My grandmother’s stage name was Linda Preston when she was younger, and she recorded this song under her stage name, so I can only guess she recorded it in the ’40s. When she was older, her screen name was Audrey Arent when she acted in TV commercials and as an extra in such movies as King Kong (1976), Turning Point, and Network. She was my maternal grandmother, and the second photo in the slideshow at the beginning is of her holding my mother when my mother was a newborn baby. You can also see Grandma with me when I was a little boy.

This video is closed-captioned for the signing impaired.

It’s important to recognize that Andy & I were already married by our rabbi on August 8, 2004, in the eyes of God and our close family and friends. Nonetheless, we commemorate today the third anniversary of our “legal” marriage in California on June 21, 2008. California began marrying same–sex couples legally on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and Andy & I drove Friday night to get to San Diego so we could be married the first day we could. It was not just a political statement, since we were already married and still are, but we did it for political and legal reasons. We went to show California that same–sex couples demanded legal marriage. As it turned out, we were married by a sweet young man who had been deputized for the occasion and was as sympathetic to our cause as can be, and we were blessed to have a few of our closest friends and my mother there to join us. It was, as you can see in the video, a heartfelt, tearful, and joyful occasion. This should not be an ephemeral phenomenon. Same–sex marriage should become legal throughout the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. It’s way past due.

Andy and I took a weeklong vacation to New York the second week of May, and one of our adventures was a long walk on the beach near Kings Park, NY, where I lived for a year–and–a–half as a kid. I put together this video of stills and movies of our time on the beach.

There are many more photos of our trip in my New York 2011 collection and Andy’s New York Spring 2011 collection on Flickr.

This is a beautiful visual representation of the Debussy’s piano song Claire de Lune. I thought it apropos because Andy and I bumped into each other at the Claire de Lune coffee house in San Diego on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, and then got to know each other at a pool party on Memorial Day.

The funniest thing about how our little dog scratches the ground is how she holds her hind legs back in a stretched pose. The other funny thing about her is she will scratch the ground to mark it with the scent glands in her paws even if she hasn’t peed or pooped. I’ve never seen a dog scratch for nothing before and hold the hind legs back in a stretch like that. She’s like a ballerina holding an arabesque.

Our dogs Lady & Buxley were play-fighting today and making the funniest noises while we lay in bed resting!

A few years ago, Buxley played like this with Andy because JJ wasn’t as playful with him. Lady has been great for Buxley and vice-versa.

I ordered the Nexus One Car Dock the day after it was released, and it arrived today by FedEx Ground. I put it in my car tonight to see how the car dock, Car Home, speakerphone, etc. worked. I'm happy I got the Car Dock, though I do wish the other Android apps like Phone and Contacts would go into landscape mode, because that's the way I like to view my Google Maps GPS navigation. … Read More

via Just Singin’ & Signin’ in the Sun

Here’s my husband being himself in public… again.

Andy & I went to the newly-opened Sea Life Aquarium at Arizona Mills for the first time. One of my favorite rooms was this round room surrounded by a continuous circular tank in which schools of fish swim ’round & ’round.