Saturday Evening Out

Saturday night we had a babysitter who even managed to get lil-M to bed! Cspew and I had a very nice evening. We ate dinner at Duck and Dumpling, an Asian Bistro I'd describe as americanized vietnamese food. The food, service, and atmosphere were all outstanding. Although the Raleigh country club type was out in full force that night....maybe they always are at non-kid restaurants downtown.

Walking back to the car, we saw this on the side of a building, making the evening slightly more positive.


I just read that this projection has actually been up since Obama was in Raleigh just before the election. I'm not sure how we managed to miss it until now. Turns out the guy who owns the duck and dumpling is responsible.

I love all the hype right now. This morning I saw a framed picture of the Obama family on a colleague's desk. People are not holding back any excitement or pride!

The rest of the evening was equally good. We went to a party, caught up with a few folks we know, but also met lots of great new people. I hate to publically admit it at the risk of coming across snobbish, but it's a rare pleasure these days to come away from a party excited about pretty much everyone we met.

Political emotions

What a ride this election year has been for me. I've never before been so interested in politics. I suppose the Blacksburg town council election when the hedgepath homies were finally ousted started my interest. Maybe it's my age, my new (since last presidential election) parental role, my pregnancy hormones, I'm not really sure. In the last few weeks, I've recognized that the nastiness of the election process is really depressing to me. On election day, I was worked up about the sketchiness being reported in VA. I'm still on a VT student environmental listserv and got lots of frantic emails from them looking for help and scrambling to get students to the polls after the ridiculous polling location move. Now today I'm reading about the suspected scandal in Alaska. What? No Way? A state with Palin as governor, a convicted felon a longtime senator, and another senator with current enormous legal problems, why would one ever suspect?!

I suppose the process still sort of works, but it's difficult to come to the realization that our country's democratic system is really just as bad as the political corruption we read about in countries with dictators and ruling classes. My world politics class in college was 15 years ago, but I still remember the prof introducing some topic and talking about how all government systems are seriously flawed, just in different ways and some more than others. I wonder if my students will be shocked some day when they too learn something I told them in class is really true! E.g. wow, that Dr. Chewie lady was right, if I improve something that's not a bottleneck it has no impact on the current outcome of the line. Somehow that's not as dramatic as a political realization.

Despite it all, I'm beside myself that Obama actually got elected and appears to be taking office. I still really can't believe it. I keep wanting to give lil-m's african american teachers a high-five, but I haven't figured out the best way to do it yet. Maybe I can just train her to do it and shout gobama at the same time.

Political Categories

My most recent revelation wrt political generalizations of groups of people is Patio Man. What a great name!

Who is a patio man? Make a guess or you can read David Brooks' description.

Buses

This morning I rode the city bus to work. I've only ridden on 6 city buses since we've been in Raleigh, and had 2 break down on me. Hopefully I'm just unlucky and their failure rate isn't that bad.

It took 50 minutes to get to campus from my house. According to google maps new walking route feature (how cool is that) It's 3.3 miles and should take me 68 minutes. Which means they are assuming about a 20 minute mile. I'm pretty confident I can walk a mile in closer to 15 minutes, so it would be about even time-wise with riding the bus and I would get some exercise in.

So, I need a formula. I'm going to guess the breakpoint is somewhere around 3.5 miles at which point it might be worth it to ride. A few other factors to consider, number of bus transfers necessary, number of kids in tow, outside temperature (I don't want to be sweaty mess at work), time of day (=>road congestion), and time since last exercise.

As a side note, if I didn't have an enormous belly making it nearly impossible to bend over, I would have just ridden my bike this morning.

Anyway, it made me feel for people who daily ride the bus to and from work. What a pain. The thing breaks down and your screwed, nearly guaranteed to be late. This morning everyone got off and started walking. Fortunately I was relatively close to my building so it didn't cost me much, but I'm sure others had much further to go and were no doubt late as the bus was already running 15 minutes behind.

What a terrible system. There must be a better way!

Voter suppression

This topic is especially disturbing to me as I feel like it puts us in the same camp as those "democratic" countries who just *happen* (through a variety of threats no doubt) to elect the same dictator year after year.

The entire campaign process in which the candidates barely tell the truth and their respective campaigns spread blatant lies is really horrible already. I guess we've just learned to deal with it via things like post-debate fact-finding teams who report on which statements are true or stretched. I'm not sure why we let this happen, but anyway, at least there are sources of political truth and enough reporters working hard to hammer it out for us.

