just laura

I’ve posted about 150 pictures of people from parties this weekend. Relive the memories and get costume ideas for next year. I think my favorites were the “one night stand” and “the road to hell.” :)

[cat's political rant]

“In toss-up states like Ohio, Republicans have hired 3,600 people to upend Kerry’s potential trump card–newly registered voters. The “monitors” (Republican-speak for racist goons) are getting $100 to stand inside polling places in heavily Democratic “urban neighborhoods” to challenge voters’ qualifications.” Lovely.

Let’s review: Under W, there were 2 wars despite no al Qaeda connections, we had 380 tons of explosives that disappeared from a U.S.-controlled military facility, there was horrific Abu Ghraib torture, carnage in Fallujah and subsequent insurgency, Nick Berg’s beheading, lies about and subsequent reports proving there were no WMD, etc.

On the bright side, if W steals the election, I’m happy to see that I might qualify for immigration to Canada. The qualifications for the “Employability and Occupational Mobility Program” look almost favorable… including my status on the “favoured training list” because of my MIS degree! (Information technology engineering, Undergraduate university degree attesting to four years of full-time studies) I also have other things they’re looking for: work experience, previous visits to or ties with Québec, at least 6 months of work experience, and possession of the minimum funds needed to support yourself for the first three months. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that…

[/end rant]

Regardless of your political views, tomorrow’s the big day to make your voice heard. It’s not just a presidential election here in WA… we’ve got a new governor to elect, a monorail (yey!), non-tribal gambling (boo!), a school superintendent, judges, and folks going to both the house and senate. Please… go vote!

I can’t begin to express the anxiety I feel each time I check the election results website, so I won’t try. The presidential and WA governor races are both still too close to call, but I’m glad to see we have some good news to report: Patty Murray beat out Nethercutt (yey!) and Jim McDermott beat out Cassady (yey!).

Seems oddly appropriate that today is both Election Day and the Day of the Dead. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so awful? Or perhaps it’s because I’ve got a cold and there’s a bit of yucky stuff going on right now in life and I’ve got a huge, scary meeting tomorrow at work? Hmmm… I think I’m just ready for clarity and closure all around.

It’s my blog and I can be self centered and melodramatic and depressing if I want to, damn it.

I’m still sick.

I’m very angry about my work.

I’m depressed and angry about the loss of human rights, jobs, health care, medical research, women’s rights, environment, and 1,001 other things I’m too tired to write about right now.

I’m sad that the world has to endure four more years of a dictator like W and a bully like the US.

I know that I’m not alone in the anger and sadness, which sucks too. With over 55 million of us, there should be quite a resistance boiling up.

I’m no longer able to sleep. This has been slowly building and the last few nights have been the most restless/most sleepless, which brings us to…

I’m tired and exhausted.

I’m almost too depressed to blog (but when has that ever stopped me before?).

Folks seem to either be in the Angry camp, the Dazed zombie camp, the “I feel like someone died” camp, or in the “It’s time to start drinking heavily” camp. I’ve dabbled in all of them so far. There was a party I skipped, bar hopping I skipped, and a “let’s drink margaritas and watch dirty Spanish movies” idea that I decided sounded like a good idea. It was a good distraction.

One half of me wants to join Dunsany in leading the resistance. The other half of me (very strong at the moment) genuinely wants to move away. I want to be done with this country (I know opportunity and rights here are better than some, but can’t we work towards improvement, not destruction?). I want to be done with my job. I want to be done with the rainy depressing winters. I don’t want to sit idly by while the “leader of the free world” ravages onward. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep and ability to focus, but I think I might finally be ready to quit work and travel for a while. I wonder if I can change my Egypt plane ticket and give myself a few months to wander… which brings up back to my favorite daydream topic: where would I go next?

I somehow became PlantLady. I’ve never had plants but four years ago I was given ivy from a coworker and a Christmas cactus from a friend. The ivy grew so big it’s been repotted into four separate pots. The Christmas cactus has been repotted into a larger pot and it’s already outgrown that. I also bought a tiny spider plant earlier this year (IKEA impulse buy for only $1). I wasn’t expecting it to grow so large and have so many babies. I’ve repotted it into more than 30 separate spider plants and given away most of them to friends and coworkers. I somehow still have seven spider plants at home and five at work. Yep, it’s a plant-stravaganza over here and there’s no end in sight as the spider plants just continue producing more babies as we speak…

Nov 2000: During the last presidential election, JD and I left Texas to go off gallivanting in China with the old folks… sight seeing, shopping, and sledding down the snowy Great Wall. We’d done our early voting before heading to China and were eager to get election results. Each night we’d go to bed expecting to wake up in the morning with an answer from CNN about who would be the next president. Each morning we were let down.

Nov 2001: Dieter and I were newly dating and I was quite happy with the boy. There was good dialogue at my family gathering. Life was good and was full of friends and hope.

Nov 2002: I voted for the monorail and it won! :) I got a new cruiser (courtesy of Gregg’s Greenlake Cycles). I bought my (then) new digital camera to replace the previous one that was stolen by kids at a community carnival. I managed to buy tickets to my first ever Pearl Jam show before they sold out. Life was good and was full of friends and hope.

Nov 2003: Can you believe a year ago I spent November flitting about from Seattle to Boston to Baltimore to California? I even spent a week in Hawaii with one of my best friends. It was the first relaxing break I’d had in what felt like years. Yes, I travel often enough, but 3 days in Boston trying to fit in multiple friends, work meetings in Baltimore till 9 at night, family reunions, etc… do not fool yourself into thinking these are relaxing events with free time, down time, or me time. Hawaii was great… as was the Hawaii sunshine (thanks to a very generous, sick Charles). I couldn’t have asked for a better November.

Nov 2004: And apparently, I really couldn’t ask for a better Nov. It clearly wasn’t going to get any better. This November, the furthest I’ve been from home is work, and yes, you can tell I’m depressed. This year we got the bad news from the elections all too soon about the man who’d claim to be king. Locals here are left watching the too close to call governor’s race in hopes of some consolation prize. Still no word yet, but I’m hoping King County’s absentee ballots will bring the final push she needs to win the race without a recount.

In other news, things (amazingly!) only got worse today when I didn’t think there was much room to drop deeper into hell. Little did I know. Work was even more awful than I’ve ever imagined it could be. I cried at my desk a few times, then pulled myself together, got productive in my empty office and accomplished some meaningful, and some not so meaningful, tasks.

And in the best news of the week, since I felt like hell today I left work an hour early. Yey! When I got home I found that my corner grocery store had Ben & Jerry’s ice cream on sale. Yey! And when I walked across the street to the video store, the clerk was very helpful in my quest for a non-depressing movie. Yey! Either I looked really, really depressed or he must have known just how badly I needed a happy movie. For whatever the reason, he decided to erase all of my past due fines that popped up and continued the kindness by only charging me for one of my two rentals. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me every day. It’s as though I was meant to leave work early! Doesn’t make up for W being an awful dictator, but it’s nice to know that random strangers in the community can still look out for each other. I [heart] Fremont.