Visiting Toronto

Today Emi and I had a nice day around the house. We cleaned up a bit outside and just hung out together. We decided to break open the Karoake mike and sing to each other, we used some Venezuelan Rum to soften the pipes a bit. As usual I sound like a cat dying a painful death, but we had a good time.

I decided my first trip to TO will be May 19th through May 27th(or around that time). I plan to drive up in the wonder wagon. No sense in putting the miles on the newer cars and the wagon fits my tall body best for long rides.

I hope we have the medicals done by that time and are on our way to permanent residency.

We talked about our future plans and came up with a couple great ideas for Emilio's Cafe. I think we are more than ready to make the move, even our home feels like a place we are buying time in.

Earlier this week we were interviewed for the NY Times, but I haven't seen or heard anything about our discussion on the unfair laws in the US for binational gay couples. Initially they wanted Civil Union discrimintation as a subject. We'll see where it goes. We enjoyed talking to the Time New Jersey reporter no matter where it goes.

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

Goods list

Let's get the best tips for setting up the goods list to import to Canada. I am overwhelmed just thinking about doing an inventory of all that we have.

Media Whores

More news media on the documentary Through Thick and Thin.

From GL Times San Diego:

From Queerty:

http://www.queerty.com/queer/the-emotions-issue/the-emotions-issue-sebastian-cordoba-20070307.php?rss

Also included the theatrical clip on youtube.

From Buzz:

http://www.sdbuzz.com/filmreview1.html

John McCain derails his straight talk express

This is hysterical!

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/mccain-stumbles-on-hiv-prevention/

Valerie Plame-Wilson

The other day I watched the entire hearing when Valerie Plame-Wilson testified under oath about the outing of her CIA status. The Bush administration sought retribution for her husband's editorial denouncing the claims of Iraq trying to buy yellow cake urainium from Niger. This claim was made by Bush in the state of the union address.

From the hours of testimony the most important points were:

1) Plame-Wilson was not responsible for sending her husband to Niger, she said she didn't have the authority to send him on the trip and her senior officer simply requested he come to the CIA for a meeting.

2) General Hayden, the head of the CIA, stated in a written statement given by Henry Waxman that Plame-Wilson was covert, under cover and worked with highly classified WMD non proliferation assignments. She was covert and under cover until the day of Robert Novak's article and had travelled on assignment outside the US within the last 5 years.

3) Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Armitage, and Ari Fliescher all systematically leaked her CIA identity to the press. Prior to the Novak article only a handful of people outside the CIA knew she worked there.

4) The head of Security at the White House (James Knowbler..SP?) testified his office never investigated the leak nor sought to take away anyone's security clearance.


http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/16/hayden-cia-plame-covert/

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Plame_hearing_transcript_0316.html

So the next time Conservatives try to spin this story, you know the truth in the links I have provided. The White House shill Victoria Toensing was torn apart by the congress people in their Q & A session in the third part of the hearing. She was a complete idiot playing work semantics games and legal term charades.

The most damning evidence being from General Hayden:

General Hayden and the CIA have cleared these following comments for today's hearing.

"During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover. Her employment status with the CIA was classified information, prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958. At the time of the publication of Robert Novak's column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson's CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information. Ms. Wilson served in senior management positions at the CIA in which she oversaw the work for other CIA employees and she attained the level of GS-14 -- Step Six under the federal pay scale. Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA. Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA."

I hate shoveling!

We had a really mild winter this year, then February brought us very cold weather and snow. I am the type of person that loves the first snow fall, anything after that is overkill.

When we moved to our house with the double lot on a corner that is 180 feet deep I told Emilio we should buy a snow thrower. We decided to wait until the next winter, but then Emilio's immigration status went downhill. So we put off the purchase thinking when he is safe in the US we will buy one.

So yesterday we had the worst snow I ever had to shovel. It was 8 inches of snow and ice mixed. The snow plows dump the entire street onto our corner making mounds up to 6ft covering the side walks. Trying to shovel it today resulted in one of us breaking the snow into blocks and the other scooping it away.

So desperation set in and we saw a guy snow throwing for the church across the street. We approached him to hire him to complete what we were too exhausted to finish. He said to us he is the pastor of the church and he will remove the snow if we accept an invitation to go to church tomorrow. I said we are a gay couple and his face nearly dropped and he said, " I don't condone your lifestyle, but I will help you out" I told him we will make a donation to his church for his work. I let the lifestyle comment go, we were that desperate to get the damned snow removed.

We ended up having a nice conversation with the Pastor and his wife. We explained our reasons for not wanting to join their church. They seemed nice enough. My one hope is they realize our "lifestyle" is no different than theirs. Family, home and work.

Possible change in destination

This week Emilio and I have been discussing the possibility of landing in Toronto instead of Halifax.

I have checked into the jobs offered in the Halifax area and they seem few and far between with pretty low pay scales. Our other issue is finding a rental that will take our pets. I found over 300 available in Toronto and only 3 in Halifax. We're thinking it might be practical to go where more opportunity lies, also my employer has offices in Toronto. I will have a better chance staying on board there.

Another plus is Emilio already has two friends in Toronto who can act as a support network in our transition, plus TO has an active expat community of South Americans.

The biggest thing for me is I feel much more drawn to Nova Scotia, it just seems like a better fit for our lifestyle. But recently there was a big to do about a same sex kiss in the newspaper there and I am just about sick and tired of dealing with prejudice on a daily basis.

I would love to get feedback from people in both Halifax and Toronto about what I have written here.

Through Thick & Thin @ San Diego Latino Film Festival

Spread the word to those Friends and Family living in San Diego Areas!

March 13th, 6:30pm

More information here

I was wondering

Emilio and I were not hearing anything from Canada about our application. One year from our AOR was February 27th and I kept checking online at least once a day this week and got the usual "In Process".

So yesterday I was working from home and checked the mail about 2pm, and low and behold there was a letter from the Canadian Consulate General. I immediately called Emilio to read the letter together at the same time.

Our file was transfered to the NYC office in order to expedite processing.

So our timelime is moving right along with all our other friends going through the process.