Happy New Year!

A year of New Yorker covers.

Here are links to the 50 greatest cartoons of all time, as voted on in 1994 by 1,000 animation professionals.

I’ve been a member of the working world again for two days now, and I’m dog tired. I feel like a walking zombie.

It’s not because of the job. It’s because I’m not used to waking up at 7:30 in the morning. I haven’t been getting enough sleep. I don’t think it helped that I had a piece of chocolate cake last night an hour before I got into bed.

I’m still finding my bearings at work – I haven’t been there long enough to get a sense of things yet. But my new office building is very close to my old office building, so I keep having to reassure myself that I’m not a lawyer anymore. Whenever I remember that, I smile inside and feel a little rush of pleasure. No longer am in a career in which people thrive on adversarial relationships. No longer am I in a career for which I’m not suited.

I’m so used to having a job that’s totally wrong for me that’s it going to take a while to get used to the new state of things. Call it post-lawyer trauma. Even though I was by no means a slave in my old position — I was a government employee, after all — I never really liked that job. I’m glad it’s over.

No chocolate cake for me tonight; I’m going to try to get a good night’s sleep.

Here’s my favorite letter from yesterday’s New York Times:

To the Editor:

Re “Democrats Plan Symbolic Votes Against Bush’s Iraq Troop Plan” (front page, Jan. 10):

So the Democrats are planning symbolic votes against more troops for Iraq.

Actually, when I and many other Americans cast our votes against this war, even before the prospect of escalation, they were for real.

Daniel England

Fairfield, Conn., Jan. 10, 2007

The Democrats won Congress and they still have no spine.

I’ve been neglecting this blog way too much lately. I really should vow to write more often.

Matt and I have been enjoying “Brothers & Sisters” on Sunday nights after “Desperate Housewives.” If you haven’t seen it, it’s a one-hour drama about four adult siblings and their mother and uncle who all live in California and run a family business together, a food company. The executive producers are Jon Robin Baitz, Greg Berlanti, and Ken Olin. The show is well written and funny, and in addition to a great cast – Sally Field, three “Alias” alumni (including Ron Rifkin), Calista Flockhart, and Rob Lowe, it features one of the more realistic portrayals of a gay character I’ve seen on TV – Kevin Walker, one of the siblings, played by Matthew Rhys.

Matthew Rhys neither overplays nor underplays the character’s gayness; he’s neither a mincing queen like Jack McFarland or a sexless priss like Will Truman. And while he doesn’t play to stereotype, he does queen out every once in a while like many gay men would. You can imagine that straight people wouldn’t guess that Kevin was gay but that he might set off a gay man’s gaydar. I like it.

Kevin is out and confident and he has a sexual appetite. He gets an interesting romantic life just like the other characters do. Every so often, there’s a gay kiss on the show – and what’s remarkable is that it’s not a big deal. Ten years ago it would have been. The same-sex kisses on “Roseanne” and “Ally McBeal” were hyped beyond belief because they were considered so controversial; today, two men kiss romantically on network TV and nobody bats an eye or even hears about it.

Granted, it’s a 10 p.m. show, but still… we’ve come a long way, baby.

As a loyal reader has reminded me, today is my six-year blogiversary. Not many blogs, percentage-wise, have been around for at least six years. Not that I’m one to talk – to some people, I’m probably still an uppity blogger-come-lately.

Here’s one of the articles that started it all for me. Ahh, the good old days…

FYI:

Just two more years. Two years from today, George W. Bush leaves the White House.

GOD, TWO MORE YEARS OF THIS!

Sigh.

On Friday I had a free financial consultation at work to assess my personal financial situation. The result: I’m way behind where I should be as far as retirement and personal savings.

For the past few years I’ve been putting almost all my extra money toward paying down my student loans. I’ve always seen debt as bad, almost a moral failing. But the thing is: while credit card debt (which I tackled first and paid off a few years ago) is bad, student loan debt isn’t so bad, because it’s an investment. (Granted, in my case I’m not sure how much of an investment it was. I spend the first year after law school making a pittance and I never went to work for a law firm or made the big bucks.)

Student loan debt also has a lower interest rate than most “bad” loans. Given the low interest rate on my student loans, I should have been investing some of that money these past few years in something with a higher long-term interest rate. I just hate the idea of having thousands of dollars of student loan debt, but if I’ll make more money in the long term if I invest some of it.

I never knew much about my previous job’s pension/retirement plan and never contributed more than the automatic minimum. But now I know more. Since I wasn’t at that job long enough for the pension to vest, I have to take that money out. I might put it into my new 401(k) or into an IRA. I’ve been educating myself about all this stuff today – 401(k)s versus IRAs, traditional IRAs versus Roth IRAs…

I’ve also ordered Personal Finances for Dummies, which should arrive soon.

Maybe this will be my belated New Year’s resolution: to get my finances the healthiest they can be.

Yay.

John Kerry bows out of the 2008 presidential race – and the world collectively shrugs, because he had no chance in hell of winning the nomination anyway. He would have been delusional if he’d decided to run again – but then again, don’t you have to be a little bit delusional to run for president?

Anyway – I’m glad he swallowed his ambition. He could do more good as a U.S. senator than as a presidential candidate again.

Two long years to go | Salon.com

On the same day that Bush — a president who has never vetoed a congressional spending bill — preached “fiscal discipline,” David Walker, the comptroller general, appeared before Congress to describe the nation’s financial future. “Simply put,” Walker said bluntly, “our nation is on an imprudent and unsustainable fiscal path.”

We have a comptroller general?

From the Times:

“There is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town,” Bush said. “And I’m sorry it’s the case, and I’ll work hard to try to elevate it.”

Sounds about right.