Kirsten and I like to spend time together at least one day each week while the girls are in school and we’re both off work (Kirsten worked last night, so she was very tired).

After getting ready we headed to Starbucks where we drank coffee, read and conversed. It was a wonderful time. She is the best friend anybody could hope for. She’s funny, intelligent, fun and super hot!

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2008 · brent

Today Kirsten and I performed one of our basic democratic duties; we voted. Voting absentee on our own terms was a much better way to go than waiting until Tuesday and standing in line with everybody else. We sat alone in the conference room at City Hall in Saco, Maine and filled in the bubbles on our ballots. It was fun.

2008 · america · maine · saco · usa · vote

I love Sarah…Silverman (not Palin).

2008 · barack obama · campaign · comedy · election · florida · jewish · sarah silverman

I love Matt’s passion. This would be funny if he were trying to be funny, but it’s awesome because he’s truly angry. Me, too.

I think candidates should be disqualified (by the voters, of course) if they believe dinosaurs and humans existed simultaneously or that the entire earth was flooded to the mountain tops or that evolution is “just a theory”. We need intelligent leaders, not credulous nincompoops.

2008 · america · campaign · election · matt damon · president · sarah palin · united states · usa · vice president

The JibJab guys (and gals) are good. I love their stuff.

2008 · campaign · clinton · hillary · jibjab · mccain · obama

Kirsten is SO mean. She put water in a bowl and froze it over night. Then she had me pour a layer of Hayley’s favorite breakfast cereal, Kix, over the ice and add a little milk to make it look like a bowl FULL of Kix. Hayley was not amused. Every time she sees this video she reminds me that she didn’t think it was funny, that she was only laughing because I made her.

She also put a looooooooooong dark thread in Jenna’s shirt with only a couple inches hanging out. In the morning I pointed Jenna’s attention to the wayward thread. She couldn’t be bothered by it. I told her to remove it. She pulled and pulled at the thread of seemingly infinite length. Skye wondered aloud where the thread was coming from since the shirt Jenna was wearing didn’t even contain that dark color.

Kirsten, you’re mean! Funny, though.

2008 · april · april fool · april fool's day · cereal ice · fool · frozen · funny · thread · video

Yes, that’s a keyfob. And, because it’s a Volkswagon Jetta keyfob, it’s also the key.

Last Sunday the girls asked me to take them to Portland Head Light to climb on the rocks, hike and take pictures. The answer to that request will always be an enthusiastic “yes”. While I took pictures the girls made a “house” out of driftwood, mangled lobster pots and rocks. I climbed all over the cliffs and boulders trying to capture the lighthouses from new and interesting perspectives.

I laid on a rock about six inches above the surface of the water to get this shot.

And got really low to capture this reflection.

Then I waited for the girls to be done playing. After a long while I suggested we go play on the swings before heading to the hospital to get Kirsten. The sun was getting low and the tide was coming in and I was getting a bit chilly.

Skye and Hayley headed to the playground while Jenna and I went to get the car and drive it down. I couldn’t find the key! It wasn’t in my pants, jacket or camera bag. Nowhere. If it were down on those rocks the tide would, in a very short time, completely cover it. Besides, it was getting dark and there were about a bazillion round rocks it could have fallen between. And, it was getting dark. And, the park would be closing at sunset. And, Kirsten needed a ride home after her twelve hour shift at the hospital. Fuck.

Jenna and I walked to the playground to get her sisters then headed back down the tall granite cliffs to the rocky shore where we had spent most of the afternoon. I scanned the ground in what I knew was a futile attempt to locate the missing key. I suspected it had fallen out of my jacket pocket in either of the two places I had laid down.

The girls were too slow over the cliffs and boulders so I told them to go to the top of the cliff and walk around. That way they wouldn’t slow me down and I could keep an eye on them.

At the first location, where I had laid on a rock to shoot Ram Island Ledge Light, the rock was submerged by the rising tide. I looked through the clear water but couldn’t see the key. I hurried to the second spot and, when I rounded the last corner, saw the bright red PANIC button of the keyfob at eye level. Whew!!! After snapping a few pics for this blog post I retrieved the key and headed back to tell the girls the good news. I had no idea the adventure had just begun.