Now, voter suppression is a whole different game. To me this is a much more serious violation of our basic voter rights. Whether or not ex-felons should vote is just one small part of this problem. More seriously, regular people are purposely tricked or pressured into not voting. Hitting close to home, the 2006 VA state election has now been linked to obvious voter suppression with people receiving threatening phone calls, deceptive phone calls, and deceptive mailings to "encourage" non-voting.

In this election, the VA college student voting is clearly a problem. Now, in desperation, McCain's campaign is blasting ACORN for voter registration fraud. While this is a valid problem, based on history, registration fraud rarely results in actual fraud at the polls. Additionally, why would they be fighting a non-profit, non-partisan social justice group. Obviously, they are suppressing likely Obama voters. However, it's ridiculously cruel to continue to lay the big hand of conservative wealth again and again to strike down anything that helps the people they abuse. This organization has been around for 40 years helping people gain access to their right to vote in addition to organizing low-moderate income individuals to change things that concern them, like minimum wage, schools, fair-housing, all those things that people need!

Our country is so on track for an uprising from the low-moderate income workers. Maybe just maybe a democratic white house could push it off a little longer.

reducing? stuff

The Bronco is officially sold and out of our possession. We, and especially cspew, have lots of great memories while driving it, but we're now glad to be free from whatever window motor, wiper motor, gas tank, etc. will be breaking next. The subaru will be getting a hitch soon unless the jet skis somehow disappear.

We're also making progress on reorganizing our house to make room for a crib. Yes, a crib is not that large, but neither is our house. We are back to the sliding squares game we played while moving in. The computer gear and files are now in the living room so we have created a new blank in the game.

NC Celebs

We've had two psuedo-celebrity sightings in the last couple weeks: Mike Connell (from The Connells) at a neighborhood pot-luck and Roy Williams (UNC basketball coach) at an Outback in CH...very thrilling I know.

CSA upgrade

The Raleigh CSA group is quite amazing. There is actually quite a variety in CSA's you can join. There is a drop-off in our neighborhood and I participate somewhat regularly by placing an order a day or so before the drop off. However, we've just stepped it up and actually purchases a winter share. It's seriously an amazing deal and I'm anxious to be forced into eating my local seasonal veggies over just occasionally purchasing them. Hopefully the fam is up for all the roots we'll be consuming this winter. The CSA we bought into is Beausol Gardens. I've added a link to a site some other members maintain with recipes....basically for my own convenience and not wanting to use bookmarks on my work computer.

Calling montgomery county residents...

I presume many of you are aware of this problem, but still might not hurt to send Randall Wertz an email or phone call.

I heard an NPR piece on this regarding ODU a few months back and this is the first VT related case I've seen. In a nutshell, the montgomery county registrar (and all local VA registrars) has been granted the power, due to vague state government language, to decide who is qualified as a resident to vote. Randall Wertz, the registrar, is purposely scaring away VT students so that they are unable to register to vote in Blacksburg. This clearly hurts Obama, but even if you are a McCain supporter it should be a bit appalling that VA is going against the spirit of a supreme court ruling in which students were granted the right to vote where they attend school. I can only presume that Wertz is in bed with the hedgepath cronies and is getting a high off this power because if VT students could vote in local elections, their good-old boy network would fall to pieces. Anyway, here a short blog about it...easy read. Seriously, at least send an email to Wertz telling him your a resident and think it tatics are a poor representation of the county and perpetuating the boss-hog style government that city slickers assume goes on in rural areas.

Work and less blogging

My level of work requirements has finally picked up. I knew it would eventually happen, and the time has arrived. I've provided my first document to folks and now my list of demands and deadlines is looming. So today's post is just a quick collection of random thoughts.

Debate tonight...I am growing weary of the campaigns. I long ago made up my mind to vote for Obama, so the further the McCain camps gets behind and the more they resort to nasty tatics, the less tolerant I become at someone voting for McCain. Palin has really taken it all over the top for me with her ignorance lacing the attacks. I realize that republican policies are completely legit and that I'm being completely biased and unfair, but it's still tough to remain accepting. Yes, both sides play mean, but it is well document that when one falls behind, out come the real playground meanies. I hope to come away from tonight without additional resentment. My hopes are low as I read predictions that McCain will come out swinging with the dirt as a last resort. Maybe I'll be surprised!

Had a good weekend in the burg...saw lots of friends and although lacking the intensity of a big game enjoyed watching the hokies live win a football game. My belly even made the Hokievision (jumbotron). Lil-M had a great time with her friends and the pumpkin farm. It's fun to be in the mountains around fall time. Although another week or two is probably in order to get the real leaf affect. Lil-M wined last night that we haven't raked up leaves to jump in yet...the fact that the leaves were still on the trees was no consolation.

