Sephy’s Platzish

Snoskred and I have been discussing politics lately (sometimes the discussions have been quite testy, but I’m coming around quickly), and tonight we had a discussion about the political conventions and why people go to them or watch them. We figured out that the real reason people go to the conventions isn’t the politicians, or the crappy bands.

It’s all about the swag, or "Stuff We Ain’t Getting."

Yep, forget the speeches, the bad covers of songs, and the symbolism of anything a convention is, it’s all about getting random junk like a sign proclaiming your candidate as the one, and even some random other junk like a t-shirt.

So, the conversation goes to the Republican convention, which is in St. Paul, MN. The question is whether it’s far or not - and it isn’t. In fact, it’s a drive that is doable and back in the space of a single day - a proven fact from a few trips there and back when I went to school at the University up there.

My first thought, though was nah, this isn’t going to work, but then I started playing with the idea, it didn’t sound too far fetched (other than explaining why I was wanting to suddenly spend money to go to Minnesota). In fact, I even started looking at how you could attend the convention, even for one day - sign up as a volunteer.

Heck, I even figured that, at current gas prices, I’d need around $90 to do the trip (figuring 600 miles at 25 miles per gallon, and gas at $3.75 per gallon - or about 99¢/L, but apparently you can get it for as low as $3.40 in the Twin Cities), and I’d be able to save money by putting my life on the line by sleeping at a rest area.

I did some searches for hotels and found the lowest rate was $50 per night, plus tax - that was at the Motel 6 near the Mall of America.

I’ve been meaning to get back to the Twin Cities one of these days. What do you think? Should I take a complete flyer and see if I could sign up as a volunteer for a day up there?

Just quietly, I’m thinking not, but it’d be fun if I could.

Either that, or I’ll stick to volunteering locally, which hopefully they’ll have something for me to do this week since I’m finally available as I don’t have to work on Friday this week…

Before I get to my my main point, a poll I’d like to have your opinion on -

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Now, this is the first in what could become a series of posts about the upcoming election.

Recently, I’ve heard about something that, had it not been pointed out to me, I would not have noticed or cared about at all. Truth be told, however, I don’t care about it even after knowing about it - a person’s looks are not enough to make me practically abandon my personal viewpoints.

What is this issue that is supposedly so important? It’s a rumored combover on the head of John McCain. I’ve seen pictures of his head from the front, and it does appear that it is there. Apparently, this is big enough of an affront to common sense that he is ineligible to be voted for by anyone.

That is where the logic begins to fall apart for me. I can see how if you completely disagree with someone’s political viewpoints, something like a combover might be something to add to your reasons for not liking a person. And, sure, looks can influence a decision - look what happened in 1960 after Nixon was at the debate without the makeup and not feeling well.

However, the combover isn’t something that many people see as an important issue - otherwise you wouldn’t have the race as close as it is now. Maybe people don’t care about it, or maybe they’re just so stuck in on their candidate to not make a difference.

Personally, and this is something that I didn’t do in the first few elections I participated in (though in 2006, I did vote for the Conservative Party candidate - I think I was one of about 500 who did in my county…that was on not much basis though), I’ve come to realize that the vote is something that I should take as a major consideration.

If you do vote, you should do so only if you are informed and know how the candidates stand on issues which are important to themselves. As it stands now, I am still leaning towards Mr. McCain - combover and all - but I haven’t taken the time to research all the candidates’ positions on issues.

There are still two months until Election day, and with that plenty of time to do my research on the candidates and choose one to vote for, with an informed decision.

Heck, I might even be able to say, no matter who won the election, "Don’t blame me, I voted for (insert name of some random 3rd Party Candidate here)".

Just as an addendum - I mentioned the combover to a coworker, and their response was the rolly-eyes. I only mention that as a gauge of one person’s reaction - the margin of error would likely be somewhere around 99.95% (even though most surveys consider 500 enough to count for a population of 300 million…).

Oh, and another addition - I hate the "my friends" line, especially the way that McCain says it.

Yeah, big deal, right? Everyone has their own collections - video tapes, music, footy cards, baseball cards, and so on and so forth. However, the collection I’ve been building involves this site.

No, it’s not a collection of links, but rather a collection of unfinished drafts - all of which are in longhand on notebook paper - which have been written at various times at work. I first noticed the collection building when I didn’t have any of my current vice - crossword puzzles - to do. I had brought along a binder (which I had taken on Sunday for another purpose, but changed the contents for different notebooks), and I looked in some of the pages, and found a ton of drafts that I had started, but didn’t finish.

Including the ones in Windows Live Writer, all up I have something like 7 drafts to finish up. The ironic thing is that I had started preparations for one of the posts by putting the item I am talking about into the computer so that I can post it.

My goal for the next couple of weeks or so is to actually get these posts finished and posted, including one on a topic I was suggested to blog about over a year ago.

While the tone of this week is predominantly sad, there have been a couple of occasions for me to laugh, generally at other people’s stupidity (or just silly things that had been said). So, here are 3 scenarios which I faced just in the course of this day (Tuesday, not Wednesday when this is being published ). However, one really isn’t totally funny, but involves me having a bit of a saving grace.

