless…), but the down side is TheBoyfriend™ had already scheduled his transfer at work based on the 7th date so now he’ll be making a hefty commute for two weeks.

• Home Sweet Home #

While I’m still not totally sold on the idea, I’m finally giving in and trying twitter. Click the bird up at the op to follow me on Twitter.

No way. Not in a million years. Even just looking at these pictures make me a little queasy.

Last Independence Day (and other than the date I don’t know what brings this story to mind), a friend of ours brought her two kids (I don’t know their exact ages but I think the younger one is like 9ish and the older about 11 or 12) over our place to watch the fireworks because you can see the fireworks from the city stadium from our backyard. During the course of the evening, Harry Potter came up (probably a commercial for one of the movies came on our something, but I don’t really recall), and I casually asked if she’d heard the (at that time) news that J.K. Rowlings had announced that the character Dumbledore was gay. She mouthed “They [her children] don’t know what gay is” to me before loudly stating for her children’s benefit, “Yep, Dumbledore is happy as a lark.” To her credit, she wasn’t upset with me for using the “g word” in front of her kids or anything like that, she just didn’t want to explain to them what it meant.

I would never give unsolicited parenting advice or otherwise interfere with a parent raising their child the way they see fit (outside of an abusive situation), but I’d sure love to have sat down and had a talk with her about it. Even if gay marriage, adoption, DADT, etc weren’t such major news items, I’d still find it incredibly naive to assume that an 11 year old doesn’t know what “gay” is. I’m not suggesting that a child knows the ins and outs of gay relationships (or frankly straight romantic relationships) or is all that aware of the political issues surrounding them, but when “that’s so gay” is a common way of responding to something undesirable, you can be sure that by age 11, they are familiar with the word.

It’s actually what they don’t know that strikes me as the reason to talk to them about it. Whether you (as a parent) choose to acknowledge it or not, your kids are going to receive messages about homosexuality; from their peers, the news, and other adults. I don’t think it’s inaccurate to suggest that alot of those messages are going to be very vague and negative. If “gay” is the worse thing a person (or thing or incident) can be called, then how is that going to effect the child’s perception of gay people when they learn what “gay” actually is, or even scarier, if they hit puberty and start realizing that the label may well apply to them!

So here’s my advice to parents out there: your children ARE being taught about homosexuality; if you’d like to have any input into what they’re learning and the attitudes they are exposed to, you’d better make sure one of the voices they are hearing from is yours. I’m not saying you need to go into the details of gay sex or anything, but what’s wrong with noting that those two guys whose house we went to to watch the fireworks love each other the same way mommy and daddy do?