Winter Break

Kent and I have both been away from work since the 21st of December. It's been a busy time that began with our trip to Las Vegas for the bowl game. Immediately after getting home from Vegas on the Sunday before Christmas Eve we got ourselves and the house ready for company and to host a Christmas Eve party with family and friends.















We had 11 folks over including Kent's Mom Sylvia and his sister Kay and brother in law Tony. We also had Jennifer, Jay and Olivia, Sean and Barbara, Mike and Bill, Sherry and one of our new neighbors Corinne.

















It was a lot of fun. We started at our house for appetizers and drinks, dinner for 13 at Judy Fu's followed by desert and ornament exchange back at our place. The house looked beautiful all decorated for the holidays including a lot of fresh flowers which I love!





Christmas day was spent with Sylvia and Kay and Tony. It was a very relaxing day - the weather in Seattle was wet and cold so other than venturing out late in the evening to tour neighborhood lights we stayed at home. I made a prime rib for dinner that was delish!


The next morning we saw Kent's family off and then did a little shopping before loading up the pups for a road trip to see my parents in northern CA. Its about a 10 hour drive from our place so we drove as far as Eugene OR before stopping for the night and arriving in Anderson CA the next day just after noon.

We had a great visit with my parents. They always treat us well and are grateful for the time we spend together. There is always a lot of laughing and joking but always from a place a love and support! We went to a couple of movies - Les Miserables and The Hobbit. Dad's a great sport - he sat through both of these very long movies although they are not his kind of film. Other than that we did our typical run to Costco and some additional shopping. It was a very relaxing time that included eating, napping, and most importantly, sleeping in! Despite the numerous roosters crowing starting about 3:45 am we slept well!


Mom always manages to create the most comfortable beds! Thanks for a great visit!

Mom shared a few pictures with me this trip which I scanned. The first two are ones of me and my brothers as children - I miss my brothers and wish i saw them more often.





The other is from my learners permit when I was about 15 and a half. Everyone thinks I look so mad in the picture! I remind then that I was a gay boy growing up in Aberdeen - damn right I was pissed! Lol!


We headed home today (Sunday) and as I write this post we have been on the road for about 9 hours and are about 30 minutes from home. One of our pups Maggie is not feeling well so we had to stop several times along the way to care for her.
We returned in time to go to Olympia tomorrow to spend new years eve celebrating an early 40th birthday for my friend Jennifer! Really looking forward to it!
We are going to go down to our old house tomorrow morning to clean up the yard before heading down to Olympia. New Years day will be spent watching the Rose Bowl and taking down decorations - just in time to return to work on Wednesday!
Happy New Years to everyone! 2012 has been a big year between moving to our new house, the reelection of Obama and the passage of gay marriage in our state!
2013 is going to be a great year much of it spent planning for our wedding that will occur on our 16th anniversary as a couple - 11/16/13.
Later - Jim
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Maaco Bowl 2012 - Vegas

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I'm drafting this post from a flight from Las Vegas after seeing the Huskies play and lose to Boise in the Maaco Bowl.

As usual we had a great time. It's been a long time since we've been in Vegas and oddly enough we will be back in March of next year for the PAC-12 tournament. We had a short window of opportunity to attend since I had to work on Friday and we wanted to be home before Christmas Eve.

We stayed at Mandalay Bay which was very nice. Way down on the south end of the strip but it was the team hotel which is why we stayed there.



The Huskies lost and has been true most of the year Keith Price had a bad game. Nice kid but if Sark wants fans to not start talking about his job its time for him to reconsider Keith as our quarterback. Between season tickets for football and basketball and travel to many away games we spend a lot of money to support UW sports and we want to see the team do better. We lived through the whole Tye Willingham era and yes 7-5 is better but seriously - three years in a row. We expect more after 3 years. Fans have enjoyed Sark and still support him but you hear more grumbling each year. Heres to next year! Go Dawgs!















Vegas is definitely pretty place at Christmas. Last night after making our way back to the hotel we had dinner at a steak place called Strip Steak. It was excellent. I don't eat much meat so when I do I want it to be top quality - and I was not disappointed.


Following dinner we took a walk along the strip and checked out Aria a hotel we are thinking of staying at next March when we are down for the PAC-12 basketball tournament. We walked down the strip as far as the Belliago and took a few pictures before heading back to the hotel for the evening.














We did little gambling - each putting in and quickly loosing $20 before stopping! The one thing I did not like was the smoking in all the Casinos - terrible!

This morning we got up and went for a 6 mile run along the strip and then drove out to Hoover Dam to check out the new bridge. Pretty cool!