They Speak THAT there?

I was alerted to the fact that an episode of the PBS travel show Rick Steves’ Europe featuring London was on the Create channel today. During the show, he was explaining how the Tube works, and he actually uttered this line -

Lost? Don’t worry because most of the locals speak English.

Really? I always thought they spoke Swahili or Mandarin in Tube stations…this was a shocking revelation that I would have never expected. That being said, however, Rick Steves is really the best (American) authority there is when it comes to travelling in Europe. Normally he has rock-solid information, and if you look at it in this context, you don’t get much more rock solid than that.

Gee…I wonder why he got stopped?

After work tonight, I went out to the south from my place of work in search of some less-expensive gas for my car (details of that in my next snippet). When you go to the south, you have to cross the freeway, and that involves a series of three stoplights (one is for a service road that leads to a hotel and restaurant complex, along with some banks and other services, the other two are for the freeway).

At the first of the freeway stoplights, traffic going south was stopped for the red light, and then, as they work, the light for traffic coming off of the freeway from the east was green. The first car in the line was a police car, marked and in black. Apparently the bright spark in the left lane didn’t notice this minor fact.

So what does he do? Go. While the light is still red. He didn’t even make it halfway across the freeway bridge before the cop had his lights on and getting ready to stop him, which he did just after the other stoplights. Wouldn’t you have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation? By the way, the fine for failing to obey a traffic signal is somewhere in the region of $150 and 3 points on your license.

Always pay attention to road signs, ok?

Yeah, I kinda didn’t… :blush:

As I was driving into the city that is past the gas station that I usually stop at (which was only 1 cent per gallon cheaper) in my search for cheap gas, I got to a point where I decided to turn around. This particular city is renowned for having confusing streets and you can get lost easily. I guess the good news is that I didn’t get lost, but the bad news could have been me either in a heap of trouble with the police or in a hospital.

That is, if it wasn’t for a guy in a truck yelling at me about the street. You see, I had gone to the end of what was a split set of one-way streets, and I had assumed that because it was a one-way street intersecting the other half of the one-way pair, that this street was also one-way. It didn’t click in my head that there were lights going both ways on the street, meaning that it is a 2-way street. And I wondered why there weren’t signs talking about left turns on red…

Anyway, the light turns green, and I do what I thought was right (and what would have been right if this were a one-way street) and turned into the lane closest to me. The guy behind me turns into the correct lane, which I thought was about 3 lanes too far over. He goes and passes me, yelling to me "This isn’t a one-way!" I promptly swerve into the correct lane behind him and his truck, and when we get to the next intersection that has lights, I went into the right lane and thanked him for letting me know. He said that he did it so that I didn’t get hurt. It goes to prove that there are good folks out there.

In fact, if it were one of those Miller commercials, he’d probably have been given a bottle of the product they’re selling because he was genuine.

Oh, and the gas? I wound up getting it at the station I went past in the first place after all - it was $4.169 per gallon (or $1.102 per liter) there - the highest I’ve paid so far. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to come down appreciably at all, thanks to the speculators playing their games.

Pretty much anyone who has a pet knows the significance of the Rainbow Bridge. I first heard about it around ten years ago when we received a piece of paper from our vet on the passing of the first dog I remember - a black lab, who was found at home by my brother having passed away after being to the vet the previous day.

Back in January, I asked about some strange behaviours that my dog was having involving licking her legs. The advice was to take her to the vet, but unfortunately we couldn’t afford to do it at that time, however, we did take her to our vet when, on the second day that I was working, she started limping heavily and favoring her right rear leg. It turned out that it was just a pulled muscle, but the doctor also took a look at the bump on her face. He made the independent determination that it was a cancerous - a melanoma.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure that this could be right because of the fact that he didn’t do any kind of analysis other than looking at it. However, he did give us some meds for her, and said that time was running out for her - nothing specific or anything, but sooner rather than later.

Now that we’re 4 months after the diagnosis, the growth on her face, which started out as a slight bump, has grown to something that has almost doubled the width of her face. On Friday, I noticed that there was some skin showing, but nothing major. However, Saturday comes around, and I notice that the skin has been broken. At that point, I think we had come to the determination that it was time to make a move.

The vet’s office is closed on weekends, so we have waited until today to make the call to the vet. At first we were going to have my brother come out to take her over to the vet, but in thinking about it, it is only fitting that since she is "my" dog (I even had my Senior pictures taken with her), I should be the one who does this, and to be the last one to take off her leash, and to take some last photos of her.

That’s something I’ve done a lot of these last couple of days - take photos of her. She’s been laying quietly on the floor, or on the couch, and mostly sleeping. If she’s up, she’ll be licking herself because (and this is my thought as to why) she’s trying to take away some of the excess saliva that she has in her mouth. However, it’s just been a lot of sleeping on her side the last day or so.

All that is left for us to do is make a call to the vet (which I know will be hard to do), and to have her set up with an appointment tomorrow for us to take her in for one last examination and probably then to be taken away and being given a proper and humane farewell, along with her crossing the Rainbow Bridge.

Lastly, here’s a photo of her from better times - the beginning of last year -