Catchy Name Needed

I am up because I have Things to Do and I am planning on sneaking off to the quilt show this afternoon, but I think I am going to have to make a Starbucks run in order to get my brain engaged. I did schlep the old coffeemaker over here, but I am not certain it is clean enough to use, or that we actually have any coffee other than instant - and I just do not do instant. So Starbucks it is. Besides, I can get some oatmeal, which is another thing I would never actually make for myself.

I was going to post the mini-map from electoral-vote.com, but I can't get it to work. So you'll just have to go look at it for yourself. I don't know about you but I'm afraid to believe it. Also, I would just like the election to be over please. (I would also like Sarah Palin to go away but I don't think that's gonna happen.)

I have a pair of black devil horns on a hairband that I bought at HEB weeks ago, and I am totally going to have to wear them to the quilt show, don't you think?

I almost forgot that I am supposed to be blogging posting daily starting tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

OK, off to Starbuck's.

The longer this goes on, the tenser I get. It busts out occasionally, although mostly I am holding it together pretty well. Mostly.

I'm at McDonald's. Not surprisingly, McDonald's internet is not great. I have also done some internetting from the Celina Wine Store, which is a combination liquor store and restaurant that (surprisingly) has good and free wi-fi. I spend a lot of time on the Galveston Daily News website, trying to figure out what's going on in Galveston. I also have spent some time banging my head against the wall because I couldn't see the damn screen, but today I found a plug to hook the laptop into, and so the screen brightness is not as much of a problem as it was. (Yeah, I know there's a way to fix it, but that was part of the headbanging, that I didn't know anything at all about how things work with a laptop. It's just the learning curve.)

I bought some clothes, including a hoodie because I was afraid I was going to be cold up here, but so far I haven't actually needed it. I don't get up early enough in the morning - it's warmed up by the time I get outside anyway.

Sitting in McDonald's and hearing people talking makes me despair. I guess I should not take the Celina McDonald's clientele as representative of all of Ohio. (Middle-aged mom: "Sarah Palin is awesome!" And then she claims to be a Democrat. I had to bite my tongue. I'm of the opinion that if you admire that woman you can't be much of a Democrat.)

Tomorrow I am probably going to go meet karen_d  somewhere in the vicinity of Toledo. We figured out (or rather she did) that that was sort of halfway. There seems to be a bead shop around there somewhere. Karen and I tend to put on the shopping when we get together.

I know I hadn't even gotten around to posting here about Ike yet, but it looks like we are not evacuating unless it makes another unexpected turn. (They expect a turn, they just don't expect it to be enough to bring it up towards us.) Yesterday we thought there was a high chance that we would be. I guess I need to call my aunt and tell her not to buy any extra groceries yet.

In unrelated news, columbina  linked to this column of Scalzi's and I really, really think it's right on the money. Every Democrat/liberal/progressive in America needs to stop and take a deep breath and refocus. Including me. (And possibly Obama - although considering that he's practically being ignored in the news right now, it's hard to know.)

Will somebody please tell me what was supposed to be so great about The Court of the Air? I finished it, because I was determined to (and because I paid I-forget-how-many dollars for the hardback), but ugh. It had some good bits in it, here and there, but mostly it was a mess. I totally don't get it.


In other questions, I came in for the end of McCain's speech, and there was a lot of screaming and there certainly are a lot of balloons, but it sounded like a whole bunch of platitudes strung together. Did I miss anything more interesting? (Despite the screaming, the placard-wavers didn't even seem that enthusiastic, to tell you the truth.)

Bah. I am back at work today and I am grouchy. I have no real concrete reason why I'm grouchy, I just am. So be warned, I guess!

I had the day off yesterday because I was supposed to go to the accountant about doing a tax return for my mother for last year, but I didn't go. I just didn't have my shit together. And then the accountants' office pissed me off, because apparently by attempting to reschedule I "lose my preferred status" or some such crap. It's my mother's preferred status and I won't be needing it any more, so whatever. (The accountant is 40 miles away in my home town, so traipsing all the way over there to the accountant every year for the rest of my life seems sort of silly.* I'll go once more for my mother's stuff, but after that, no thanks.) So anyway, I stayed home and went through papers and sorted and shredded and so forth, which is what needed doing before I would be ready to deal with taxes. I thought I could get this done Sunday and be ready to go on Monday, but it just wasn't happening. I was not in the mood and was being balky about it, for one thing, but I also just think it was more than a one-day  project. So hopefully this (both missing the appointment, and even more, getting mad!) was the kick in the pants I needed to get me going on it.

My dad's birthday was Saturday, and I was off doing the quilt thing and he decided that they would come see us that day and didn't tell me. Luckily they didn't start for Galveston without checking to see if I was home first! They are now going to come visit next Saturday instead. (That's an extra motivator on the shredding/getting rid of extra crap thing, because the house is kind of a mess. I have several boxes of Mom's junk that I still need to go through.)