Kent and I are both off work between now and the end of the year which is nice. It's going to be busy few days. Tomorrow we have 13 people over for Christmas Eve and then family on Christmas for dinner. We are heading to Northern CA on the 27th to see my parents and then need to be back in town to celebrate the 40th birthday of my friend Jennifer on New Years Eve. Looking forward to it!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Jim

We have our Marriage License!

It's official - we have our marriage license!


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It's finally arrived and what a wonderful day it is for our state! It's also a great day to work and live in King County! The county really did a great job of doing this right and honoring and celebrating equality! Thank you Executive Constantine! Congratulations to the happy couples! This is the first couple in King County to be issued a license. Pete-e Peterson and her partner Abbott Lightly who have been together for 35 years!

















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Location:Finally Marriage Equality in WA State!

Favorite Tree from Christmas Forest

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Supreme Court may take up gay-marriage cases

The Supreme Court justices this week will decide if now is the time to rule on whether gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry.

WASHINGTON — After two decades in which gay rights moved from the margin to capture the support of most Americans, the Supreme Court justices this week will decide if now is the time to rule on whether gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry.

The justices must decide whether to hear an appeal from the defenders of California's Proposition 8, the 2008 voter initiative that limited marriage to a man and a woman.

At the same session Friday, the court will sift through several appeals to decide whether legally married gay couples have a right to equal benefits under federal law. Appeals courts in Boston and New York have struck down this part of the Defense of Marriage Act, and the justices are almost certain to take up a case to resolve that question.

The Proposition 8 case, known as Hollingsworth vs. Perry, presents justices with the more profound "right to marry" question.
Opinion polls now show a majority of Americans favor marriage equality, and support for it has been growing about 4 percent per year. On Nov. 6, voters in three states — Maine, Maryland and Washington — approved same-sex marriage, bringing the total to nine states.
Does the shift in public opinion suggest the court should uphold gay marriage now, or wait for more states to legalize it?

The defenders of Proposition 8 say their case "raises the profoundly important question of whether the ancient and vital institution of marriage should be fundamentally redefined," and in this instance, by federal judges.
A federal judge in San Francisco struck down Proposition 8 as discriminatory and irrational. In February, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that by a 2-1 vote, ruling the ban on gay marriage violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws. The majority relied heavily on a 1996 opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy that had struck down an anti-gay initiative adopted by Colorado voters.

Usually, the justices are inclined to vote to hear a case if they disagree with the lower-court ruling. The most conservative justices — Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — almost certainly think the 9th Circuit's ruling was dubious. Scalia, for example, says the "equal protection" clause, added to the Constitution after the Civil War, aimed to stop racial discrimination and nothing more. He often insists the justices are not authorized to give a contemporary interpretation to phrases such as "equal protection."

If Chief Justice John Roberts joins the other three, the conservatives would have the needed four votes to hear the Proposition 8 case.
They may hesitate. To form a majority, they would need Kennedy, the author of the court's two strongest gay-rights rulings. His 2003 opinion struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law and said the state could not "demean" gays by treating them as second-class citizens. Five months later, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, citing Kennedy's opinion, became the first to rule that gays and lesbians had a right to marry.

If the court were to take up the Proposition 8 case, Kennedy, 76, would be likely to control the opinion.

"If you care about history and your legacy, that must be pretty tempting, to write the court's opinion that could be the Brown v. Board of Education of the gay-rights movement," said Michael Klarman, a Harvard legal historian, referring to the case that ordered school desegregation.

If the court votes to hear the California case, it will be decided by late June. If the appeal is turned down, it means gay marriage will become law in California. The court may also put off a decision on the Proposition 8 case until the justices have decided on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), also by June.

The court is likely to announce whether it intends to hear the cases by Dec. 3.

The high court has scheduled a closed-door conference for Friday to review the case of Karen Golinski, a staff lawyer for the federal appeals court based in San Francisco who married her partner of 23 years, Amy Cunninghis, during the brief 2008 window when same-sex marriages were legal in California.
The purpose of the meeting is to decide if that case or any of four others that also seek to overturn DOMA to put on the court's schedule for next year.

The outcome carries economic and social consequences for gay, lesbian and bisexual couples, who now are unable to access Social Security survivor benefits, file joint income taxes, inherit a deceased spouse's pension or obtain family health insurance.
The federal courts that heard the cases all ruled the act violates the civil rights of legally married gays. Two appellate courts agreed, making it highly likely the high court will agree to hear at least one of the appeals, Lambda Legal Executive Director Jon Davidson said.

"I don't think we've ever had an occasion where the Supreme Court has had so many gay-rights cases knocking at its door," said Davidson, whose gay legal-advocacy group represents Golinski. "That in and of itself shows how far we've come."


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