This is my day
I’m proud of myself because I finally got a bunch of little errands done that have been languishing for weeks or months due to working too hard. Eventually that stuff all builds up and makes you feel … I don’t know what – disorganized, incompetent, kinda out of control in little ways. So! It was time. I had just as much to do as ever yesterday, but just couldn’t stand it any more and got the process started by cleaning the house and doing a big comprehensive grocery shopping (with pre-planned recipes, even).
I kind of felt like writing about my day today, in all its mundane details, because I’m happy with it. Sort of like a big extended Twitter :D Hopefully, you won’t be too bored with it!
As usual, I was up until 1am last night, and managed to actually sleep almost 8 hours – a good start. The one false note was that I came out to find that the door on the freestanding gas stove that heats my house had fallen open again – I could smell gas and plus, there’s all that flame uncontained (visions of kitty tails on fire – not good). I quickly aired out the house and put that on my “must do very soon” list, to call up a stove repair place and figure out how to fix that door. In the meantime, no more unsupervised use of the stove.
I finished up an editing job, which was my only deadline for today and turned out to be very straight-forward (a journal article about mutations in specific genes that they’re testing for a relationship to cervical cancer). Read my e-mail, made myself some coffee and enjoyed the yummy chocolate-hazelnut biscotti with it that I bought at the grocery store last night – yay! Took out some chicken to actually make a home-made recipe with tonight :)
I finally made an appt. to get my hair cut (after 6 months or so it is getting impossible to manage) and tried to make an orthodontist appt., but they are all on vacation until next week! Called up my grandpa – I was going to visit and take him to an eye appt. this afternoon, but i think he forgot – he had already arranged for the nurses to take him, and I guess he didn’t want me to go out of my way – even though it was really just an excuse to visit. I’ll go for next week’s appt. and I told him, he won’t get rid of me next time!! :)
Which left an entire afternoon open, a luxury I never get these days. So I quickly resolved to continue my winning streak and go out and run a bunch more errands. First, some online banking. I am really tired of my bank (US Bank) hitting me with expensive analysis fees every time I do anything even slightly out of the ordinary (like working internationally online, which i do a lot). I’ve recently defected to West Coast Bank, who has a brand new money market account, FDIC-insured, with a 3.5% interest rate. Not bad at all, considering the alternatives. So, moving money out of PayPal (which is not insured) to that account online, and switching over all my online electronic billpaying accounts.
Filled an online order for board game parts for Magic Realm, then off to the post office to mail that and get some pretty stamps – part of the wildlife series, this one is for the Great Lakes Dunes ecosystem. I love those :) Right next door was a Staples, so I ducked in and grabbed some 100% recycled paper (haven’t seen that easily available before) and some plastic bins. At last I can organize the last of my clothes that I unpacked, which are currently all over my closet floor – these are things I seldom wear and don’t fit into my bureau, but which have specific uses, like clothes for tropical trips, skiing clothes, etc.
Stopped at a bagel place for lunch, and in one of those serendipitous coincidences, there was a state liquor store next door. Now, I don’t drink, but the other day I was looking at this recipe I really, really wanted to make – Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce. Well, a real bread pudding should seriously have alcohol in it, and I LOVE bread pudding, all forms of it. But I thought, well, I’ll never make this because I’ll never get around to buying the bourbon. But there it was, and I did :) Decadence in my future, I can almost taste it…
Next, it was off to the bank to make my deposits and sign up for that money market account. Little things, like changing the bank I’ve always had (for good cause) and even changing my pin number from the last four digits of what used to be my phone number when I was married, are making me feel oddly free and like I’m really leaving behind all the last vestiges of my old life.
As I was leaving, a colleague called to remind me about a public meeting tonight and ask if I wanted to go. The Port of Olympia is trying to dredge some very nasty sediments without cleaning up the highly-contaminated sediments right under the dock next to it that will slough into the project area and get blown all over the place by the prop wash. We (agency staff and consultants) are all very opposed to it, but in these economic/political times (right before an election) it is getting rammed through the system at high levels. We plan to go and just sit in the back and let them know we’re watching. And I, not being an agency regulator anymore, can say anything I please as a citizen of Olympia. I just might, we’ll see.
