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I decided to buy a MacBook and iPhone the morning before the night before my 3-day trip to L.A. for the Heritage Resource Bank Conference, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) New Media Workshop, and Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) Blogger Reception & Meet-up. (Great and fun and very worthwhile, all. More about them in another post, along with my after thoughts.)

Right after I made the purchase decision, I decided to unplug my home PC/tower and take it to the Apple store so the nice Apple people could magically transfer all my data to my new MacBook while I was out of town.  Which meant I had access to Gmail and the Internet on my iPhone but was otherwise offline from Thursday morning until now, when I got my MacBook plugged in and configured and my iPhone synched up.  (If I had been thinking ahead, I would have set up an iTunes account when I was still plugged in so I could have downloaded WordPress in advance of my iPhone purchase…but I wasn’t.)

Now that I have all this fabulous mobile/wireless technology, I will never again be separated from my blog, Twitter, Facebook, and other accounts.

Joy!!

Here’s a nice piece and a couple of photos from Illinois Review (that’s me on the far left, next to Mary Katherine Ham).

And here’s Warner Todd Huston’s write-up.  (How on earth did I miss talking to WTH?!  Darn it!!)

Here’s Bob Weeks’ blurbs at Kansas Meadowlark.  Including mention that Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher presented me with my award.

In the meantime, check out my sidebar and blogroll links; there’s plenty of good reading.

In the days after its official shut-down, in what became a Long Good-bye on The Confabulum blog, managing editor Joe Carter wrote a detailed personal accounting and lovely farewell titled ”A Beautiful Mess.”  The piece was aptly named.  What made it messy (and interesting) was a delightful diversity of belief, thought, and style among the editors and writers.

I was fond of the site, and was sad to see it run out of money.  There is talk that it may be resurrected.  We’ll see.

Patrick also gets brownie points for pointing us to P.J. O’Rourke’s latest brilliance in the WS (and he, in turn, gives thanks to The Anchoress, from whence he got it).  P.J. – who is still hilarious even while battling cancer – shreds Obama on stem cells; you simply must read it.

Andrew wrote about Michelle Obama’s recent PR stunt volunteerism in a D.C. soup kitchen and dared ask how a homeless person in need of a meal owns a cell phone (with which he took the First Lady’s picture).

From the close of Andrew’s piece:

If this unidentified meal recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone?

And if he is homeless, where do they send the cell phone bills?

I chuckled and then scrolled down to read the comments, most of which are dripping with outrage at poor Andrew’s cruel-mindedness.  How DARE him?!

Said they:  The cell phone could be pre-paid; he needs it so he can receive calls from potential employers; maybe a friend or family member is paying for it; etc.

Could be.  But Andrew’s questions were still funny, and the photo of Michelle Obama hamming it up for the guy’s camera is great.

After the article made its way around the office, a co-worker asked:  “nevermind how he got it and who pays for it; where does he charge the battery?”

A gold star goes to the best smart-alec answer (leave in Comments).

Thanks to the Paragraph Farmer for posting.

So I’ve been visiting friends in Louisiana for the last few days; partly to catch up because I haven’t seen them in forever, and partly because I love Mardi Gras – and thanks to a special surprise, I was actually able to go this year and enjoy it.

I love everything about the South: the food, the pace of life, the fact that my skin doesn’t get dry and that people walk around with funny hats on for no reason and don’t get self-conscious. But most of all, I love it because of interactions like this:

We were sitting around the kitchen table after Bacchus, when a two year old child came running in brandishing a toy shotgun (with real cocking and smoking action!), aiming and firing at nothing, shortly followed by his mother.

Mother: “Give me that gun!”

Child: “No!”

Mother: “Give ME THAT GUN!”

Child: “No!”

Mother takes the gun.

Child cries.

Father (from Kitchen Table): “Give him back that gun, Nancy Pelosi!”

Another child (also from Kitchen Table) bursts into tears: “Don’t call mama that, Daddy!!!”