Category: General

Democratically-controlled House of Representatives, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I like it. Got a nice ring to it. Say it with me:

Subpoena power.

There’s gotta be some urine-soaked tighty-whities in the White House tonight.

In other news, the bOregonian is calling Measures 39 (prohibiting public transfer of property to private hands) and 44 (expanding prescription drugs under the Oregon Health Plan) as passing – both of those got my vote, too. Everything else is failing, which is also how I voted.

Sadly, Connecticut (and the world) appears to be still stuck with Joe “Joe for Joe’s sake” Lieberman. Wanker. That’s my only major disappointment tonight, though.

In other news, I haven’t felt this good on Election Night since… since… um, ever. (In ’92, I voted for Perot – don’t be mad, I was a crazy Libertarian)

I must have felt last night’s earthquake last night.

But at the time I just thought it was the neighbors upstairs falling down on the floor.

I should have known something was up when Smacky came running in from the bedroom.

I slipped into the bus shelter behind the old man, where it was dry. I bit into my apple, a juicy delicious Honeycrisp, sweet and mixed red and green in color. The old man, tall, white hair cut into near-invisibility in a buzz, barrel-chested and skinny-legged, looked like a football coach, his back to me as he watched for the bus. He jumped at the sound of my apple bite and looked over his shoulder.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I didn’t hear ya sneak up on me.” His voice was kind and a bit sad, not accusing me so much as he was wistful. He picked up his bag, which had been sitting on the bench.

“No problem,” I said. I was content to stand and try to finish my apple before the bus showed up.

He turned completely around. “You know,” he said, “30 years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to do that.” He had a slight lisp, and it looked like his nose had been broken and reset oddly. His lip half-curled. “I’ve lost some skills since then.” His eyes lowered and he stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets.

I wondered what he was remembering. Did he serve in the military? Or just have to spend a lot of time in places where one doesn’t let their guard down? I smiled around a mouthful of apple. “I’m sure that you’ve gained some skills in that time, though, too.”

“Oh, maybe so, maybe so,” he conceded. “It’s hard to know whether the gain has been worth it, though.” He turned and looked down the street. “The bus’ll be here in, oh, about two minutes.”

“How true. We take what we get and do what we can with it.” In the span of just a few minutes, I’d come to like this guy. I silently wished him luck.

It’s an odd feeling, liking strangers. I’m not used to it, yet. And it may only be for today.

It’s taken me three days to start to get a rhythm. At first, I was going nuts with over-thinking my first line. I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be perfect. I had spent some time on outlines, and character sketches, and writing down bits of dialogue or scenes I wanted to include, through the latter half of October, but I was still faced with the question of where to start, and whose voice was going to tell the story. Big Important Questions, questions I could Ponder Endlessly.

Sadly, the pressure of getting something, anything, committed to the big white blank window forced me to just start writing. I realized that I didn’t have to be perfect. I just have to be version 1.0.

Besides, in the past, when I wrote longer stories, the first stuff I wrote didn’t turn out to be the beginning of the story. It took me a bit to find the characters and the voice. It’s not that what was first was junk – it was more like clearing my throat, or warming up.

Once the logjam was broken, the story just took on a life of its own. I’m on a roll, now.

If you want to see the very first words that flowed from my brain and came out of my fingers onto the screen, this is where I started. Go easy on me.

Remember that the motto of NaNoWriMo is “Quantity, not quality”…

Yay! I voted. I voted “Democratic” on all the people, I voted “Yes” to the library measure and the schools, and I voted “No” on all the other measures except for Measure 39 and Measure 44.

Oh, and I didn’t vote at all for all the judges, or anyone running unopposed. And I honestly can’t remember what I voted on the Metro bond measure. I hate Metro as an example of an unaccountable quasi-public agency (an example of Portland’s governmental corruption – handing money out to favored parties) but they’re asking for money for what they were originally created to do (preserve greenspaces and parks and stuff) so it seemed like a good thing.

