Category: My World (Page 11 of 15)

The elections are *almost* over, the democrats took the house, they may have taken the Senate, and Mike won!!! What a day of celebration today is. Mike’s victory was decisive at almost 20 points ahead of his opponent. And Mike ran a clean campaign. There was no bad mouthing of his opponent (or his wife), no stealing of signs, no fake endorsements and no changing of party affiliation to sway voters. It’s nice to know that sometimes the best candidate does win – even if it takes a herculean effort to get there.
We were lucky in that we had the support of many, many people. A volunteer graphic designer made the website, the signs and the flyers. Our local coffeeshop owner made and printed flyers, gave us a home base and tons of free coffee. And tons of volunteers provided advise, made phone calls, walked precincts, etc. etc. etc.
Mike, of course, spent innumerable hours working on his campaign: getting endorsements, getting financial contributions (we had to raise $10K!), schmoozing with people, learning more about the job, calling people, walking precincts, handing out flyers, you name it. Blood, sweat and tears went into this work. OK, maybe not that many tears, though the girls did cry a couple of time when daddy had to go to yet another meeting.
But alas, it’s all done now. As hard as school board work may be, it’ll be a cakewalk in comparison to what running the race was. I’m ready to relax, enjoy a couple of days sans kids and sans campaign and feel free again.

We have our number in the National Do Not Call list, so when I received a telemarketing call this morning, I wanted to know who the company calling me was. They said the name was National Information Network based on Burbank California. They wouldn’t give me an address or telephone number, so I asked them if they were scammers. The first time they said yes, and as I couldn’t believe my ears, I asked again, and they hang up on me! I guess it was too much honesty.
So now you are warned, if you get a call from a company calling itself the National Information Network, you know it’s a scam.

Last night I got a message from someone in Colombia telling me about the disappearance of his sister – a woman with no political activities at all, save for some union work. I published the notice and was about to write the letters asking the government to investigate what happened, when I find out her body has appeared. The brother, now, is being threatened.
Y hoy, en el día de los muertos!

This election’s California ballot includes a yes or no vote on a myriad of judges. Of course, we’ve never heard of most of them so it’s hard to decide who to vote for. To make it easier, we decided to vote for those who were appointed by Democratic governors and against those appointed by Republican ones. This meant that we voted yes for Sandra Margulies and Maria Rivera and no for everyone else.