I'm glad I went to the "quilt thing" (i.e., retreat) for the day Saturday, even if I didn't really have time to go, because I got one of the things on my quilt to-do list done, which was putting the binding on that quilt that my mom made for my sister. I'm pretty good about doing the handwork part of the binding once the machine part is done, so we can practically consider that quilt finished! I think I'm going to enter it and maybe one or two more of Mom's quilts in the guild quilt show at the end of April. I can't enter anything of mine because I haven't finished anything in the last two years - with the exception of one small quilt that's gone far, far away - so I'll enter her stuff instead. Maybe in another two years I'll have something finished. (That or I'll be buried alive in a pile of jewelry by then, which also seems possible at this point.)


As far as the primaries go - I was really, really evenly balanced between our favorite two Democrats, but I think what tipped the scales in the end was the negative tack the Clinton people inevitably let fly with at the last minute. I was home all day yesterday and I got the full blast of CNN (hey, it's better than Oprah and soap operas) and ad upon ad upon ad. And at the end of the day, I tilted toward Obama.


*Actually my dad is still going to that same accounting office and he lives more like 75(+) miles from there, all the way on the other side of Houston. I wonder if he'll start to rethink that now that diesel is $3.50 and up?

Breaking news:Romney to "suspend" campaign.

columbinawrote a thing about the candidates, and that reminded me that I had written something sort of along the same lines last week and never did post it, because I only got around to doing the Republican side, and I really intended to do both. But I think it's safe to assume I'll get around to the Democrats later.

So here's the Republicans, in alphabetical order:
Guiliani - I think of him as sort of a cipher wrapped in a 9/11 flag. Presumably has the money to stay in this despite the various kerfluffles about his abortion views and his ex-wife and so forth. But I'm thinking the decision to skip Iowa and New Hampshire is going to bite him in the ass.
Huckabee - Like Bush in a lot of ways: a Southern governor, not very experienced, and scarily conservative behind the aw-shucks manner. Given that he's a preacher, I'm inclined to assume that he is genuinely religious in a way Bush is not. (And I know that last is highly debatable but that's not the point right now.) In a way, that makes him even scarier than Bush to me. My fear of him, however, is dwarfed by that of the mainstream Republican party, which is terrified - Huckenfreude, one political blogger called it. However, given that Iowa's about the most religious place out there, I'm inclined to think that it might have been his one big shining moment. I could be wrong about that, of course.
McCain - hanging in there, rather surprisingly (and as of last night, rather more than just that). A war hero, but so was Kerry, and look how that came out. Old, compared to the others, and not quite as conservative; he's the Republican I could possibly be persuaded to vote for should the Democrats go crazy and nominate somebody completely unacceptable to me. (Which is unlikely at this point, I'm not in love with any of them but I am still swayable.)
Paul  - I wouldn't bother to discuss him, except that as it happens, he's my Congressman, and has been for years - and I still don't know very much about him, which is rather extraordinary in itself. Until this year, he's had a positive genius for flying under the radar and still managing to get reelected, even though his Libertarian views would be considered by a lot of people to be pretty nutty.
Romney - the only thing much out of the ordinary about him is the Mormonism; otherwise, sort of a sheep in Republican wolves' clothing - that is, not quite as conservative as he tries to make you think. Apparently considered good-looking, although I am not seeing it. But then I can't stand the guy.
Thompson - the only thing remotely interesting about him is (sometimes) his acting. Politically, middle-of-the-road and boring. Trying to be Ronald Reagan and failing pretty spectacularly. I think if he gets elected, then any old actor can get elected. For all we know, Steve Buscemi may be next.

There was a whole big line of motorcycles in front of the IHOP this morning. It was sort of funny. My muffler seems to be going out in my car, and it sounds strangely like I'm driving a sportscar, but nobody's going to notice that as long as all these bikes are in town. They really make a racket. We live a good 1000 feet or so back from the Seawall, but I still can hear them out there, every time one of them revs an engine.

I told somebody I was going to "earlyvote" today - I don't know when that became one word in my head. I think the flipped word order comes from talking about "early voting" all the time, but it's still kind of an odd usage. Anyway, we have a new courthouse in Galveston, and I had to go figure out where we go for early voting now. It wasn't too hard, although if somebody hadn't told me it was on the 2nd floor I would've been asking the guards, because there was not much in the way of signage.

Guard (in reply to something I didn't hear): "I don't get involved in that. I'm just here for guns, knives and bombs."

It was also the first time I've used the electronic voting machines - eSlate, I think they were called. Dumb name. They were, uh, not exactly intuitive. I don't know, are everybody's machines the same or do different states have different ones? These, you have to sort of spin this wheel thing, and they look like touchscreens but they're not, and it was all rather confusing. They're not actually that hard to use once you get the hang of them, but it took me a while and I'm usually pretty decent with figuring out computerized things.

(I will probably write something about who I voted for later. But not now; I'm beat.)

I have been wanting to say something about the immigration debate, but I just haven't been able to get my thoughts together enough. But now I don't have to, because Hanne Blank has said it all for me, much better than I ever could have.

(OK, really it was yesterday's Meme of the Day, but I didn't get around to posting it.)

I am: -9% Republican.

"You're a damn Commie! Where's Tailgunner Joe when we need him?"

Are You A Republican?

Calling Reagan a senile puppet works wonders.