New Hampshire legalizes civil unions!  I found this particular comment extremely amusing:

...Several senators described civil unions as unnatural and warned that the partnerships would harm heterosexual marriage. "We don't allow our cousins to marry, you can't marry your brother, you can't marry your sister," said Sen. Robert Letourneau, a Derry Republican. "We don't allow blind people to drive or felons to vote, all for good and obvious reasons."...

Thank you for comparing a healthy loving relationship between two people of the same gender to blind people driving, criminals voting, and incest.  What an ass.  What, pray tell, are the "good and obvious" reasons for disallowing gay marriage?  I've yet to hear any, and I've been listening for a long time.  Besides, these are civil unions we are talking about.  Oh yeah, and on that note, Letourneau has more to say...

...Despite the efforts of Democratic senators to distinguish civil unions from same-sex marriage, Republicans cast civil unions as marriage in all but name. "Let's call it what it really is," Letourneau said. "This creates same-sex marriage."...

I'm sorry I was laughing too hard to follow that.  Do you mean to tell me after all the tooth and nail fighting deny gay people marriage and the offering of civil unions as a substitute, now we're going to say that civil unions are the same as gay marriage?  Then what was the point of making the differentiation before we banned gay marriage?  You gays can't have X, why can't you settle for Y?  Okay now we passed a law saying you can't have X.  What you want Y now?  No way!  It's as bad as X!

Good for you New Hampshire.  I'd rather it was same-sex marriage, but at least this is a step in the right direction.

Over the weekend the Governor of Washington State, Chris Gregoire, signed into law a domestic-partners bill that gives gay couples some similar rights to married couples in the state of Washington.  While it doesn't address all the issues it does address a few of the most important ones, such as the right to visit a dying partner in the hospital, or to take part in a partner's funeral arrangements.  It also creates a domestic partnership registry.  Gregoire herself seems to be strongly on board with this bill, as quoted in the Guardian UK Unlimited article:

..."This is a very proud moment for me as governor, to make sure the rights of all of our citizens are equal," Gregoire said.

People in the crowd cried as Gregoire relayed stories of couples who testified before lawmakers this year about how they have been denied hospital access to dying partners, or were not allowed to plan their funerals.

"It is time we put an end to these stories," she said. "This simply allows our seniors and our same sex partners to rely on each other and to care for each other when they are faced with life and death situations. These are the rights of all Washingtonians."...

Needless to say, the knuckledraggers aren't very happy with this turn of events.  Imagine!  Letting someone who has had a loving relationship with their partner for years visit their dying partner in a hospital!  The horror!

..."I think it's an unfortunate step backward, not knowing where it will lead us culturally," said Joseph Fuiten, a Bothell pastor who is the leader of Positive Christian Agenda, a state group of Christian organizations opposed to gay marriage. "Giving marriage-lite benefits without the benefit of marriage strikes me as not a good idea."

Well jeeze, chucklehead, maybe if you would freaking let them get married in the first place, we wouldn't be having to address their rights in this way would we?  Damn that burns me... working to make sure these folks can't get married and then saying that giving someone the benefits of marriage without marriage itself isn't right.  What a jerk.  The "step backward" remark recognizes the knuckledragger sponsored ban on same-sex marriages that was passed in Washington in 1998 (the inappropriately named "Defense of Marriage Act"), and was upheld in the state supreme court last year.

Life has been a little hectic for me, and while I've had time to take part in interesting discussions on articles I posted over a year ago (weird) I haven't had much time to post any new articles.  So here's what's goin' on, reduced to a bullet list, just so I can get the shite out there:

• Went to see the oral surgeon on Tuesday, no real surprises there, it was just a consult, they wanted me to know what to expect and to talk to me.  Had to read some scary consent forms where they tell you everything that could possibly go wrong during your procedure... we might break your jaw, we might puncture your sinuses, we might damage teeth you were planning on keeping, you might have a heart attack from the anaesthesia, you  might die, the world might end.  Great stuff to read if you are a person with an anxiety disorder triggered by medical situations.  Thanks guys.
   
• I go in for my impressions at the dentist this afternoon.  Probably have to have the surgery in about 3 weeks.
   
• Celebrated Easter with Patty's family on Saturday, and with my family on Sunday.  Plus we had a little egg hunt for Lynnea at our house Sunday morning.  Total of 3 egg hunts, and I hid somewhere between 85 and 145 eggs over the weekend (I had help on the last hunt.)
   
• Atheist's don't believe in jinxes, but lately it's hard to shake the idea of misfortune following me around.  During Saturday's get together, I noticed that the dog of one of my sisters-in-law, who had been brought to the gathering, was acting funny--labored breathing, strange movements.  I told my sister-in-law about it, and she took the dog to a vet during the celebration and was informed that the animal needed to be put to sleep.  Happy Easter kids, the dog is dying.  They had the dog put down that same day and a lot of the kids were crying about it.
   
• Continuing the jinx thread, I was on the phone with a friend yesterday afternoon and we were discussing all the things that had been going on in my life when suddenly I heard a loud bang on my cellphone.  My friend had been rear ended by another driver and terminated the conversation with "my back is hurting, I can't talk now".  Later in the evening I heard back that after a trip to the hospital my friend was okay, but he didn't yet know how bad the damage to his car is.  We joked that I should try to capitalize on this Hurleyesque bad luck of mine, have people pay me to stay away from them, or pay me to hang around with folks they don't like until the meteorite hits them.
   
• I've been seeing my Mom each weekend and helping her to get things taken care of now that Dad is gone.  Mom runs a small business out of her house and depends entirely on an ancient Windows-98 box to do her work, and the box is acting pretty spotty lately.  A few weeks before Dad passed away he had purchased a new computer, and so now I am trying to repurpose that box so that when my Mom is ready, she can switch to the new box and run her business on that.  Unfortunately the new box comes with Vista which my Dad hated, and after spending a couple of hours trying to use the box I can see why.  Microsoft completely changed the standard windows interface, all the control keys are different, and no functions are where they used to be.  They also decided (apparently) that menus are overrated, so the standard office suite doesn't have menus anymore... yeah you heard that right.  Everything is now reorganized on a new fat toolbar with tabs on it so that you can switch between toolbars.  Microsoft calls it "the ribbon", I call it "thumbing your nose at everybody who already learned how to use your shitty applications".  Vista does not come with a "classic mode" option like XP did... they really expect you to relearn where everything is.  I refuse to subject my 68-year-old mother to this nonsense.  So I backed up Dad's files, packed up his computer and all his peripherals and disks, brought it to a computer shop and told them to wipe it, and then install XP home edition and Office 2000, and get all the drivers to make sure the peripherals work.  In the end, my Mom will be happier for it.  And having a chance to check out Vista I am now quite certain that I won't be upgrading to it.
   
• Had a little birthday party for Pat at home last week, a little cake and song, and a couple gifts (taking our economic situation into consideration of course).  Pat got the movie "Eragon" which was -eh-.  It's basically Star Wars... AGAIN, and progresses far too quickly.  I kept saying "these guys forgot the montages" while watching it.  But the dragon was pretty, and it was still fun to watch.
   
• Oh, and I am saddened to report that Kurt Vonnegut passed away.  Thanks for the stories Kurt, we'll miss you.

Guess that's about it.  Gotta get to work!  See ya later.