Month: May 2008

rules & bylaws

So here’s the thing — it sucks that Florida and Michigan decided to ignore the DNC’s rules and move their primaries up. My understanding is that they knew it would cost them seats at the convention.

I should probably preface this little rant with the disclaimer that I hope to vote for Obama (again) in the fall.

If the DNC had said, “Oh, we’ll seat everyone, regardless of when their primaries were held,” and were now considering taking away states’ delegates, I’d be pretty outraged. On the other hand, since the DNC said, “These primaries are invalid,” and the “playing by the rules” thing to do was to boycott the elections, it now seems…unfair…to then seat the delegates from those states. The counterpoint, of course, is that no one should be denied a vote simply because their state party ignored a fairly arbitrary rule.

But. An election in which one candidate doesn’t even appear on the ballot — not because he didn’t have the support, but because he wasn’t supposed to campaign in the state — doesn’t sound to me like a valid election.

In my mind, the ideal solution would have been for Michigan and Florida to hold do-over primaries later in the season. Oh well.

inspiration

I received today a very inspiring email. “I really miss your blog,” it said, and that was it. I thought about hitting reply and saying, “Me too,” but thought instead that I would just bite the bullet and write something (very) slightly more substantial, and post it — wait for it — to my blog.

So here it is.

I used to spend hours surfing the web and reading news stories looking for things to blog. Now I stumble upon something cool, or hear an interesting story on NPR, and think, “I should blog that.” Of course, I never do.

I used to think this blog was mostly an exercise in narcissism, but I think one of the biggest differences between my life in the blogging-days and my life in these non-blogging-days is to do with the extent to which my attention is focused inward, rather than outward. Those days, I had very little in my own life that was fulfilling or interesting to me, and I was passionate about widening my view, about seeing and understanding (or trying, at least) the things that mattered in the larger world. These days, I have a pretty full home and work life, scads of entertainment options (more on this later), and I have this sense that it’s time to work on understanding what happens next for me. Also, I have more disposable income, so surfing Amazon.com is now less frustrating than surfing NYTimes.com, which is largely just depressing.

The past few weeks, my Amazon time has dwindled as my Monster and Craigslist time has grown. Yes, I’m on the prowl for a job. I’m hoping for something with a title like “Business Analyst,” but I’ve sent resumes off for some totally unrelated things, too. I want something that stretches my brain, requires creative problem-solving, and has room for growth. Know of anything?

Entertainment. In the past few months I’ve acquired a Wii, an Amazon Kindle, and now a Wii Fit. I’ve got fun stuff to do out the wazoo. Next month, I get a new house, in midtown Harrisburg, in which to put it all. (We’re just renting, so I don’t really get the house, just use of its walls for a year.) Today I got an entertainment hybrid, in the form of the first round of the summer’s CSA share. Maybe doesn’t sound like entertainment to you, but I had a blast this evening looking up recipes containing mesclun mix, radishes, spring onions, and more. I was going to include a link, but apparently WordPress is broken, and when I link to things, it doesn’t display anything I’ve written after the tag. Anyway, making food utilizes those creative problem-solving skills, and they’re quite yummy.

Food and video games aside, I’m really enjoying the Kindle. It’s exactly what it’s intended to be, and it’s enhancing my experience of the world. I’m reading way more since I got it, because I never have to decide which book to take with me, and I have Newsweek wirelessly delivered every week, so I’m getting print news in a way I haven’t done in years. If I could blog from it (I suppose I could, just not easily), maybe you’d be reading more updates.

The Wii Fit is fun, too, in very different but still wholesome kind of way. Today’s only day two with it, so who knows if it’ll last, but I’ve never enjoyed fake hoola-hooping in my living room so much. The gluteus maximus is a little sore, though.

This is probably a very different sort of blog entry than the kind today’s emailer was envisioning that he missed. Maybe there’ll be something more relevant to other people’s lives later. Maybe not.