Remember, as Gov. Howard Dean said, “YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGH!”.

Oh, and also, he said, but I can’t find a link anywhere, so you’re just going to have to trust me, he said, “If all you do is vote, you barely get a passing grade in citizenship.”

On that basis, yay! I’m (barely) passing!

Don’t forget that this month is National Novel Writing Month and that I’ll be working feverishly trying to crank out my 1667 words a day (on average) and posting some of the results over here.

So posting here might be spotty until midnight, 30 November, 2006. Maybe earlier if I get a burst of speed and finish early.

Thanks. To the (on average) 214 people who visit me daily, I don’t want to lose your visits. It means a lot to me.

When I ran in the Pints to Pasta 10K a while back, one of the prizes was a gift certificate for a free entrée at Old Spaghetti Factory. Today I used it; it’s been a while but between the combination of my being fairly broke, having a car, and getting a day free from counting calories due to having run a race today (the Run Like Hell 5K – see my unofficial results here) all led me to a gianormous, delicious, pasta lunch. I had the Half and Half – half spinach and cheese ravioli, and half spaghetti with meat sauce, along with delicious bread (I LOVE BREAD) and a salad. I passed on the ice cream because I was too stuffed full.

The waiter was a nice kid, and I knew that even though my dinner was paid for, I’d still leave a tip. When the check came, I had no cash, so I put down the gift certificate, and a credit card for the drink, and on which I’d add a nice little somethin’ extra.

When the waiter returned (his name was Mo – can you believe it? Sounds like an old man’s name, but this kid was barely old enough to shave) he said, “I didn’t even need the card! I kinda forgot that you had the free meal.” He set down the little black tray, with the receipt and my card and a pen.

“Oh?” I asked. “But the drink…?”

“No worries,” he said, “I took care of it!” He seemed so proud. He wandered away. I looked in my wallet. Nope. No cash. And I looked at the receipt – sure enough, the total was $0.00. There wasn’t any space to add a tip.

Damn if Mo wasn’t so nice to me that he screwed himself out of a tip.

I was standing at the streetcar station at SW 6th and Mill, near the Pizzacato. As normal for a Saturday (or any day, really) I had my bright orange messenger bag slung across my back.

I heard a male voice behind me say “Guess what?” and before I could turn around, he finished the couplet in a loud, laughing voice: “Chickenbutt!”

Smiling, I finished turning around. But the guy, in his twenties, wearing hipster hair and a trendy nylon running jacket over his ironic t-shirt and jeans, was not speaking to me. He was speaking to a cute, pig-tail-haired brunette girl, wearing a puffy green down vest, long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans. She looked startled a moment and then laughed at the hipster-haired young man.

She had not seen the button on my bright orange messenger bag.

But apparently the boy had. They started talking, he explaining to her about the chickenbutt joke, she telling him how silly he was.

The streetcar came and I got on. I was smiling.

Chickenbutts are great for flirting, it seems. Maybe not for me, but for others. And that’s OK.

I’m… um… damn.

Pic stolen from this post over at Blogtown.

I added some new links to my links page (deleted some, too, but I won’t mention those).

• Jim Thompson’s blog – this man knows a lot about technology, and it shows. Plus he’s kinda arrogant about it. Makes for great reading.
• Go Fug Yourself – A blog where two girls make fun of famous people’s fashion mistakes. Kinda gossipy, but damned funny. I’ve been reading this one for a long time; not sure why it’s taken me so long to add it to my permanent list.
• National Novel Writing Month – I figured, since I plan on participating, I might as well add it to my page.
• Outside.in – This is a new social site that lets people add reviews and items for a specific locality, like a mash-up of Google Maps and Citysearch, sort of. I’m going to play around with it. The link is to my own neighborhood but it will work anywhere.

…that it? Only four links added? Sorry, for some reason I thought it was more.