Livingston, I Presume

New job

So I have a normal job now. It's part-time, but it has some benefits and it promises to be fun and challenging. The real challenge will be seeing if I can re-adjust to life in an office with Other People. I've been working from home for more than three years now, and while I feel that my discipline is pretty good (i.e. I try not to work in actual bunny slippers), it's not as if I've had to be truly socially acceptable for quite some time. It should be interesting.

The best thing about it--besides the obvious regular paycheck and *gasp* 401k and paid sick/vacation and employer contribution to Social Security and Medicare--is that it will allow me to get out in the community and meet people, something that can be difficult for us home office types. The other best thing is that it's part-time, which means I don't have to give up the freelancing. I do feel that writing is where I want to be long-term, but anything that helps me develop my skills outside of that while also letting me use the communications stuff is good in my book.

Ever mindful of Dooce et al., I'll keep my new workplace private, thankyouverymuch. In fact, I hope this will be the last you hear of it.

Back to...North Dakota?

We arrived home from California yesterday evening after mostly good roads, with a mostly sunny toddler. Really, we were unbelievably lucky, having enjoyed amazing weather in the Bay Area (sunshine! every day! in Northern California!) and dry roads all the way to Belgrade, about an hour from our house. Still, it was hard not to be a little depressed from Belgrade on, since none of the mountains were visible (and none of the other cars on the road, either, but who's quibbling?) and it was 8 degrees outside.

We made it to Livingston in time for dinner--mmmmm...what's left in the fridge after 11 days?--but seem to have been involved in some sort of whole-town tornado situation in which our lovely mountain burg has been transplanted en masse to the flat and snowy reaches of North Dakota. I know that when we left here, there were mountains. Five ranges, in fact. Now, I see no mountains. No discernable difference between nine and noon. And it's f*ing cold.

But I digress. The trip was great, and the drive overall was not as grueling as I had expected. We did it in two days both ways, with overnight stops in Nevada. I tried hard to like Nevada, and indeed I did very much like the flat, wide expanse of Highway 80. It was well maintained and evenly graded, just as the AAA guidebook had promised. In certain portions, there were some very nice mountain vistas, and we managed to survive one whole stretch of the day thanks to a double-rotored helicopter transporting telephone lines and creating v. much excitement among the toddlers in the car. (OK, we thought it was damn cool, too.)

But you know? It's hard to come away from Nevada feeling entirely good about the experience. In Elko, we had booked our night at a hotel with a pool. We paid extra for it and knew it would be worth it because it would give us something to bribe the boy with when the going got tough. We talked it up. We cajoled. We wheeled and dealed. And when we arrived, the pool was closed, owing to the shenanigans of guests the previous evening. Through gritted teeth, we agreed to take the room anyhow, and we downgraded Connery's expectations so that a hot tub would suffice. When we had changed into our swimwear and padded down there, we were met with a chemical soup so toxic that the water foamed up a good three inches and my skin immediately turned an alarming shade of red. Even more lovely were the dozens of cigarette butts surrounding the hot tub and the half-empty beer bottle in the corner. So classy! We soaked long enough to say we'd done it and then ran back to the room for a Silkwood shower to try to get the chemicals off.

For dinner, we tried a local establishment that billed itself as a Family Fun Center (with Toddler Corner!). We figured the food would be passable at best, but it was important--again--to try to offer some rewards for Connery's good behavior. Instead, we walked into a strip mall/warehouse and were assaulted by the smell of bad pet store. (Any of you Great Falls readers remember Jack's Pet Store downtown? It smelled just like that.) The toddler corner seemed to consist of chairs pulled over to the video games to allow a 3-footer to reach Mortal Combat.

By contrast, the Pizza Hut seemed like some kind of paradise. As we left Elko the next morning, we stopped for gas. We didn't think to check the prices, because everything had been about the same all over (around $2.49/gallon), but Chip had already pumped in half a tank before we noticed that this store, by virtue of its proximity to the highway, had decided to inflate its prices over $3/gallon. The Chevron right across the underpass from this Chevron was charging $2.40/gallon. I wonder how many tourists they get with that? I wonder how many of them make fervent vows never to return to Elko only to stay in Wells on the way home and immediately contemplate reneging on said vow.

