The Elections for the (Poor, Uninformed, Easily Swayed) Masses

Okay, seeeeeriously, I'm getting sick of being talked down to by pundits and news reporters and political experts and various talk radio hosts about the presidential and vice presidential nominees. I'm sure this is getting blogged about literally all over the world, but I feel like if have to at least get this down so that 10 years from now I'll remember what was going on.

Some of you may not remember, but Barack Obama gave a little speech last night accepting his nomination for president at the DNC. Do you remember that? Did you talk about it today? Yes, you remember, but no you probably didn't talk about it because John McCain's camp made a brilliant move: they announced their nominee for vice president, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, who no one has heard of until today. That incredible speech that Barack Obama gave should have been playing on every media outlet today. It was measured, it was well thought out, it was impeccably delivered. 43 minutes after he started I was staring at the TV in surprise. I've been a luke-warm supporter of him since campaigning started- I'm a Hillary fan. But after I heard a speech with substance I felt a lot better and I know he could help this world, not just the country. And that he has a plan, and that he can stand up to the tough stuff. If I had the money I'd go help his campaign.

But no, today was Sarah Palin's day. Her irritating voice has been all over the news all day long. She's a conservative Christian. She's got a lot of kids (which translates into soccer mom, which gives an image of warmth and sweetness and cookie baking). She's all for drilling in Alaska. She's a member of the NRA. And she's against abortion.

And SOMEHOW this translates into a move that McCain made to try to get Hillary supporters on his side. Hunh? How could this woman be more unlike Hillary? I see absolutely no resemblance. And it is really getting on my nerves because if this were a white man there would be little or no talk about how he could sway Hillary supporters. According to the media, women support women because they're women. Not based on their convictions or experience or ideas. Sort of like how it MUST be that black people vote for black people because they're black. And apparently these two huge groups of people never voted when there were a couple of white men up for office, because how on earth could they relate? And gosh, what about those black women? What will they do NOW? I mean, elect a black man into office, or elect a president who is old and has health problems so that maybe he'll keel over and a woman will take over? I just don't get it. When we compare potential vice presidents, who has done more for women? Who is talking about the fact that there is still unequal pay for women and who has done major things for victims of domestic violence? Joe Biden, the old white vice presidential guy. You can't judge a book by its cover and you can't judge presidential candidates by their sex or race or religion or sexual preference or disability, or any of the other things that have no bearing on who a person is.

Whew, rant over. But I have to tell you that I am wishing the election was over already. I remember the disappointment when the Republicans won out for the last two elections, and I really don't want to feel that again.

Fancy Stepstool

So remember in my last post, the one right under this one, where I said I didn't have a chair or any step-stool sort of object so I used my bedside table to hang my window mistreatment? Well I decided it was high time I fixed THAT (how would I get high enough up to clean the top of my fridge?) so here's what I did.

I took some upholstery fabric that I had lying around:
I found my roll of duct tape:


A plastic crate just like one of these:

And a high-density foam chair cushion that I found at Jo-Ann's:

I cut and shaped and taped and fooled with fabric until I got this:


It's actually really comfortable to sit on because the high-density foam is super thick and I can't feel the ridges in the bottom of the crate even when I stand on it. It looks pretty cute just hanging out in the living room too!

And, as I told my sister, the whole time I was looking for the picture of the high-density foam I kept thinking, "Lorraine, you are my density. I mean- destiny." Which just makes me giggle.

THUNK gfdgfdfdas;foiurash;ofbsifdouaytrphjsgfdklsjbfgkdf

Sorry, I just swooned and my head hit the keyboard. I love me some George McFly.

My very own window mistreatment

I have been a fan of the Nester for a long time and LOVE her posts about home decoration using a few yards of fabric, a hot glue gun, and some upholstery tacks. She is one talented lady! I don't know how she does it- using fringe and pompom trim and different prints and it never looks tacky. It looks designer. I get jealous.

So here's what I did. I took some polyester fabric from the home-dec section of Jo-ann's. (Okay, I didn't TAKE it, I paid for it. That sounded all wrong.) It was fraying something terrible and I didn't want to sew the slippery stuff so I lit a candle and singed all the edges LIGHTLY so as not to burn the building down. I opened a window, it was stinky!

Then I started playing. I dragged a nightstand to the window (I don't have a ladder or even chairs and the table was closer) and jumped up there with my fabric and some upholstery tacks. I fussed and draped and jumped down to get a look from far away and the jumped back up and played some more.I found the tassel yesterday at walmart and I slapped that sucker up there too, check it out:



















I think the results were worth the 15 minutes it took to do the project! The pictures are sort of disgraceful- it is really hard to take pictures of windows. Then I had to lighten them up enough so that you could see that the fabric wasn't a big chunk of black, but that made it look like the fabric was see-through- it isn't. Also, mini-blinds are courtesty of my landlord.

How to Win an Olympic Medal

A while ago I wrote a post about how to be a gracious interviewee on NPR or other media. When a host thanks you, you should never, ever say "You're welcome," at least in my opinion. You should say something along the lines of, "Thank you for having me." Gracious. A little humble. You could be the coolest most laid back person on earth, but if you say "You're welcome" you start to look pompous.

And now I've found that the same rules apply to winning a gold medal at the Olympics. After watching several medal ceremonies, here's what I've decided you do (because I'm now the manners person I guess):

#1 Shake hands with the people winning Silver and Bronze, and smile at them. But not too enthusiastically. They did just lose, don't make them feel like you're lording it over them.

#2 If you don't sing along to your national anthem, at least mouth the words. Otherwise it looks like you don't actually belong to the country you just won the medal for. And there's something wrong with that.

#3 Tears are good. At least a little mistiness around the eyes. There's nothing wrong with working your ass off to achieve a dream and then actually achieving that dream and having it all hit you while you're standing on the podium. This applies to men and women.

There you have it, my official medal receiving guide.

Well, it's Tuesday

I like to think that after being in the corporate world for over 6 years now I'm pretty good at handling myself in the workplace. Making small talk in the elevator, telling my employees that they can't take vacation on a particular week, and mastering the art of the succinct email are all skills I've become pretty good at. But there's still one that stumps me to no end.

I'll call it "Days of the Week Chit-Chat".

Every time I ask a select group of people how they're doing, they give me a shrug and a smirky sort of face and say, "Well, it's Tuesday."

Because obviously I'm supposed to infer from this that it is still 3 WHOLE DAYS from Friday and how the heck do I think they feel anyway? It's just Tuesday.

But they also do this on Wednesday and Thursday, and on Friday there is the variation that instead of a smirk there is usually a smile.

If you don't like your job that much, you should go wait tables or something with a really irregular schedule. Then see how dumb your days of the week chit chat is when you shrug and sigh and say, "Well, it's Saturday." And people will look at you like you're a moron.

Hello all 2 people who might read this blog. I'm back.