January 06, 2004
NH primary fever (or flu?)
Primaries - The NH primaries are about three weeks away. If ever there is a time to be glad to own a TiVo, it's now. Commercials are dominated by campaign spots. It's no secret that Howard Dean has a pretty strong lead among the democrats in the state. He got another major boost today with the endorsement of Bill Bradley. You have to wonder, though, when you see the notoriously conservative National Review doing a cover like they did last month (see right). It indicates that the neo-conservatives want to have to run against Dean. In some sense I'm sure that 8 years ago the democrats would have loved to have the NH primary win of Pat Buchanan continue onto the national spotlight. In both cases it gets easy to paint the candidate as out of touch, out of the mainstream. It's rather sad that due to the overwhelming dominance of just two parties, it now tends to often come down to "who can unseat the existing President" rather than who better suits the goals and values I as a voter hold. Politics needs more dimensions than big business & subsidies versus big government social programs & handouts.
Winnie-the-Pooh - Last weekend I tried to take the girls to the Milford library but they were closed, probably due to the New Year's holiday. So instead I took them to Toadstool Bookstore in Milford. I picked Claire up this beautiful edition of "The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh". It's a hard bound book containing both "Winnie-the-Pooh" and "The House at Pooh Corner". It has large type and beautiful original (pre-Disney) artwork inside. She really loves it. Since she finished Charlotte's Web, she's been working through an abridged children's version of "Pollyanna". Once she finishes that, she can dive into her new Pooh book.
Dentist - I'm sitting at the dentist office this morning while Claire and Abby get their exams. The technician just arrived to tell me that Abby, like Claire did a year ago, has a permanent tooth growing in behind an existing baby tooth. Unlike Claire's earlier case, though, this baby tooth isn't loose, so it'll likely be extracted in a few weeks at the dentists office. The dentist also assured me that the gap in Claire's teeth is nothing to be concerned about at this stage of development. He'd rather see that gap than for there to be too little space. As the other adult teeth come in they should exert pressures that close things up.