The girls hadn’t gone up to the cliff, but were still down on the beach. Apparently they hadn’t heard me or communicated to each other. And they couldn’t hear me now, they were too far away. When they were in range I called out to Jenna and Skye and asked them where was Hayley. I figured she was behing a large rocks and was just out of sight. All I got was a shoulder shrug. I yelled for Skye to go find her and off Skye went. When I finally reached Jenna I was missing two girls, but was confident Skye would find her sister and we could finally leave.

As Jenna and I climbed up the cliff there were about fifteen people standing on the edge watching us. When we got close to the top a women asked if I was the dad. I told her I was a dad. She said they found my daughter, which was nice. I didn’t think they were lost, really. Pretty soon Skye rounded the corner and everybody looked quite pleased about the reunion. Until I told them I have three daughters. Those happy expressions instantly changed back to concern and panic.

With Skye and Jenna close behind I walked around the top edge of the cliffs yelling for Hayley. After only a few very long seconds we heard a man yelling that he had found her. I could tell by his voice that she was okay. She had a huge smile on her face as he carried her up to us. Everybody was relieved and happy our little family was back together. Hayley had been several hundred yards away from where I had left her. She was trying to find us but was going the wrong direction over very large, sharp and treacherous boulders.

I was never as concerned as any of the spectators. The girls are very good on the rocks and hardly ever fall off them.

2008 · adventure · cape elizabeth · emergency · found · keyfob · lighthouse · lost · panic · phl · portland

Yesterday the girls and I traveled to Brentwood, New Hampshire to attend a rally where President Bill Clinton was going to be campaigning for his wife, Hillary. His speech was refreshing and inspiring. During the question and answer period I stated that, “religion is a big deal to Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and that scares me, quite frankly.” Then asked, “How does religion fit into a Hillary administration?” The following is his reply.

First of all, her faith is very important to her; she’s always been quite religious in a more traditional way.  She was raised in a Methodist home.  She taught Sunday school for a while while I was a governor. And she religiously read a lot of books about theology, religion, and the history of faith. It’s very interesting. But, she feels much more strongly than they do that the founders were right. [APPLAUSE]

A lot of our founders might not be able to get elected today because they were deists, you know. Thomas Jefferson even clipped out the Bible and just stripped it down to the essential teachings of Jesus. I don’t know if you ever saw the Jefferson Bible, it’s quite interesting. Those fellows would have a hard time passing that Republican test, I guarantee you. Jefferson, Washington, and all of them, they’d have a hard time getting over the bar. I think it’s interesting, there’s no doubt in my mind, the reason America has the largest percentage of citizens who regularly go to churches and synagogues and mosques and temples is that we keep the government out of their faith. [APPLAUSE]

We allow people to be non-believers and we don’t use taxpayer money trying to pick and choose winners when it comes to faith. I don’t think there’s any question about that.

When the tsunami hit South Asia, before President Bush asked his father and me to go head up this group, Hillary and I went to one of her constituencies in Queens. They had a Buddhist temple and they were gathering up stuff to send to Sri Lanka. They had, it was amazing, all these African American guys from the local African American church showed up with supplies, the local Hispanic community leaders from the local Catholic church came up, and then the local people from the synagogue came up, and they had some Muslims came from a couple miles away and they were all contributing to this and I thought, “You know, this only works because the government does not get into this.” I mean, it was a tribute to the wisdom of the founding fathers and she thinks they were right. [APPLAUSE]

This response, of course, is calculated to appeal to a very broad audience. It is, however, in stark contrast to Mitt Romney’s statement in his “Faith in America” speech that “freedom requires religion” and his implied assertion that the founding fathers intended to create a religious (if not Christian) government.

I also very much like her position on Iraq, health care, taxes, economics, diplomacy, and science. Go Hillary!

2008 · bill clinton · campaign · hillary · new hampshire · president · primary