Sean and I got a tree yesterday and everyone (my family) keeps congratulating us. It’s the first tree of either of our adult lives, meaning not at our parent’s house. My Aunt bought us snowman ornaments that coordinate with our birth months and my mother told me to take pictures. I think this means they think we’re ~serious~.
I’ve been ignoring you, and it totally wasn’t on purpose. I don’t even know what I’ve been up to but suddenly it’s December tomorrow and I haven’t uploaded photos from Election Day or my trip to Puerto Rico in mid-October. No blog entries of substance and about 250 words on a new essay.
Here’s the thing though, I’m pretty frickin’ happy right now. I keep rooting around to see if there’s something deeper or sinister or suppressed inside me but nope, I don’t think so. Just laying low and loving it.
Long live cross stitching and marathon sessions of the last season of the West Wing.
We hit the streets tonight in Cleveland, dropping lit well past dark and in the rain. We finally stopped when we started freaking out the folks at home–can’t blame them, no one wants knocks on their door that late and dark in the evening.
The mailboxes, doors, and porches were loaded with Obama lit though and the people we reached had either already voted (probably about 75% of them) or were planning on voting tomorrow and knew exactly where to go. Good news.
The Obama lit is beautiful. As I said in my tweet, Frame It On Your Wall beautiful. The above is a small example and nowhere near the coolest we’ve collected. On Sunday outside the Board of Elections they passed out posters with Barack quoting Dr. King and talking about “the urgency of now.” Sean claimed it for his office, brat.
One more cool thing and then I’m hitting the hay–the Obama campaign has Red, White, and Blue GOTV teams. The Blue and White team are doors and phones (can’t remember which) and the Red team is focused on poll sites (getting food, umbrellas & even entertainment to voters waiting in line). It’s so cool. When you walk into an Obama HQ you head to the section with the Red, White, or Blue team poster hanging and get your assignment.
Damn, these guys are good.
I intended to get a post up about Puerto Rico but as soon as we got back into town, I plunged myself into local and national campaigning.
At the moment, I write from the Holiday Inn in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Sean and I are here to do “voter protection” tomorrow and will head out to the doors as soon as he finishes up some work.
Yesterday we attended our observer training at a big ol’ church on Euclid Avenue. About 200 lawyers, law students, and politicos (that’d be me I guess) sat through a couple hours of anecdotes and instructions from Mark Griffin, the Democratic counsel for Cuyahoga County. As out-of-state and outside-the-polls observers, our job is to look for voter intimidation/suppression, calm the folks waiting in long lines, warn against wearing any Obama/McCain into the booth, educate voters about the “double bubble,” and otherwise look out for any trouble.
After the training we were lucky enough to catch the Obama/Bruce Springsteen rally downtown. We knew nothing about it until we arrived in Cleveland and kept pinching ourselves all throughout the event. Like really? He’s a couple blocks from our hotel? Sweeeet. After I texted my brother to brag about our good fortune, he wrote back “there is no god.” He’ll be 18 in a few months and is bummed he can’t vote.
Anyway, I’m rambling here and have things to do (like visit my polling place tomorrow and see how far it is from hotel). More later and, as I did yesterday, I’ll be tweeting from my post on the ground.
