Ultranormal

  • Promise

    It was a long night. It’s been a long campaign. But, as I sit here with tears in my eyes watching our new President-Elect speak, I can’t help but think about the promise of the next administration. Throughout the last two years, I’ve hoped that Barack Obama would be the next President. He’s the first presidential candidate we’ve donated money to.\
    Now, that hope has been fulfilled, and now the promise of a new administration is here. A new day is coming, and in January, the worst president in our nation’s history will leave office and be replaced with one who promises to at least be better, and we hope will be great.\
    The last eight years, I’ve been full of anger at what George W. Bush and his administration have done to our country. I hoped for change, and that hope felt in vain at times. I’ve been trying not to hope too much because I wasn’t sure I could take the disappointment this time around when the stakes are so high.\
    But, I don’t have to worry about that. My hope has been fulfilled, and now I’m filled with the potential, the promise, of the next four years. I’m hopeful that Mr. Obama won’t disappoint me.\
    God bless you, America. Thank you. Thank you for voting in record numbers, for (although a little late in my opinion) rejecting the politics of fear and division, and embracing the future. This election to me was the past vs. the future. We could either keep going the direction that George W. Bush had taken us, or we could decide it was time to embrace the future and become the country we say we are, but never quite live up to.\
    Yes we can. Yes we did. Yes, yes, we will.\
    (and not to spoil it, but I can’t help but think that all that Barack’s daughters will remember about tonight is that they’re getting a puppy and got to stay up really late)

  • Hope

    I just want to write this down so I remember it later. I woke up at 5:30 this morning full of nervous energy, thinking about today and what’s happening around the country. I’m excited, but most of all, I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful that Obama will win, and not just with a slim margin like the last two elections, but a real mandate to start the process of fixing things.\
    I’m looking forward to watching the returns tonight, and seeing what happens. I smiled this morning, at 7:45AM, as I drove past our local polling place and saw a line out the door and into the parking lot.\
    I’m tired, but happy, because unless all the polls are wrong, and really wrong, Barack Obama will be the President-Elect tomorrow morning. That makes me smile. It makes me downright giddy.

  • Holy cow!

    A friend in Florida spent 7 HOURS in line to vote yesterday. That’s crazy, right? Good for her and everyone else for actually sticking it out though.

  • My Little Internet People

    Max and Brian dressed up as Pip and Kitteh from the Laugh Out Loud Cats

    I’m not sure what to say about the boys’ costumes this year, other than, I think I’ve broken my children. Did they want to be characters from mainstream popular culture? Nope. They wanted to be the main characters from the very funny, but very internet-y Laugh Out Loud Cats. Did anyone in the neighborhood have the slightest clue who they were? Nope. I don’t think that bothered the boys a whole lot, but I do worry that I’ve done irreparable harm to their pop culture repositories by showing them funny stuff on the internet like Homestar Runner instead of more mainstream fare. I don’t know, but they’re so damned cute as niche web comic characters, I kind of don’t care.

  • Mark It Zero, Dude

    me dressed as Walter Sobchack from The Big Lebowski

    I haven’t dressed up for Halloween for years, at least since Max was born. This year, for some reason, I decided that I should be Walter Sobchack from The Big Lebowski this year. Why? I’m not sure.\
    I grew the beard just for Halloween… that’s how seriously I took it. And again, I’m not sure why. But, here we are, and I think it came together quite nicely. See?

    me as walter vs. john goodman as walter

  • Baby, you can drive my car

    A friend of a friend is trying to win SUPERBOWL tickets to surprise her awesome husband (no, it isn’t me or mine, heh, but I only have super cool friends so it is easy to see how you could get confused) from work. You can help her out by texting 57533 with the message P00077804. The person with the most texts wins! If you’re in the mood, help a girl out, ok?\
    This brings back memories of my first Christmas with Kevin, before we were married. I stood in the RAIN for FOUR HOURS to get tickets to a basketball game with the REIGNING NCAA Champion team, Arizona. Woot woot. Fun times. So, yeah, if you can help, that would be great. Thanks!

  • Admit it, you’re a little jealous

    I have the coolest husband ever: Clicky.

  • Learning and Junk

    • Brian really likes a song called “High School Confidential.” (It has already been established that I am a bad mother.) He doesn’t hear the words correctly though, so when he sings along or requests the song he says, “Ha stu compadoo.” He comes by his misheard-lyrics heritage naturally, as I have been known to mangle a few songs in my day. (My favorite is thinking that “Raspberry beret” was actually “Rags, baby, hurray.” Which is totally supported by the line that follows. Of course, had I only known what the title of the song was, I probably could have saved myself some embarrassment.)
    • Max has been “provisionally” put back in the gifted program at school. He has been tested, and received passing scores, so they are letting him back in. I think the scores still need to be formally evaluated or something and then he can be in for real. He had to meet 3 of 4 requirements for ability, achievement, creativity, and motivation to be eligible for the program. They took last year’s CogAt scores for the ability portion. The accepted minimum is 96, he scored 99. He received a 98% on the creative test, the minimum accepted is 90. They tested this by having him draw pictures from various doodles. (True story.) They used the Hawthorne test for his motivation score. I have no idea what this test is. He needed at least a 90 and got a 97%.
    • As part of his nightly homework, Max has to read for 20 minutes and write about what he read in a journal. Last week he was reading one of the Harry Potter books. He wrote, “The introduction Luna Lovegood foreshadowed” a specific occurrence. His teacher was all, “Whoa” when she read that. Because, really? A third-grader talking about foreshadowing?? Crazy! I wasn’t overly impressed though, because I assumed Max had read that thought online at the Potter wiki and then unintentionally plagiarized it. So I asked him about it. Turns out he came up with it all on his own. Momma says, “Whoa!” For the record, he learned about foreshadowing from Homestar Runner. (It’s already been established that our kids are weird.)
    • In other Max school news, he is working on his first research paper! He picked the topic of “How laws are made.” This has led to many political and historical discussions at the dinner table. Kevin is pretty much in heaven. 🙂 I remember my first paper was in the third grade too. My topic was Botswana. I don’t remember anything that I learned, except its location. Heh.
    • Kevin and I voted on Saturday and it was exciting to mark my choice for The President of the United States. I haven’t been that excited since the first time I voted. There are reports that over one million people in Ga, about twenty percent of the eligible voters, have voted already. There is early voting going on at our local library this week too. Every time I drive pass, which is several times a day due to its location, the parking lot is overflowing, which is very unusual.
    • I went used-book shopping last week and bought many, many trashy beach reads. Stuff like Tom Clancy and Dean Koontz. They are fabulous in their utter lack of anything educational in them! I also bought a collection of classic short stories by American writers for Max. I started reading the book, to check its content. What a snoozefest! There are probably only half of a dozen good things about being middle-aged, but not having to read “classic” literature anymore is definitely one of them. (Thanks, Mom and Dad for my college education. I appreciate it, really.) Excuse me now while I snub the book I got for Max and read about a genius dog who can play scrabble instead.

  • Spare Eight Minutes

    Lawrence Lessig provides a great argument against Proposition 8. It’s reasoned, has a sound legal backing (because, he’s Lawrence Lessig), and is profound in its simplicity. It perfectly echoes my own feelings on it, and does a great job of dissolving the rationale for the proposition without insulting those who support it. Great great stuff. Please watch it.

  • Too early to be coherent

    It’s about 6:45 am and Brian and I have been awake for almost an hour and a half. Booo. I can’t imagine what our mornings will be like after Daylight Savings Time ends. Waaaaaaaa.