Next, it was off to the DMV to get a driver’s license with my new address – now that I’m really living where I’m going to live :) And there I bumped into one of the college kids that lives next door, who had just registered to vote (yay!!). I made the DMV lady retake the picture – I may look older than I did 9 years ago, can’t help that, but at least I can be smiling :)
And back home again, through a beautiful sunny fall day with leaves turning. Now I have a whole three hours before the public meeting starts, and I could do… what? Actually read a book? Sounds nice :)
Campaign finance and other topics
OK – I know I’ve been quiet lately. I am trying to finish one career to start another (well, really two new ones). Having three jobs is pretty wearing. It’s not that there hasn’t been a lot going on and a lot to talk about! I just keep thinking about blogging and not doing it. I’ve resolved lately to carve out some time though… even if it’s just little observations here and there.
Today’s thoughts are about campaign financing from the public perspective – yeah, that’s you and me. I’ve never given to a campaign before, at least not for a politician. And I don’t tend to like being approached on the street or solicited by mail. This is a candidate I feel strongly about, however, more so than any other politician in my life. Of course, I’m talking about Obama.
That doesn’t mean that I would just run out and give money. As I mentioned, things have been a bit hectic. Knowing that you SHOULD do something is different from actually getting around to it – if I can’t find time to go to the grocery store, clean house, or get my hair cut because I’m working so hard, giving to a political campaign is just not going to be high on my list, no matter how important.
Nevertheless, they’ve managed to get a bunch of my donations, and I think it’s very telling how that happened. First, I found Barack Obama on Twitter. I decided to follow him, and oddly enough, he followed me back. I doubt he’s really reading all our posts ^.^ but it was kind of symbolic. Then I visited the website and signed up for e-mail updates. Then text messages – and yes, I was one of the first to know who the VP was :) That was cool.
Almost immediately, as you would expect, the e-mail requests for donations started coming to my inbox. But these were different. Each one was accompanied by a personal video – of Barack, Michelle, Joe, or the campaign manager. They talked about who they were, shared personal moments on the campaign, talked about the campaign strategy.
Those were the best ones, later in the game. It wasn’t hard to convince me to part with the first $100 or two. After that, I wanted to know what I was paying for. Well, they told us. In detail. Often a specific ad would come with the request for money that we were being asked to fund – that was not airing yet. They would explain why this particular ad right now and where it would be playing. Now Obama hasn’t had too many ads I disliked, most have been very positive. But if for any reason you didn’t want to fund a particular ad – well, you didn’t have to! I REALLY liked that.
Later came discussions of what exactly they were doing in battleground states that was costing so much money. It was nice to hear that, and to think we had some hope of taking Florida, for example. That might go a long way toward erasing the Al Gore pain of old.
The last tactic I personally enjoyed was grass roots matching funds. Everyone has employer matching funds – this was person to person – those that had given before matching new contributors and sending personal messages about why we support this candidate – and getting personal messages back from the person who got our match. That was fun, too.
All of this has contributed to Obama having more than 3 million contributors now. Each has given an AVERAGE of only $86. Compare that to lobbyists, PACs, and industry. Yet, he is so far outstripping McCain in fundraising that he is able to compete in places that no presidential candidate has bothered to before.
It doesn’t hurt that he has a huge army of volunteers (organized on the internet, of course) working for him on the ground. If you don’t have money, you can get lists of people in your neighborhood to call or visit and talk with – and they emphasize that this is just as important or more so. Ads go only so far.
I hope the fact that this personal fund-raising approach has beat the pants off of traditional campaign financing will change the face of politics forever. We’ve shown what our money can do as the vast public, $86 at a time. Go, Obama!
(and please keep sending those videos, twitters, and e-mails AFTER you become president)
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