Still thrilled about the whole Obama thing... *stoopid grin* I may eventually have something intelligent to say, but for now I'm settling for a generally pleased and relieved haze.

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So... the ugly saga of the laundry room, abridged: When the exhaust becomes detached from the dryer and you do not notice for weeks (or months?) , the lint will pile up on the floor. When your basement leaks, and the lint gets wet, then dry, then wet, then dry... it becomes as cement and adheres to the floor so firmly you need to use a hoe to loosen it. :( Then, when water is poured on the remainder, the floor is still amazingly absorbent until the layers are scraped off. Oi. Not fun. Also? In addition to all their other crappy household "improvements", the batshit crazy previous residents used the worst ever hose clamps. I didn't think hose clamps were complicated enough to have crappy versions, but there you go.

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Tonight, I realized that I was exhausted... tired from work, tired from loading my car with linen for the weekend, tired from being up too late last night... but I didn't hurt. So, I decided to see if I could break that. ;P I went out and fenced for the first time in about  year. I warmed up with devikat , fenced with Tomas and a newer guy, and then ended the night with Sir Guillaume. (Note to self, pick that fight earlier in the night. :P) I can tell that I've lost a lot, but I didn't completely suck either. I need to remember to fence in conversations, not sentences and I need to work on only taking the clean shots and doing so decisively... I did, however, have a pretty good track record for responding to being rushed by stabbing the offender in the head. It was a good time, if tiring. I've missed it. We'll see how often I can manage to do this - I was full of achey-ness by the end of the night, but it was probably worth it. :)

Happiness.

Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

McCain abandons advertising in Wisconsin!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081015/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_ads

While this YouTube video about voting and getting registered has been making the rounds and has some good points, I would just like to point out that, at least in Wisconsin and Minnesota, preregistration to vote is not necessary. However, if you are not registered, they are pretty strict about the requirements to register at the polling place.

South Dakota does require preregistration (to be received at least 15 days before the election) however, interestingly enough, North Dakota does not require voter registration at all.

Preregistering remains a good idea, of course, but even if you fail to do so, there's not necessarily any excuse not to go and vote on election day. Just saying.

Yoiks.

Last weekend was wonderful. Saturday morning I spent sewing and chatting with gwyneth1362, I spent the afternoon enjoying plants and gelato with damej and spent the evening wallowing in my wooshy tub with a cider and arebekah's Pama trufles. Sunday, I spent hanging around the house, reading and cleaning and otherwise relaxing. The closest I got to leaving the house was when I opened the door to get my dinner from the pizza boy. Heavenly.

The beginning of this week, however, has been something of a failure. The weather has been cold, work has been alternating between stoopid and boring, and I have been tired and uninspired in my projects. Blah.

Random blather ensues:

I am happy that so many of my friends are politically aware and vote. Yay! I'm not the only one who cares! I also find it somewhat encouraging that, despite very similar populations at both locations it took me less than 1/3 of the time to vote as it took to post a letter.

The "letter" in question was a sort of fun project in of itself and put my OCD to good use. I have been trying to assemble a more full set of Tournaments Illuminated and Creative Anachronists and to that end posted a message to the Northshield Hall awhile ago. Yesterday, I got an email from a lady who is helping to get all the tables of contents of past TIs online and, for one reason or another, did not have access to about twenty issues. She googled TIs and found my message to the Hall. Happily, I had all the missing issues and so was able to photocopy the tables of contents and other pertinent information for her. See? I'm not a pack rat! These things are useful! Like bits of twine... ;)

Today I got my birthday present from jtdiii. He bought be a lovely set of spintriae from Antiquanova. Now I am just pondering where and how best to display them. *evil grin* Mmmm... Roman porn!

So, aaron_pike and damej, now that I have the tools in hand, we need to form a Laurel plot to break Kaydian... (Don't worry, cass_lee, we won't break him beyond repair... probably.)

I have decided that I need an all-weather cabana boy. One of the few things that would have made Saturday night more delightful would have been a cabana boy to bring me cold fruity drinks on command. But that got me thinking about the other uses one could have for a cabana boy, and I decided that one of the sexiest things a young, nubile, tanned youth could do would be to scrape the ice off my car. :P At the very least I should look into an electronic substitute... a remote starter would have been just the thing this winter.