But I should stop now, lest you think that I am totally negative and the choir whiner and all that. Because overall--and I will document this later in song and story--the trip rocked. We saw tons of friends, went to the beach, sang at a dear friend's wedding. shopped until we dropped, rode the cable car, drank Frappuccinos at an alarming rate, and got to spend Thanksgiving with a great Ritter contingent. Plus our friend Matt totally kitted out our iBook G4, replacing our 40-gig hard drive with an 80-gig one AND throwing in an 80-gig external hard drive just for fun. The thing runs like we just bought it yesterday.

But really, wouldn't you rather hear me bitch about Nevada?

Going dark

I'm taking a little break for Thanksgiving. Sometime last summer we thought it would be a good idea to go to California for the holiday. And drive there. That last part isn't sounding like such a great plan right about now. Oh well. Here's to clear skies and dry roads!

Weirdest search yet

I think most bloggers can't resist checking their traffic and where it comes from. Oh, sure, we play cool, but we all want to know how people are finding us. A lot of people come here after searching for the famous phrase that is my blog's title, and a lot of others come through "Prague" and "birth" searches. Jay sends me a lot of traffic as well.

In addition to these, I've had some pretty *ahem* unusual google search strings bring people here. Today's takes the cake, however.

"Pipe insulation masturbation"

I'm trying very hard not to think about that.

One of the best day-after posts

While my first reaction to most of the election results has been to dance around my house shrieking "SQUEE!" at the top of my lungs (I'm not lying when I tell you that my jaw actually hurt yesterday evening from smiling so damn much), I am equally feeling the pressure on my party to be up to this monumental task. That's why I was glad to see this post on Democratic Underground highlighted on Salon's Daou Report.

Written by "The Witch", it is an open letter to "Dismayed Conservatives":

I hereby make these promises to you.

We will protect your lives and livelihoods.

We will listen to and respect your beliefs.

We will never try to force you to change your religion, sexual orientation, or first language.

We will do our best to reduce the number of abortions in our country.

We will have no tolerance for corruption and cronyism, even in our own party.

ESPECIALLY in our own party.

We will never tell you that you are unpatriotic.

We will never tell you that your opinion doesn't count.

We will never waste your lives for power.

We will hold our leaders to a high ethical standard and when they succumb to lust for power, WE WILL HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.

If we forget this, please, please, please, remind us.

We need you to do this. You are America as much as we are.

Let's go.

I can only hope that this is the spirit into which our new leaders go. It must be unbelievably tempting to give as good as the Dems have gotten, but I hope they will collectively resist and try to make the radical swing from a bickering body into a governing one.

Not waiting to exhale anymore

What an amazing turn of events. Really, until the last possible minute, I was sure that every candidate I cared about was going to go down. Because, you know, that's the way it's almost always been. I had a good friend in college--a committed Democrat like me--who went on to become a campaign manager in the late 1990s and into the 2000s. Talk about a bad time to be trying to get Democrats elected. He told me once when we saw each other when I was still in grad school that he had begun to feel like he had the reverse Midas touch. All he had to do was sign on to a campaign and he could be sure it would be a losing one.

That's how I was starting to feel. That and having been punched in the stomach repeatedly while being told that My People were spineless, planless, Godless traitors who somehow still managed to control the media enough to kill Christmas. I coped with it while we were abroad. It was easy to distance myself from bad decision that Americans made, because I had separated myself from the whole country with a big-ass ocean. While I was sipping red wine and swilling espresso with my Gauloise-smoking euroFriends,  I could cooly dissect my country and shrug it off by saying that I not only had voted for Gore but had also had the good sense to pack up my commie-red jammies and move away from a country in which elections can be stolen, "enemies" can be tortured, and lies can lead us into war.

Then we moved back.

