It is the role of government to regulate and record civil unions for the purposes of governing and taxation. Marriages are the role of religion.

Supposed to be the best of 2008 - 100+ meteors a hour. See you outside!

The Quadrantids Meteor Shower
January 1 – 5, 2008

Peak Time (Estimated)
USA: 6pm – 2am (Pacific Time) on Jan. 3 and 4, 2008

Northern Europe: 2am – 10am (London) on Jan. 4, 2008

Northern Asia: 11am – 7pm (Tokyo) on Jan. 4, 2008

The Quadrantids get their name because the meteors appear to originate in the abandoned constellation Quadrans Muralis. (Located between Boötes and Draco.)

To view the Quadrantids, find a dark area with a clear view of the sky. Use a tree or pole to block the light from the moon. Look towards the North. While the Quadrantids can be seen anywhere in the sky, they will appear to be coming from the area between Draco, Hercules and Boötes. Estimates call for between 50 – 130 meteors per hour.

For more information, please visit http://quadrantids.seti.org

Change - an appropriate topic for New Year's Eve. The idea that you can "Change Your Life" is an assumed birthright of the American nation. Happy New Year! Make a resolution, get saved for the thousandth time, read another book with ten easy steps to: business success, happiness, a faster metabolism, better sex, a "new you."

It's actually really hard. I made up my mind a year and half ago that San Francisco was the right place for my next step and I'm still in the process of getting there. Just living in one place for 20 years creates an uncountable number of ties. There is family. My family seems to reject change as unnecessary and likely to provoke disaster.  Then there are the civic groups, clubs and all that I joined to fill the boredom void over the past decade. Some of it has been rewarding - I particularly liked being a local legislator and making laws, but it wasn't much fun. It may be irresponsible, but fun is really high on my current list of requirements.

I was certain that I would have moved to San Francisco by September, right after Burning Man, but it didn’t happen. My daughter tore her ACL in a skateboarding accident in August and everything just stopped while she rehabbed, had surgery and then rehabbed again. It was terrifically frustrating having to wait extra months, but it gave me time to wrap up a lot of business and it made the move seem less precipitous to my family and friends. The waiting has drained me to the point where I almost can’t remember why I want to go, but then I read an email about some art project or event that my friends are involved in and I remember the wild joy I feel when I am there. That sends me back to packing my stuff.

Ah, stuff – the Anti-Change. And in this holiday season we are all the recipients of even more - items, some of them pretty nice, that you didn't ask for, but that you are now responsible for because someone you care about gave it to you. They're like barnacles on your bottom that just slow you down (OK, so that was a pretty weird analogy. I'll work on that one.)

For the past few months, I have been going through everything I own, everything in the house, trying to pull out the things that I really care about. It looks so easy on cable, Clean Sweep" and all that, but hell, it takes a lot of time to handle each item and decide – save, sell, give away, throw away. Every closet, every drawer, the basement, the garage.

There are things that seem usable, valuable, too good to go to the landfill, but who will  take it away? The local thrift stores are full up - with signs saying "Nothing accepted at this time," The libraries don't want used books - they're overwhelmed. Kids don't want used toys - the stuff from China is so inexpensive, why would they? No one wants the 12 settings of antique china my mother gave me - who is going to hand wash dishes - not me or, apparently, anyone else!

Last winter, I stayed in an apartment in San Francisco that was stuffed, just stuffed, with things that the owner, a young woman, could not bring herself to discard. It was pathological – forty plus kinds of tea, thousands of plastic bags, multiples of everything (get this - she was off on a silent Zen retreat for three months. So much for nonattachment) and it made me come back to my own house with a cold clear eye. I couldn’t bear to see the obvious comparison between her and myself. Eeuuuw.

This has been exhausting and liberating process. Dusty, too. One more week and I make my move. Am I ready...