Rebel Prince

Our Alaskan vacation, which has been months in the planning, is finally upon us! I still can’t believe it’s here. Tomorrow morning we fly to Vancouver, where we’ll spend the weekend, and then on Monday we board the Coral Princess for a seven-day cruise to Whittier, Alaska, with stops in Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway. And at the end, we’ll spend a couple of days in Anchorage before flying back to San Francisco.

This will be my first cruise and my first time to Alaska. As usual we’ve packed at the last minute, but we’re basically ready! We should have Internet access now and then during the trip, so hopefully I can write or at least update status as we go along.

Bon voyage!

• Sorting out Coffee’s Contradictions [New York Times]
  “As with any product used to excess, consumers often wonder about the health consequences of caffeine.”
  (tags: caffeine coffee health newyorktimes)

On Friday night we had a great time seeing Bernadette Peters sing with the San Francisco Symphony. (If I remember correctly, the first time I saw her in person was a concert she gave, also with the SFS, back when I was in high school.) After a short opening of pieces performed by just the SFS, she appeared — all sparkly and charming — and entertained us with several songs (often with interesting arrangements), mostly Broadway and a lot of Sondheim of course:

Let Me Entertain You (Gypsy)
No One Is Alone (Into the Woods)
There Is Nothing Like a Dame (South Pacific)
Fever
Mister Snow (Carousel)
Some Enchanted Evening (South Pacific)
Shenandoah
When You Wish upon a Star (Disney’s Pinocchio)
Johanna (Sweeney Todd)
Not a Day Goes By (Merrily We Roll Along)
You Could Drive a Person Crazy (Company)
With So Little To Be Sure Of (Anyone Can Whistle) / Children Will Listen (Into the Woods)
Being Alive (Company)
Kramer’s Song (lullaby written by Peters for her book Broadway Barks)

Good times. What a classy dame she is.

By the way, if any of San Francisco’s musical theater queens weren’t at this concert, they might have been seeing another great dame who was in town that night: Mitzi Gaynor. With Bruce Vilanch. At the Castro Theatre.

The latest cat cartoon from Simon Tofield, “TV Dinner”:

Funny, ‘cause it’s true. Though our cats don’t know how to use the remote control … as far as we know.

I’m walking in the San Francisco AIDS Walk on Sunday, July 20, 2008! I’ve done two walks so far (D.C. and San Francisco) and am excited to do it again.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation has been dedicated to providing direct services to thousands of people living with or at risk for HIV/AIDS, supplying information about HIV treatment and related issues, promoting HIV prevention and awareness in the community, and advocating for sound HIV/AIDS policies at all levels of government.

If you’d like to help support the important work of SFAF and several other local HIV/AIDS service organizations, please visit my page and sponsor me by making a donation! I’m grateful to you blog readers who have been great contributors in the past, and I hope I can count on even more of you this time around. (If you have any questions, just let me know.)

Thanks for helping out a worthy cause. Every little bit helps!

[Addendum (August 1): Thanks, everyone! It was a great event. With your help I raised $950 (definitely the most I’ve ever put together), and the total amount raised at this year’s AIDS Walk was a near record-breaking $4.5 million!]

I was uploading some recent Disneyland photos and also decided to look back through some family albums to find photos from my childhood vacations to the park. As usual I got lost in a kind of reverie looking at old photos and suddenly remembered that it’s been two years exactly since my dad died. Not that I totally forgot — the time around the Fourth of July is a bittersweet reminder — but the actual day did sneak up on me.

I hope to scan a lot of these old photos; for now here’s one I found of my dad and me (at four years old) on the Autopia ride at Disneyland, from a family trip in November 1981. Aww.

I was trying and failing to write a concise 140-character tweet/plurk about this morning, and then realized, oh, yeah, I have this neglected Weblog, or blog, thing, huh.

So my recent attempt to steer away from Starbucks coffee and pastry and towards work-kitchenette tea and brought-from-home bagel—in a spartan attempt to promote my health and wallet—lasted all of one day before I decided to treat myself. I went with Thom to his regular morning haunt, Martha & Bros., which may become my regular haunt now as well. Not that I have anything against Starbucks per se, but it’s kind of nice to support the local guys.

I’m now sipping a caramel latte and nibbling on “morning glory” cake. Yum.

The other plus is the friendly staff, one cute cashier in particular. I told Thom, “Uh huh, I see why you come here.”

“I come here for the coffee.” He added, “But yeah, that doesn’t hurt.”

(See also Kristin Chenoweth, “Taylor, the Latte Boy.”)

June has a couple of milestones for us. It’s been two years since Thom and I moved from Virginia to California (to my hometown and the very house where I grew up). In June 2006 we packed up the Prius, drove across the country, and arrived on Father’s Day, June 18.

And our main June holiday is what we consider our anniversary, June 21, when we first met (in person) five years ago. What are we going to do next? We’re going to Disneyland!

Truth be told, the first thing that spurred this trip is the forty-fifth anniversary of the Enchanted Tiki Room; on June 22 Disneyland is having a sale and signing of artwork and other items commissioned for the event. We both love tiki, so that was a perfect reason to go. (I haven’t been to Disneyland in several years, and Thom’s never been.) The fact that it’s over our anniversary weekend is icing on the cake!

A happy day here in California: the state Supreme Court has overturned the state’s ban on gay marriage and stated that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. From the opinion (PDF):

Under these circumstances, we cannot find that retention of the traditional definition of marriage constitutes a compelling state interest. Accordingly, we conclude that to the extent the current California statutory provisions limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, these statutes are unconstitutional.

It’s not over though. Gear up to battle the possible constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall. But for now, pop the champagne!

[Addendum (May 28): A new Field Poll finds that a slim majority of California voters supports same-sex marriage, the first such majority in the over thirty years that the Field Poll has been tracking this issue (report PDF).]

It’s my birthday! So I’m 31. And here I thought I could dilly-dally around 29/30 for a little longer. Thank you so much for the nice greetings—they’re making being sick on my birthday (I am still not over this cold!) quite bearable. While I had hoped to go out for a fancy dinner tonight, we may scale it down to dinner at home or somewhere close by, and save the fabulous meal for when I’m feeling more fabulous.

Also celebrating a birthday today: Enrique Iglesias and Darren Hayes. Not bad.