Nearly 10 years ago, at the beginning of 1999, the 50 State Quarters Program began. I bought a coin folder to collect the quarters of all 50 states. I was in my last year of law school and living in Virginia. Over the last 10 years I’ve moved eight times and I’ve taken that folder with me from place to place.

Last night my cheap umbrella broke, so on the way home I stopped by Duane Reade for a new one. It cost me a few dollars and 49 cents. As change I got two quarters and a penny.

And they were both Hawaii quarters, thereby completing my collection.

My coin folder has spaces for both Philadelphia and Denver mint quarters, but my quarters are all Philadelphia mint. I don’t care about the different mints — I just wanted all 50 quarters.

Of course, it turns out my collection is not complete, because last year Congress extended the program to cover Washington, D.C. and the five U.S. territories: the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Fortunately my coin folder has a bunch of empty spaces — I guess this was just in case we added more states after 1999?

Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition. On December 5, 1933, at 5:32:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, fulfilling the requirement of ratification by 3/4 of the states and thereby repealing the Eighteenth Amendment. America’s nearly 14-year experiment with the nationwide prohibition of alcohol came to an end.

So drink up on Friday!

Has anyone been following this crazy political/constitutional crisis going on in Canada? Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper was re-elected several weeks ago, but he didn’t win a majority of seats in Parliament. He subsequently gave a response to the economic crisis that pissed a bunch of people off. Now three parties have formed a majority coalition to try to oust him. And one of those parties is the Bloc Québécois, the Quebec separatist group. So along with a economic and political crisis, the separatism issue is thrown in as well.

So, Harper was facing a vote of no confidence — and in response, today he suspended Parliament for the next two months! And he got permission to do this from the Governor-General of Canada! Who is appointed by the Queen! As in, the British monarch! As in, “Oh yeah, Canada isn’t really an independent country after all!”

What the hell is going on up there?

Here’s a Canadian columnist’s view on the whole debacle.

Prop 8: The Musical. Written by Marc Shaiman (seriously). Starring Allison Janney, Neil Patrick Harris, Darryl from “The Office,” Maya Rudolph, Barrett Foa, Sarah Chalke, John C. Reilly, Kathy Najimy, Margaret Cho, and Andy Richter, and others.

Thanksgiving was nice. We went to my brother and sister-in-law’s place on the East Side, where we had twelve people. I made my first apple pie yesterday and brought it for dessert. Here it is, courtesy of my new iPhone:

Here’s the inside:

My mom went kinda crazy on the dessert-baking herself. She made a lemon polenta cake, a hazelnut chocolate mousse, a lemon meringue pie, and chocolate chip cookie peanut butter sandwiches. We also had ginger snaps, brownies, cupcakes from Crumbs, and a fruit plate. In total we had 9 desserts for 12 people. (The lemon polenta cake is behind the water pitcher.)

We left feeling stuffed. We have tons of leftovers. And tonight we’re going out for dinner.

As for the iPhone: I love it.

I just ordered an iPhone.

I’d been thinking about doing this for a while. I’ve had my current cell phone for almost three years.

But that’s not why I bought an iPhone — I was getting along just fine with my current phone.

However, yesterday I was baking something, and my phone was on the kitchen counter — far enough away from the baking activity, I thought. But after I finished baking and cleaned up, I realized that my phone had somehow gotten wet. I wiped off the phone and plugged it in, and it started… vibrating. Nonstop. Even though the phone was off. It was kind of freaky.

I took out the battery. Matt and I went out for a few hours. We came back, I put the battery back in, and the phone immediately started vibrating again. After a few minutes it stopped — so I tried to charge it, but it still wouldn’t turn on.

I took out the battery and let the phone and the battery sit out overnight in case there was more moisture that needed to evaporate.

This morning I put the battery back in the phone and tried to charge it up for a few hours. Tried turning on the phone again. It still wouldn’t turn on.

So instead of buying a new battery I’ve decided to go ahead and buy the iPhone. I can afford it, and I want one. So I ordered one. Black, 16GB.

I can’t wait to get my new toy.

Minnesota recount: judge some sample disputed ballots on your own.

We were watching “Brothers & Sisters” this past Sunday — it’s one of my favorite shows; I love the whole dysfunctional-yet-loving Walker clan — and, as happens about every other episode or so, a character was cooking for a dinner party in a fabulous kitchen. Bright and airy, a spacious countertop island, farm-fresh vegetables being chopped, pots bubbling on the stove. Like something out of a magazine. Kitchen porn, I call it.

We’ve actually got a great kitchen by Manhattan standards, but I don’t cook nearly as much as I want to.

But it turns out you don’t need a great kitchen to make great food. Mark Bittman is the author of a great cookbook I own, and it turns out he has a regular ol’ crappy Manhattan kitchen.

Wikipedia entry on redshirts (linked in honor of the new “Star Trek” trailer released yesterday). The list of parodies is fun.

Wanda Sykes comes out and speaks out against Prop 8:

We wound up not going to the protest yesterday after all. Matt woke up sick yesterday morning and I didn’t want to go by myself. (And what illustrates couplehood more than looking after your sick partner?) But I’ve looked at a bunch of the photos and reports: see here and here. Andrew Sullivan yesterday was a clearinghouse as well.

I’m pretty sure this was the first coordinated coast-to-coast gay rights protest we’ve ever had in this country. There were events in all 50 states, plus D.C. and internationally. And this was crucial. Because it’s not just the protests in the big cities that were important — NY, DC, SF, LA — where crowds of a few thousand could gather. The smaller groups in the smaller places were important, too, and maybe even more important than in the places where we march all the time.

Here in the big cities, gays are everywhere. Straight people see us every day, or at least they know we’re here. Not so in the smaller cities and towns, where gays might congregate in hidden enclaves, such as online chat rooms or the local gay bar — getting to know each other, yes, but not visible to straight people.

For small groups of gays to protest where gays have never protested before was crucial. Straight people saw that we really are everywhere.

It was a brilliant idea, and it reminds me of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy for the Democrats that some people saw as a waste of time. By competing in places where they never had before, Democrats forced people in every state to take them seriously. Yesterday, gay people did the same. In places like Oklahoma and Arkansas we are more highly visible today than we were yesterday. Even if the mainstream straight communities in those places don’t begin to take us more seriously now, rest assured that in every town or city where there was a protest, some confused kid or closeted adult or open-minded straight person saw that group of people with their signs, and something clicked inside each of their heads.

Change happens slowly. And it will continue to take time.

But we are better off because of what happened yesterday.

Photos of nighttime. Some of these are beautiful.