Election night 2008

I can't stand it anymore. I know that I have not written in a really long time, but I am motivated tonight because OBAMA MIGHT WIN THIS THING!! What if they steal it? I can't watch the news anymore because I realized that when reporters report they really do sound like the stupidest thing ever. We flipped through a few of the channels and I kept saying "uh, not them, I hate so and so" and then realized that we were through all of them. This left PBS, which, god luv'em for it, is doing endless intellectual analysis with two men from opposite sides of the spectrum. I want liberal bias.

Caucusing

Yesterday I attended my legislative district caucus. I was selected as a delegate during the precinct caucus, so this was my next civic obligation stemming from that selection. I have never been so interested and bored at the same time in my life. I got there at 9 am and didn't leave until 4:30 pm. Here is a basic rundown of what went on:

• First, we signed in and got our badges. This took more than an hour as the lines were long, the school cafeteria was small, and I was not impressed that I was up this early on a Saturday morning;
• Next, we waited around for them to give us the first count. This took more than an hour, and all of the alternates had to wait around until this was done. Once we got the initial count, then they called the alternates that were needed to stand in as delegates. We then waited while they conducted another count for how many delegates would be awarded to each presidential candidate. After this count was completed, they allowed 15 minutes for people to change their mind. Then they counted again. This is mostly happening on paper using the sign in sheets.
  
• While the counting is going on, we went through the district platform. People commented on what they would like to further discuss in the platform. This, again, took another couple of hours. We then started to go back through the platform and address the sections that people wanted to discuss. We only made it through a few sections before we had to stop in order to hear the final count and vote for delegates to go to the next level of conventions;
• Voting for delegates began at 3:30. We had been told that we would be done no later than 4 pm, so you can imagine my dismay when we were given a list of people to consider that was four pages long and had more than 250 names. Of these people, we had to selected 21 men and 20 women. Each person was given 20 seconds to speak about why they should be a delegate. After one hour, we were only half way through the list. At this point, I left. I didn't care anymore. They still had to hear from the rest of the list, and then count the votes.
  

Now that I know what kind of commitment this requires, I am willing to do this again in a few years. I was just a little dismayed that everything took so long (I truly believe there is a better way) and equally dismayed that people were allowed to ask questions at the microphone. I did it myself a few times, I have to admit, though I felt I was bringing up valid points about affordable housing, health care plans, and such, but there were other people who wanted to discuss things that were very important to them, such as whether we should support biodiesil and factory farms and other things. Yes I care, but there needed to be a better way to get through these issues without taking nearly five hours. I don't think the rules were written very clearly, and I have a general hatred for open mics.

I find it very odd that even though this was an absurdly long process, I was still fascinated by it. I probably would will run for a delegate position in four more years when I have more means to go onward. I am kind of laughing at myself for this. Sure, democracy strives to be fair and inclusive, but it is also horribly inefficient. My Saturday experience made me understand why some people just accept dictators!

Weddings

'Tis the season for weddings to begin again. We went to one today for my S.O.'s friend. They had a nice ceremony, though the preacher kept talking about Satan, and how they had to fight Satan and not each other during their marriage. Not sure what to think of that, I generally think that you shouldn't mention the devil during the wedding ceremony, call me old fashioned. Then they had a really lovely reception that involved a full meal, dancing, and a semi-open bar (beer and wine on them). I was quite surprised by that, because serving all of those people a full meal must have cost an insane amount of money. They had a small wedding party and didn't hire a DJ, so they saved money that way, but still. I did like that they had the ceremony on a Saturday afternoon, because it left time for us to do other things, and we felt we could take our time and enjoy the wedding.

The strangest things about weddings is how people dissect them as they are in progress. Eyebrows are raised during the ceremony if the preacher talks too long, everyone is judging the dresses and the colors, the behavior of the new couple at the reception is scrutinized in minute detail...the whole bit. I am far from above it, and there are a few things that drive me up the wall about many weddings that I have to get off my chest. One is children in the ceremony, mostly because I like children best when they are seated and quiet, and I don't like to pretend that they are cute (I only like it when children actually are cute, and stomping around in a tux hardly qualifies). My second complaint is rude photographers. The one today was the topic of a lot of complaints. He was all over the place with a rather bright flash, and even got in the way of us taking pictures of the couple with our cameras. And I really don't like it when they take photos during the ceremony because it distracts from the couple and the event. They are supposed to be one of the most hidden parts of the whole thing, and this guy was one of the most obvious fixtures.

At this point, I only have two more weddings to go to, unless I make it to Alaska for another friend's wedding, but that will depend on airfare. One is local, the other is family. I have a feeling that 2009 is going to be an action-packed year for weddings for me, just from what I am hearing from friends and family. I suppose I am getting to that age when all the people who didn't want to get married young start to feel like they are old enough now to settle down. Isn't that such a terrible phrase? As if life before marriage was unsettled or something. What other terms are there, aside from planting roots, starting a family (ahahahahahhhhhhh)...there should be something that implies affirming that you have selected someone as your lifelong companion, rather than you have given up your mobility or something. Will think on this more.

Blog Watch Update 1

I started keeping track of a few blogs online over the past few weeks. A few of them have not posted since before Valentine's Day - one woman gushed on her blog that her husband was so romantic because he made a roast and they ate Twizzlers while watching a chick flick, not my idea of romantic, but hey, whatever gets you going. Another blog updated the status of their building project, and I'm pleased to report that the house is coming along quite well. They have gone from laying the foundation a few weeks ago to putting down the trusses for the first floor this week. I'm interested to see what happens next week.