Suddenly, I didn't have that separation and, what's more, it wasn't like we had chosen to move to the Castro district or even Missoula. We were in a town with 7500 people, a good number of whom might be tempted to use liberal as an epithet rather than a descriptor. Still, I didn't start to lose my mind until a month later, when Bush was re-elected. Since then, it's been just one Bizarro news day after another. Until now.

I can be sad about Lindeen losing to Rehberg. I really would have liked to see a truck driver's daughter unseat a guy with one of the highest net worths in all of Washington. I can be angry that the voters of Bozeman somehow thought returning Vile Roger to the legislature was the right choice. I can bemoan the projected Montana legislative split.

But then I think about Santorum going down and I just can't stop grinning. (Although I did, I must admit, feel bad for his little daughter at the concession speech. She was obviously crushed by her dad's defeat.) I think about the voters of South Dakota smacking down idiots like Bill "Rape-Isn't-Rape-Unless-It's-Done-Brutally-and-Savagely-to-a-Christian-Virgin" Napoli. And yes, I think about the 200,000 or so Montanans who said to Conrad Burns, "Don't try to buy me with your appropriations." (I try desperately not to think about the almost 200,000 Montanans who were ready to sign on for another six years with the joker, but hey! I'm trying to be inspirational here!) And the 2,150 Livingston residents who blackened in the oval for Bob Ebinger, a true progressive and pretty much the direct opposite of his incumbent opponent.

Since blogging is all about me, I can finish by telling you that it just feels damn good to do some work for people who win for a change. The quixotic underdog thing makes for great pathos, but it was getting old.

Don't mind me

I'm just sitting here at my computer, refreshing madly.

Count, damn you, count!

UPDATE! The Great Falls Tribune is reporting that Tester has declared victory, while the Helena Independent Record has a running banner claiming that Tester will officially announce at 11 a.m.

Still refreshing madly.

UPDATING THE UPDATE! The Associated Press has declared Tester the winner!!!

I still may get some work done today yet!

HOLY F**KING MOTHER OF SWEET BABY CRAB CAKES UPDATE!!! Not only has Tester been officially named the winner and made his live announcement, but NPR has just reported that Bush is expected to announce the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld at his news conference.

No working. Must party. Who can party? Why is today a work day? Why?

If the Republicans win in Livingston...

...it's only because the Democrats--in their smaller, more fuel-efficient cars--were all blown to Big Timber trying to get to the polls.

No semis have blown over yet--to my knowledge--but Chip's barbecue (a big, manly one) was blown halfway across our deck before I rescued it.

My worst idea today? Agreeing to do a honk-n-wave for Monica Lindeen. Let's just say that the combination of 75 mph winds and a large campaign sign are not exactly compatible.

Luck, be a lady tonight.

Just do it

There is nothing I can write in this space that probably hasn't been said elsewhere, at least about tomorrow's election. (On parenting a toddler and repairing cars with diapers I might have more luck with originality.) I will therefore make just one more impassioned plea:

If you care about the future of the United States, please vote--TODAY--for Jon Tester, Monica Lindeen, and, if you live in my general vicinity, Bob Ebinger, John Vincent, Jan Counter, and Clay McDonald. I can now say that I've met each and every one of these candidates, and I came away very impressed.

Jon Tester and Monica Lindeen came to Livingston on Saturday for a rally (along with Max Baucus, Linda McCulloch, and a double-booked Brian Schweitzer who dissed us for some cattlemen, but I don't mind). It was amazing to see Tester, especially, in person. He has a sort of charisma that I really didn't anticipate. Even Connery noticed it. There was a full-page Tester ad in the paper on Sunday morning, and Connery saw it and said, "That's Jon Tester! I like him!"

Me, too.

But at this point, I'm not going to change anyone's mind. It's all a turnout game--one that I intend to help the Democrats win. I'll see you at the polls. If you need a ride, call me.

Had to happen eventually

Here it is, my semi-political blogger's obligatory link to Wonkette. It's a good one though, and worth your clicky clicky time. "Crazy Conrad", as Wonkette pegs him, is getting more national play--and not in a good way--than the last truly famous Montanan, the Unabomber. (Who was not really a Montanan since he was born in Chicago and went to Harvard, but I quibble.)