Getting your kid is swim lessons in Raleigh is like getting tickets to a basketball game. Maybe I'll camp out when the next enrollment session opens.

The more I'm in this office, the more it's like The Office. The latest...on Friday the major street by campus was going to close at 5pm for some event. A request by one office worker to leave a little early so she could get off campus, which would be somewhat difficult with the street closed, was denied because someone had to be here to answer the phone!...seriously? Maybe the thinking is that when the economy tanks you can stop offering anything nice to employees?

I wonder if #2 will have a name and/or a bed to come home to. Not yet!

Bugs, bugs go away

I was relieved to read Traci's slug post and realize I'm not alone in my weariness. Last night was a beautiful evening to have dinner outside...fortunately restaurants provide this option and we took advantage. We simply cannot be outside at our house, even with bug spray, bug coils and candles, etc. I'm torn between loving our shade, grass, plants, etc. and despising the bugs it all encourages. Don't worry, the tree hugging-side of me will continue to win out, but for now I'm just anxiously awaiting some colder nights, so we can enjoy some outside air without the requirement of pavement.

Weekend Events

This was a nice pro-community weekend for us. Saturday afternoon/evening was a park party in our neighborhood. Just a pot-luck in the park, but extremely well-organized, rather more like a birthday party a super-mom would throw. The highlight was cardboard slides. They spread cardboard down a hill and then mostly kids used pieces of cardboard to slide down. Lil-M followed the big-kids and waxed her board prior to sliding. There must have been 75 adults and at least that many kids.

Yesterday we visited Carrboro, a small ultra-progressive town near Chapel Hill. We had been there in our previous lives to listen to music at Cat's Cradle, and buy goodies at the Performance Bike shop. This time there was a music festival. Many closed streets, more bands than one could possibly take in, and excellent kid activities. It was an interesting environment that was enjoyable. We had glimpses of a burg event in it, but with ridiculously more disposable income floating around, which has pros and cons. Lil-M whined much of the afternoon about not having ice cream like half the kids we passed and I whined about the heat, but overall we were glad we made the trek. We had a drop-in on my cousins whom I rarely see, and it was well worth the stop! I may have even contributed to the event. We were sitting on lots of random stuff, railroad ties, bricks, tree roots, etc. At some point I managed to make a nice tear and pretty near expose myself to all those walking behind me. I came up with the great idea of twisting my skirt, so only my hip was exposed....I wonder who out there is blogging about the "sight" they saw at the festival!

Putin

This image made me laugh out loud.

Surprise visit

Last night Nately J happen to be in town and unexpectedly had the evening free to hang out with us! We were reminiscing about "drop-in" friends and lamenting the lack thereof in our current lives. It was excellent to have a friend drop-in on us! Why do people seem to outgrow this wonderful aspect of relationships? I'm definitely not ready to give it up.

Will the economy seize?

The last few days I've been downloading the podcasts of the Diane Rehm Show to listen to at lunch time. It's a nice happy time (despite the topic) to sit outside, eat lunch, watch the campus foot traffic, and attempt to catch up on the government financial bail-out plan.

I only got through about 15 minutes of the show, but today's is excellent. In general I love this show, it's very critical without being partisan, at least the first half before the call-in questions start. Even that part is useful. They always give great explanations that are intellectual, yet not so politicized that I can't follow what's going on.

Today was a nice discussion of the potential disasters if congress does not pass a bail-out this week before they break for the year. They were not expecting doom and gloom, but certainly the worst case is quite disastrous. The gist that one guest was emphasizing, primarily via examples, was our dependence on credit in our own economy. Previous shows presented the impact of our credit structure on world economies and our ability to recover our own economy. A quick summary being if our economy faulters and we have enormous government debt, other foreign companies and governments will not have incentive to invest via loans and recovery will be exceedingly more painful and drawn out.

The expectations of today's guests was that congress would pass something, but it would most certainly include limits and guidelines on executive pay, relief for homeowners, and limits on the control of this new unbridled power of the secretary of treasury. They expect that a plan for next steps will not even be touched until 2009.

Anyway, if you want to get a good perspective of what's going on, I recommend checking out some of the last few shows. They are broken up into ~15min segments. The first two segments are typically the best. Diane Rehm is out this week, so they have guest hosts who both are very good. Today's 10am "Debate over Treasury Rescue", and Monday's 10am "Tresury Rescue Plan." You can stream them from the show's website or download a free podcast from itunes.

Legos at work

My job was fun for an afternoon. I just built a lego robot. It was critical that it be tested before the kits could be sent out for classroom use. I needed to figure out which parts to track the return of, and if it could be used in another class or not. I saw no other choice but to give it a test run.