Needless to say, this experiment in snooping isn't nearly as interesting as I had expected, largely because it is hard to discuss baby pictures to great lengths. I picked rather mundane blogs on purpose, so that's part of my frustration. I think part of my fascination with this comes from my struggle with privacy in the digital age. For example, yesterday I had a store ask me for my phone number in case they had a problem with their credit card machine. I balked and gave them my office number, completely turned off by the idea of this nice woman in the knitting store having my phone number. I also recently joined Facebook, which I have always resisted because of privacy issues. I am finding that the number of setting available on Facebook are a little bit confusing, though I feel pretty confident that you can use the site to keep in touch with friends and still keep some level of privacy. I have no idea where this fear of invasion of privacy came from, I don't think it stems from an unhealthy fear of identity theft (part of me would be flattered if someone used my identity for something else). I have had a few instances of people having my information and abusing it by calling me and leaving scary messages (changed my number once because of this). Maybe it is more of a general feeling of "none of your f**king business" that runs deep in my personality. Which brings me back to putting pictures of your children on the Internet where any stranger can look at them. When there are great social utilities like Facebook and MySpace which allow you to only let people you know look at your site...maybe they don't know. Maybe they aren't that concerned. I'm fascinated by this.

Voyeur

It is kind of funny how interested I am in cruising the Internet just looking at other people's lives. I'm not really into trying to find anything serious out about them, but I did spend at least a half an hour just flipping through the 'Next Blog' function on Blogger and just looking briefly at the page that came up. Most of it was simply a mix between family photos and artists, but there were a lot of people who were pretty excited about their knitting and craft projects. Being a person who also knits and picks up random crafts occasionally, I understand this completely - most people don't want to listen to you talk about knitting unless they do it themselves, and we tend to seek each other out online for tips and ideas. However, when I do run into another knitter, it is very hard to start up a conversation. "I really like to make sweaters." "Really? I prefer socks." See, it only goes so far! But back to blog watching. There were a few people who had started a blog on their wedding, which again I can understand, though I want to mercilessly ridicule these people at the same time. They will someday turn into the people who blog about their family, which will be read by other family members and friends and the random stranger like me. I thought as I was cruising by these blogs, "Should I leave a message? What would I say, something like 'Nice family'?" It was as if some part of me wanted to let them know that they were advertising their life online and allowing people like me, or people with not so pure intentions, into that life. Most of these families seemed like the pretty religious conservative types, talking about going to church and their kids going through first communion or whatever the Protestant equivalent is. I didn't accidentally run across a blog about a family who lets their kids dye their hair and start a band. I would like to read something like that.

I could definitely see how you could get obsessed with following these blogs. I find that this could become a perfectly interesting way to replace celebrity gossip as a mind numbing pastime. I firmly believe that everyone needs an activity that just dulls them a little and makes their mind relax. I think that is why TV is so popular. Watching hours of TV isn't the answer, but there are other ways to do it. I think if you are watching hours of documentaries that is a different thing. Gossip sites serve a similar purpose, but leave you with the same dirty feeling as daytime soap operas. Really, we are just paying attention to either soaps or celebrities to see the clothes and the hair. We know they are just as deep as a bathtub.

I think this will become a new pet project, a new form of wandering. I'm going to spend some time looking through the random posts on blogging websites and see if there are any families that post regularly enough for me to report on, and then I'll keep track of what they are up to and report every so often. We'll see how this goes - I could quickly tire of this as I do of other new project, or I could work on turning myself into a Perez Hilton-esque pseudo celebrity via other people's mundane everyday lives.

Oh what's the use!

I have not posted in a long time, perhaps because I have been busy with other things, like finishing a thesis, reading other books for entertainment, and following the Britney Spears saga to an embarrassing degree. The rest of my life has been continuing though. I enjoy my job, but there are times when I get frustrated. We are expecting a lot of Iraqis this year, and while the numbers are not as high as many had hoped, only part of the reason lies in the admissions process - another part has to do with Iraqis not convinced that they want to come to the United States once they learn how hard life can be here. And those that are here are finding that things they had expected, like free education for as long as they need, does not work out the way they think it should. They are rather jarred by the fact that we expect them to get jobs even though they are not fluent in English. They also don't like that they are expected to do just about any job, not just the ones they think are best suited for them. I'm not impressed. I had one fellow tell me he wished he had not come here. I was thrilled.

But there are only a few days when I am frustrated by that. Today was only one of them. Tomorrow I expect will be better.

I spent a lot of time online talking to an old friend, and it got me thinking about people I have lost touch with, some intentionally, others not. There is a temptation to look these people up online, though I'm not sure what would come of that. I mean, what would I say? I think I want a chance to prove that I have changed, but I fear that I would only find out that I really haven't changed as much as I had thought. Life has turned out much different from what I had thought, but I think it is better than what I had envisioned. I thought I would have a lot of conflict in my personal life, but really that has become a quite dependable and nice thing. I have a nice place to live which always surprises me...I'm not sure why I have this temptation to find people from the past. Seems crazy, don't you think?

Winter is coming

I can tell winter is coming - the days are getting shorter and shorter, and I'm starting to feel a little melancholy. Tonight I have decided to turn to writing tonight.

I'm still working at the International Rescue Committee in the United States, assisting with refugee resettlement stateside. It has been quite a challenging position, dealing with cultural dilemmas to finding enough apartments for the people who are arriving. We face numerous challenges everyday. On a related note, the troubles in Burma could change the refugee program in the US; at this point, the United States is admitting a lot of refugees from Burma, but as civil unrest continues there, it is possible that fewer people will want to come to the United States, opting instead to remain in the region to participate in a rebellion. Interesting to think about.

Not much going on in my mind tonight, perhaps that's why I'm having some trouble. I promise to come back with more later.