What I'm Up To (The Cliffnotes Version)

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Aggies 12, t-sips 7

Aggies 12, t-sips 7!!!
(Just in case you didn't notice the score in the blog title.)
Yeah, it was a good Thanksgiving weekend!

I went up to D-FW to spend Thanksgiving with family. I think it was the larger family gatherings (from Dad's side) that we've had in a while. I stayed with my brother, sister-in-law and Munchkin in Dallas and we trouped over to Ft. Worth for dinners at my cousin's place. He, his wife and their twins were housing my parents & my other cousin who was visiting from Oregon (some state waaaay up northwest where it gets cold). And yes, I did say "dinners" (plural). That was not a typo. We had the pre-Thanksgiving dinner, the Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday and the real Thanksgiving dinner on Friday. My brother & his family had to miss Thursday's dinner, so it was decided to have the "real" one on Friday when they could join us. The end result being that I waddled out of the D-FW area on Saturday.

It was great being on vacation and seeing them. I brought my dog up and the kids LOVED him. He's a Golden Retriever and he's almost as tall as my niece and my cousin's twins. They hugged on him, loved on him and (in the case of my niece) sat on him. Every once in awhile, I took pity on him and let him into the backyard to give him a break from the little people.

Munchkin (aka my niece). She's now 2 1/2 and speaks in full sentences. In fact, she rarely stops speaking. My first morning in Dallas, I woke up to the dog licking me and Munchkin talking to the dog. She'll talk to just about anyone or anything ("hi house!", "I miss you Bear-Bear", "play in my room, Jock"). Another morning, I woke up to see her talking on my cel phone just "like Daddy". (BTW - Bear-Bear is her favorite Beanie Bear and Jock is my dog.) She's such a funny little person.

The Saturday I came back, I met up with Nemesis & D who was in from San Francisco. We had a great time catching up and she taught us great variation on Scrabble called Speed Scrabble. I'm hooked! (Thanks, D!)

Oh yeah, and the Aggies won against t.u. 12-7!!!

Friday, November 17, 2006

Election Updates

The blogging came to a screeching halt due to the elections. That was an exhausting, interesting experience. We had a flurry of final rounds of fundraising events. Then I spent the last 2 weeks working out of one of our client's headquarters. She lost, but we knew it was going to be an uphill battle. She was a Democrat running in a VERY Republican district. (That's ok, we took the Hill, so it all balances out.) Anyways...

I was working the polls for early vote and on election day pushing cards for her. So yes, I was one of those people who would run up to you and remind you who my candidate is and what she was running for. I had a few interesting responses. One guy strong-armed me (you know, that football blocking move when they stick out their hand to push you off). Another guy literally sprinted to the poll. He got out of his car and ran to the poll then ran back to his car after he was done voting. Then I had a guy ask if my candidate was pro-life. Not an unusual question. I got a number of those working the polls. I told him she was pro-choice, then he proceeded to preach to me for about 10 minutes. I just nodded my head when I really wanted to say "the poll is that way and you're lucky you're voting in the morning, not during the last 10 minutes before the polls close". I definitely didn't engage him in a debate, because my coffee hadn't kicked in yet and I'd probably still be there debating with him. It was already going to be a long day and I didn't want him to make it any longer. It was election day and I worked the polls from 7am to 7pm with about 2 hours for lunch. Election day ended back at headquarters with the beer and everyone glued to the computers and TVs. Needless to say, as soon as we saw our numbers falling and we knew we couldn't win, the party started to dissipate.

This election cycle was definitely an interesting experience as I was slowly sucked further into the political world. Oh, and it's not over. We have a December election for a contested race and we're already crunching numbers for future elections.