Where Is The Sun?

-July is here … today is Wednesday the 1st of this new month.  Welcome to our blog.  We are Steve and Warren, a male couple from Minnesota.

-Out in our back yard this morning it is cloudy and 52 cool degrees.

The weather forecast for today for our area is: Mostly cloudy. Areas of drizzle in the morning. Scattered rain showers through the day. Highs 55 to 60. North winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30 percent.

Color weather radar this morning does not show any rain in Minnesota … but the a forecast like the one above – it could rain any time.

Where is the sun?

-At last Minnesota now has a second senator who will be representing us in Washington.  The Minnesota Supreme Court’s unanimous decision for Al Franken over Norm Coleman ends a wait that began eight months ago, sending a key Democratic vote to D.C.

All Steve and I can say about this is: “It’s about time!”

-Yesterday, I spent the better part of the day washing and drying our clothes from last week.  It was a rainy, drizzle filled day around here – the kind of a day when you really didn’t want to go outside to do anything.

Steve worked all day, and then went to play softball – which by that time the weather had improved somewhat.  It was a blow out game, with his  team losing.

It seems the team’s manager, who was also the team’s pitcher last night – got into a verbal disagreement with the umpire and was ejected from the game.

Apparently the guy wasn’t wise enough to keep his mouth shut and just play softball – and it turned into an ugly verbal match.

Steve’s team lost … and so did the team’s manager, who was finally ejected.

-Lt. Choi loses round 1 in his fight … The military board hearing Lt. Dan Choi’s case suggested that the West Point graduate be discharged from the Army National Guard for violating the armed forces’ ban on openly gay service members.

The four-officer panel made the recommendation Tuesday in Syracuse, N.Y., after a day of testimony. Lt. Gen. Thomas Miller of the First Army Division, and Gen. Craig McKinley, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, will make the final decision, according to The Post-Standard of Syracuse.

Choi said in a news conference following the hearing that he was disappointed but not deterred, adding that he refuses to lie about his relationships to keep his job.

The hearing was at the Thompson Road Armory in Syracuse, the headquarters of the 27th Brigade Combat Team, which oversees Choi’s National Guard Unit.

Choi, who came out in the Army Times newspaper and on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC in March, graduated from West Point in 2003. An Arabic linguist, he served with the Army in Iraq for 15 months before leaving in 2008 to join the New York National Guard.

According to Fanning, Choi is the first officer in the 10,600-member New York National Guard to face a discharge because of alleged violations of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

-Well the guys’ body is barely cool … and leave it to the news media … Unauthorized Michael Jackson biographer and investigative celebrity reporter Ian Halperin has claimed in London’s Daily Mail that the “king of pop” was gay and that Halperin had spoken to two of Jackson’s former lovers.

In 2006, Jackson’s brother Jermaine said he and his brothers had suspected that Michael was gay.

In this writer’s opinion … Jackson was a musical talent, but I hardly would call him “gay”.

-Steve goes back to work today … then has his second softball game of the week this evening.  I think he plays at 6:00 p.m., but I’m not entirely certain of that.

After that he’ll be back home, with only one more day of work – that being tomorrow – Thursday, when he works his primary job and then tomorrow evening works his secondary job.

Good thing is … one of the key management people in his company may be leaving by September 1st and there could be a remote chance that Steve may go back to work for his primary job on a full time basis.

We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed and see how it goes and hope that he gets back on full time – so this “crazy work schedule” ends and his life gets back to normal.

-In birthday’s today, on this July 1st:

• Actress Olivia de Havilland is 93.
• Cookiemaker Wally Amos is 73
• Actor-comedian Dan Aykroyd is 57
• Olympic gold medal track star Carl Lewis is 48
• Actress Pamela Anderson is 42

-I’m going to the kitchen and get myself some breakfast … Steve will be up in just a few minutes – so you guys – have a great Wednesday.