This kit is super cool, and ridiculous, really. There are online communities of these Lego Mindstorm junkies. Anyway, I built this little robot with a claw for picking up stuff. It has all kinds of sensors: sound, light, and ultrasonic. Tomorrow I get to write the program to make both the robot and the claw move. Should me more excitement.

This year's flood

Traci's most post about spending gave me a thought that I decided was too long and off target to put as a comment. She was noting that finally in this financial crises you hear people talk about trying to control their spending.

It made me think about disasters that affect our communities, be they natural, human-implemented (war, terrorist, etc), or in current days, financial. I was just thinking how they serve as a modern-day flood. Whether or not one believes the biblical flood happen or not, you can take away from the story that people were messed up and the flood was used to set things straight and start new. How about the story of Joseph storing up food in the good times to feed entire regions in the bad times. These are obviously not new stories to our primarily christian society. It's fascinating to me that as a society we live beyond our means thinking the party will never end. If nothing else, the income party ends when you retire! It's difficult to look or plan for much of the future, and all though the bible also says to not worry about tomorrow, seriously, you have to do some planning as there will certainly be some floods and famines to face in our lives. Why is this concept so hard?

Well hopefully for the near future our country will learn to become slightly less careless about spending, but I'm sure it won't last long. I've already heard excitement over yesterday's slightly up market....seriously is their hope we'll bounce out that quickly. Let's all learn from Miller and "Live Responsibly" :)

Belly Tipping Point

Although it's been obvious to me for about 6 months now, it's officially obvious to the public I'm pregnant now. It's ramped up over the last couple weeks, but now nearly every random person I encounter is treating me differently. I walk up to a counter and if the person working is of the friendly type they ask when I'm due followed by the sympathic groan or excitement (I never know which I'll get) for a christmas baby. The other big change is the high rate of door holding. Honestly, I'll take the door holding and seat giving, especially in the coming months!

Professional Social Events

Seriously, why do we do this to ourselves. Socializing with work people is just a bizarre kind of work, not a social thing.

So there is this IE department dinner here that I'm considering attending. I am an alum of the department, but not otherwise associated with it. However, I may need to tap some resources there for my current job. Additionally, given my sporadic employment habits, I'm very reliant on others to get my random work. Random projects are not advertised, they come to you through connections. However, I hope that I don't need to find random work around here. Ahh...I suppose I should go, but I loathe the Engineering small talk. It will also cause me to have only about 30-60 minutes with my kid that day.

Dinner last night

How routine is that title?! Our dinner last night was not standard, but good. We helped cook dinner for some homeless families. There is a pretty cool national organization with a local arm here, WIHN. Although we've done a little when our church as sponsored in the past, this time we got to meet the families. We were really impressed with it all. It was a very easy, simple evening for us. We prepared a small amount of food and cleaned up at our church. Lil-M had fun playing with a few of the kids all evening. We really had no idea what to expect from the families. They were all very pleasant and enjoyable everyday sort of people, working to get back on their own. We have been amazed at how expensive it is to live around here. I can't imagine trying to support a family on a minimum, or near minimum, wage job. I looked at the stats and it's really unacceptable. According to the WIHN website, a worker making minimum wage cannot afford fair market rent anywhere in the US! I'm happy our church is participating and selected this as one of the few outreaches it can handle. Because of the small size it takes a fair effort from a large percentage of the people, but it's so simple to do and from what I can tell effective.

Abnormally Dry - the new drought status

I am abnormally hot and large. We had a fun afternoon at the lake yesterday. It was a huge relieve to be in the water. I am in a continuous mode of near explosion due to the heat. I suppose slight relief is coming sometime in the next month or two, but that feels very far away. Thankfully we have friends with toys who are willing to share and facilitate a day at the lake. Lil-M loves to tube, more precisely bounce all over the place in a tube.

Thanks to the various storms this summer, the lake levels are finally high. In fact so high that yesterday the lake was flooded into the parking lot. There is normally a beach, but instead we set up camp in the parking lot and walked through grassy waters to get to the sandy part of the water where we could play. It was a little strange at first, but turned out to not really make much of a difference.

It's a bizarre situation to have the lakes overflowing and still be classified as abnormally dry. I've heard that the ground water levels are still a little low. People tend to think, the lakes are up, lets waste some water. It's not easy to find much information on this. It's like a secret around here what's really going on with the water. After a little investigation this morning, we are still under some water restrictions, which seriously if they happen to be effective I'm in favor of having all the time. Really, why people should be free to waste as much water as they please is beyond me.

working mom

I just read a TNR article today about the Palin-style working mom and thought I'd write a bit about my recent new status as a working-mom. The article was interesting because she claims to do it all without ever missing a beat. However, she is able to "do it all" because her husband is basically a stay-at-home dad and she's loaded with other family around her helping out. Therefore, she has made some token efforts towards working parent concerns, basically only fair-wages for women, but none of the other biggies that count, like, affordable child-care and availability of accomodations at work for moms, i.e. breastpumps.

