i’ve been wearing pants for over 30 years now. pretty much every day. oh, sure, there was that phase back in late 2005 where i started wearing skirts pretty regularly, but that’s in the past. i can most assuredly be described as pro-pants.

so. pre-work wade wore jeans a lot, and shorts a lot. after college, i discovered dockers. dockers are awesome. i’m hip, casual, dressy but not overly so. i’m a dockers dude! then, back in 2001, i decided to upgrade my lower-half apparel. for my rehearsal dinner, i bought a pair of black gabardine dress pants. pants do not adequately describe them; these are slacks. however, i can’t ever use that word without cracking up, and the word “trouser” should be deleted from the english language, so i’ve landed on: fancy pants. as the years progressed, i have replaced my stable of dockers with fancy pants. i am happy with this decision, but it has not come without cost.

until i was 25, securing my pants around my waistline was a two step process: button, then zip. every day, pants on, button, then zip. button, then zip. internalized. easy. fun, even. however, fancy pants have a new wrinkle-free wrinkle: clasp! so: clasp, button, then zip! three steps! it sounds so simple, but that’s fighting over two decades’ worth of mindless pant fastening! it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

my point? of course. this is the long answer as to why, three days out of five, i realize my fly is down around 10 a.m.

sigh….

So, I was reading this the other day: Petraeus picked to lead Central Command, which basically says that the current head of central command, Adm. William Fallon, was resigning due to widespread (but supposedly false) reports that he was at odds with the Bush administration over Iran that had made his job impossible.

So this morning as I’m “getting ready for work”, I’m reading Esquire (yes I have a subscription to Esquire… it was a gift… screw you!)… and I read this: Meet Fox Fallon

Sure… sure they were *false* rumors… riiiight… if you are too lazy to read all of this, the short version is “expect a war with Iran before January 2009″.

If you are a newsie (kind of like a foodie, but with news) like me, you’ve definitely seen and heard the “not guilty on all counts” verdict in the trial of NYPD officers who shot and killed a groom-to-be the day of his wedding.

If you aren’t familiar with the case, it echoes the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo; a quick and concise summary of the case can be found on CNN.
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A really good three part series (one,
two, and
three) in the Strib on the rash of foreclosures have affected Wright County, but it’s all quite applicable across the state and the country.
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As I transition myself from last week’s abject disaster of a first workout to today’s workout that just about managed to call itself passable, I’m reminded of what Jason told me after he’d convinced me, eons ago, to come lift weights with him at the YMCA in Austin. Obviously, I’m paraphrasing, but:

It’s ok if all you can do is lift the bar. Everybody’s weak when they start. The whole point is to keep working and get stronger, not to just lift a lot of weight.