DNC observations

In the end, Boston during the convention was not as bad as it could have been. I'd actually welcome Boston Police pointy-nosed smarty pants talking head Mary Ellen Burns if she wanted to come on the news and give a big fat "I told you so" to everyone in the region.

The predicted traffic nightmares were never realized, mostly because 90% of those commuting into the city either STAYED in the city (like our girl Taunia) or they bailed for points north. With a substantial number of people not coming into town at all, traffic moved nicely. In fact, it was downright "The Day After" in a few places from what I can see.

Doug's commute went well, and this morning he left knowing that a lot more people would be hitting the roads to come into town even though it is Friday. So he anticipates things being a bit more back to normal.

I didn't watch a lot of the convention. We watched Kerry's speech last night and I honestly want to know what kind of bullshit lie he is telling when he said as a child (living with his Army based dad in West Berlin) he rode his bike across the line into East Berlin and saw the fear in the faces of those who do not have freedom.

"La la la la, I'm out riding my bike, I think I'll ride over the top of the Berlin Wall to get to the east side and check it out. La la la la. Oops, can't ride over it. Too much barbed wire. But I guess these nice army guys will let me just ride through this big gate. La la la di da, hello Army guys, I'm just a wistful little American boy out for a bikey today. Mind if I check out the Strasse over here!? Thanks! You're not half bad! Auf Wiedersehn!"



Right. Thing is, later he'll come back and say "I never said I actually RODE my bike into East Berlin. I looked into East Berlin... you misheard me..."

Well then why would your dad promptly ground you for LOOKING at something like... a house and a neighborhood? Please don't make up stories, and then tell me I misheard you, Mr. Kerry. It doesn't endear.

Best part of the night though was the balloon drop. On the local news, earlier in the week they interviewed the woman who owns the balloon company, and turns out the balloons alone ran the DNC a half million bucks. Nice! So knowing that, I'm sitting there waiting to see a half million dollar balloon display.

Instead of $500,000 worth of spherage, I see like five dollars worth.

Where are the balloons?

Doug, Jessica and I are sitting there, and she says out loud "Hey, that's not a lot of balloons. Where are the balloons???!!! They showed them up in the rafters. What's the deal?"

And there were rows and rows and rows of tubed up balloons, just waiting. Something obviously was wrong. And after a while it all got corrected but not until the grandstand champions were listening to their third in a string of victory songs.

Which leads to the funny part. After the whole whoop-di-doo was over, Doug gets online and I hear him laughing his ass off. He calls me into the study and shows me this news article off of the Drudge Report.

Normally I steer clear of Drudge, Michael Savage, many of the right side pundits. Lileks is the only one I read and he'd cringe if he heard me actually categorize him as "right" side. If you avoid Drudge like the plague, expose yourself today. This is a good one. The CNN director guy was on a live mike when the balloons weren't dropping, on the air, across America, freaking out. Or at least swearing Dick Cheney style. Heh. Dude dropped an F bomb. Sorry I missed it. I saw the Janet Boobie thing live, would have loved to have heard this live.

Drudge posts a .wav file, which I can't listen to because my sound isn't working. But you can listen to it if you want.

Overall, yeah. Boston Survived. The balloons fell. I would hate to be a resident of the area where the fireworks went off sometime after midnight... but. Hell. Once in a lifetime opportunity for some, and I'm glad folks had a good time.

While we were at the beach on Tuesday, two fighter jets were circling overhead for most of the day. There was one little airplane flying an advertising streamer, and he may just have been flying too close to the power plant. Other than those three birds, there wasn't a plane to be seen in the sky anywhere.

D's beach house is really close to the Seabrook Nukular power plant, so whenever the drawbridge for rte 1A went up, the jets were there. Checking out the fishing trawlers, the whalewatch boats, the traffic parked on the bridge... it was kind of creepy. I guess on Monday at high tide some kids wanted to jump off the bridge into the water and Army Guys came out with rifles and the whole thing.

We're off to the beach again today. Last day possible before the kids go away. I'll have two fairly kid-free weeks here. Huzzah!

That's about it for me. I'm going to QA the remaining dart pages and get going. More later!