So, my recent job has been an overall good change for me, and I think the whole family. It's really great because it's short-term, so even if it was the wrong choice, it's only a problem for another 3 months. In the immediate term, the major plus for me is that life is easier. I'm not sleeping quite as much, but I get to sit all day! At 6 months pregnant, sitting in an ergo-designed chair is much better than the ground, park-bench, or just playing and constantly moving. The longer term plus is that I'm learning some new stuff and filling in the resume some so it's not completely blank. The negative is it's often boring and I have strict working hours. The working hours thing is completely ridiculous since I rely on noone else to do my job and only need an internet connection and a spreadsheet, maybe Word too. It's exactly the type of job that as a working mom they should be allowing some flexibility, but yep, that's not the case. As a consequence, there is little chance I'll come back to it after this contract. The little one seems to enjoy daycare and gets to play with much cooler toys than at home, do gymnastics, dance, music, and spanish, lots of fun stuff that she loves. The hubby is adjusting as well and doing a great job getting lil-M out the door every morning...not as easy as one might expect.

I appreciate the chance to mix things up for our family and give us all some different experiences. The sad part is that jobs which could be more accomodating to moms aren't. I could easily do this job part-time, from anywhere, but neither is an option b/c they are inflexible. At least it's only 4months long.

USA

The combination of September 11 and Elections has caused me mixed feelings. The 9-11 memorials on the radio today generate the need to love our fellow Americans (and people in general for that matter). In contrast the ridiculousness of the campaigning has me pissed at the stupidity of Americans. I'm appalled at the obsession over Sarah Palin. Seriously, I'm embarrassed to be a female these days. How can the same women who hate Hilary be in love with this hoochie mama. The obvious answer is that the suburban-mom identifies with her...do these women think they themselves could do a good job as VP?

What's with this logic of identification with our president? It worked for GW, he's just as ignorant as the majority of the country. Personally, I'd rather have someone smarter than most people as our leader. Because someone is smarter than most americans does not imply that they can't understand the problems to be addressed. The real problem is the lack of rational decision-making from the masses that the campaigns so effectively cater to. Last night a commentator suggested that in the debates Obama needed to tone done his orator style of speech to sound more like the general stupid american. Again, I appreciate that he can speak better than me! When he speaks with leaders from other countries, I prefer he be intelligent and sound that way than sound like the average american. Look how well that strategy worked for GW...wait he doesn't talk to other countries, just bombs them.

Weight of a nation?

It's only been more than a year since I've posted. Maybe I'll start again, maybe not, we'll see. Chew sent me the article linked in the title. In summary it's a US journalist suggesting there is a "black cloud" over gymnastics because there is suspicion that the Chinese government is allowing girl gymnasts under the minimum Olympic age of 16 to compete. This is a problem because such a young girl shouldn't have to bear the weight of the hopes of a nation.

Is it okay if they are 16? 18? 21? When is it appropriate? Who is generating such pressure? The government, the press, coaches, families? Seriously, does the general public as a whole care that much? I've been sucked into the Michael Phleps craze and can't wait to see if he can pull off another victory. However, do I feel like I am somehow superior because my country can generate an athlete who can win so handily. I suppose in the Chinese case, it's a legacy thing. They always produce amazing gymnasts, so maybe they can therefore somehow feel superior because it's in their blood or something.

Athletics certainly creates an emotion of pride and it's fun to get caught in the craziness. I suppose this craziness is somehow responsible for the pressure. In college, I remember being emotional about each competition, but I don't ever remember feeling like the hopes of an entire school were on my back. Even in higher exposure sports I don't see it. Although I love to see the Hokies win lots of football games, what foolish fan would place their hopes in say Michael or Marcus Vick. Even the guys I know who think about nothing but Hokie football don't in REALITY put all their hopes in it.

Forget the pressure. What I think is a sad black cloud was what I heard a commentator say during the coverage. One of the young girls was sent to the training facility at age 3. Repeatably asked to come home and was denied by her parents because they knew what a successful gymnastics career could do for their family. She was being praised for her determination (or something). This is the same logic of the successful business puke who buys his family everything they could ever want, but works 80 hours a week. It's really a simple principle we all know, but it's depressing to see it on the world level.