I am looking forward to Thursday - I will have two opportunities to torture little people. The first one I will post about afterwards, provided they don't eat me. But in the evening, my little... er, younger cousin will be in town. He made State for wrestling! He's always been super excited to talk to me about wrestling because I lettered in high school and am one of the few relatives who really understands what he is talking about. So, I am planning on going and hanging out with my aunt, watching the tourney, and cheering him on. I have not seen a State tourney in better than a decade, so I am excited. :)

I am hating LJ tonight, because it ate this post halfway through the first time. Boo! Bad Frank! Don't eat my posts!


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Edit: a quote from CSI:

(Girl has just been blown off by stoopid Boy because she smells bad after doing an autopsy)
(Boy2 walks past)

Boy2: You smell like death
Girl: (scowls) So I've heard.
Boy2: You know... A real man wouldn't mind...

*snerk*

I just got a call from Bill Clinton's handlers wanting to know if we could come down and remove the archery equipment locker at the Stock Pavilion. The reason? They are prettying up the SP for this afternoon's speech and it is in the sightline of the cameras. WTF! The speech is being held on a floor that is probably still 25% manure by weight and the seats/pillars have not been painted in living memory... and they are worried about some Rubbermaid showing?

I convinced them to drape a banner over it and call it good. :P

...because it is too delightful not to share! This is an account of the Scientology protests from last weekend. Whether or not you agree with them, this is a good sign that the geek shall inherit the earth.

http://deathboy.livejournal.com/1082404.html

Hmmm... Interesting/disturbing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfNAAAdLyH4

I saw this yesterday:
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/12/06/cheney.daughters.ap/

I'm kind of amused because this is going to cause all sorts of trouble for good ol' Cheney, but on the other hand I am deeply saddened that this is an issue at all. I am happy for Mary and her partner and I hope the media circus doesn't detract from their joy.

I had just read dread_ex's post when I saw this on CNN.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061202/ap_on_re_us/wiccan_soldier_2

So, there is some small happiness to balance the yucky in the world.

*sigh*

How in the world have we come to this? We are apparently a country which values waging war, executing people, and denying civil rights... and all this largely in the name of a man who advocated peace, forgiveness, and love. Am I the only one to whom this seems insane? Especially in a world that grows smaller everyday, it seems it would be wise to be better stewards of the earth and better brothers to one another...

I had a particularly odd small world moment today - I left work at lunchtime to volunteer for Fair Wisconsin. They sent me to a rallying point near Woodman's on the East Side. I arrived just in time to get the very last of the walking routes that had not yet been visited. The volunteer asked me if I thought I could find the target neighborhood or if I needed a larger map and after a half-second glance I was able to definitively say yes, I could find it... Of every ward, every district, every neighborhood in Madison, which did I get? Mine! As in I got the streets and addresses which literally included my house number! Madison is just not that small a town...

So off I went door-to-door... Usually, they assign you a partner, but since they were short handed, the guy doing the odd houses in that neighborhood had left some time earlier and I was on my own. That was fine for the first few hours, but once it got past five, I realized exactly how very dark my neighborhood gets. I do not generally make a habit of walking about after dark, but I have faced enough of my personal fears and demons this summer/fall, so what's one more, eh? Still, once I'd hit all the houses on my list and it was past seven PM, I'd been on my feet and walking for over 4 hours and I called it quits. *sigh* Quality blisters in the name of a doomed effort.

Well, while the referenda were won by the forces of evil, at least not all was lost - Doyle will likely win, and Joe Parisi, Herb Kohl, and Tammy Baldwin are all clear winners. Sadly, Kathleen Falk is in serious peril, and standing at 50%/50% the outcome won't probably be announced tonight. On the other hand, John Gard is in a similar situation... one can only hope he is defeated by morning. Oh, and happiness! Santorum is out! :) He's not directly my problem, but I am still quite pleased. We have the House and still have a fighting chance at the Senate - there are three seats still in contention and the Republicans would need two of them to have the majority. We won't have a clear majority, but with two independents already, it is possible that it could be 2 Indep, 49 Dem and 49 Rep. Interesting times, that.

Anywho, it's off to bed with me, with a prayer for this broken world of ours.

So, I was thinking today was Tuesday, but here it is only Monday night (er, I guess Tuesday, technically, by now, but I've not yet been to sleep). I suppose that's good since I didn't vote today. :P

Which brings me to my point of this post -

VOTE DAMMIT!

Whatever your other politics, I would ask you to carefully think about the marriage amendment. Whether you agree with same-sex marriage or not, institutionalizing discrimination is just wrong and is the first step in undermining anyone's, everyone's rights. *grumble*

See you at the polls later today (since it's now properly Tuesday)!