Code Neon Blue!

(x-posted like woah!)

One of the things that impresses me about the Udall campaign so far is how eager they are to try new ways to reach out to voters. For example, Friday afternoon they held a conference call where Mark Udall talked with a batch of bloggers. I’m not sure how I made the list, since I am a bit of a new bee in the pol-blogging world. (I’m not too proud to admit this was a big boost to my self-esteem!) Since they were nice enough to include me, I feel like it’s only polite to actually, you know, blog about the call.

Caveat: The call started at 3:00 Mountain time, just a little bit after my son got home from school. I probably missed some details due to one ear being subjected to a dramatic soliloquy about a package of computer games he bought with his own money which STILL has not arrived nearly two weeks after the purchase.

Mr. Udall’s topic was his recent visit to Afghanistan. He did a short introduction more or less retelling, in his own words, some of the background info that he had sent out the day before in an email. He then took questions.

I didn’t ask any. Foreign policy isn’t one of my strong points, and everyone else was doing pretty well coming up with thoughtful things to ask. I just sat back to listen and learn. One of the things I learned was that if I get a chance to do something like this in the future, I should take notes with a pen instead of trying to type one-handed. My notes? Not remarkably useful….

The text of Mr. Udall’s email is up at SquareState.net right now, and will probably appear soon on his own web site, so I won’t paraphrase it here. Instead, I will just share some thoughts I came away with.

I was impressed that his answers didn’t sound like pre-scripted sound bites. I feel like he has spent a lot of time studying and THINKING about Afghanistan and its neighbors, and a bad situation that is not showing many signs of changing for the better any time soon. His ideas on what to do about it won’t please everyone, but it seems to me he is at least framing them around practicality and a sincere desire to fix the problems. That’s a whole lot better than what we have in that department NOW.

My other conclusion is that the more I try to give equal mental time to all the important issues, the more I become inclined to cut at least SOME politicians a little more slack. There’s SO MUCH that is wrong, that needs fixing NOW. Trying to do everything at once seems overly-optimistic, but trying to pick and choose which fire to put out first? Daunting. (Or is that just me being a Libra?)

Maybe what we need is to put people in office who have a strong commitment to doing what is right, but are mentally flexible about how that is to be done. From what I have seen and heard so far, Mark Udall sounds like that type of candidate. I really hope I’m right.

I guess I technically am, today, anyway. I’ve spent a lot of the day so far working on the mailing we are going to do for the Prowers County Dems. I’m a net junkie, but most people aren’t, so we need to use the services of the good old Post Office to get the word out.

VAN (Voter Access Network?) is a great resource, but Murphy never sleeps, so I had to fiddle things around a little bit before I could get the labels to start flowing out of my printer. My mistake was in following the on-line instructions to the letter. Really, I should know better than THAT by now!

The labels themselves make a funny story. Jillane had a bunch she couldn’t use, but when she brought them to a meeting, it turned out they were the tractor feed kind. But luckily, Susan L could use those in HER business, and she had a big box of label sheets to trade for it.

Except they were 33 to a page size, which is not a size the interface at VAN recognizes. However, MY printing program will accept them, and what seems like several million other sizes, with no argument. So *I* kept the 33s and bought some new ones in the favored size. (I hope we don’t have to try to explain all that in our financial report!)

We are trying to make the postage cost pull its weight, so there are to be THREE events announced on the postcard. Which means we have had to plan and consult and switch things around at least half a dozen times since we started working on the project, trying to nail down all the dates and times and locations and speakers. As soon as we hear back from one more person, though, we are ready!

For the next tasks: printing, cutting, and adding stamps and addresses. Woo.

In an effort to be efficient, I started trying to keep a little notepad file of ideas about things to say here. As you can tell, the plan has had minimal success so far, but I’m all about the perseverance….

If you keep up with the Colorado news, you probably heard about the “adverse possession” case in Boulder, where a couple (retired judge and lawyer, I think?) went to court and legally swiped a chunk of their neighbor’s land. They were able to do this because they had been using it as a shortcut for a long time. They had offered some small sum to the neighbors, but when it was turned down, they just went to court and used a little-known law to take what they wanted.

After reading all about this, it occurred to me that WE could do something similar here at the House of Unruly Fish. There’s a small road at the edge of our property which we use as a driveway that technically belongs to the neighbors east of us. We’ve been using it since we bought the place in 1984, so the claim would fit in under the current law.

On the other hand, what we gained on the apple we might lose on the banana, because a little slice of our property is on the other side of the official county road. It’s part of our vet’s alfalfa field, and has been for that same 27 years and change.

Even so, I wouldn’t try to snatch our driveway land. It might be legal, but it sure isn’t neighborly.

I think I recently read that some reps are working on a bill to amend this “adverse possession” law. I’ll be interested to see how that goes.

The Colorado House is in the house! As it were. Which you probably already knew. I had known about them starting up on Monday, but I needed to adjust my browser add-ons or something. So today was the first time I was able to see some of the live broadcast. Only a few minutes, though, before the signal cut out. I don’t know if that’s my ISP CenturyTel’s fault or if they are still shaking the bugs out at http://coloradochannel.net Or maybe I am still confused as to how to do it right. We can’t eliminate that as a possibility.

I was impressed and pleased, however, to find that they had the saved session up for video watching almost right away, so I was able to see all of today’s broadcast. That was cool, because there were some Prowers County connections. Andy Wyatt, our assessor, was introduced on the floor as a guest. Wes McKinley also made an appearance on camera when he made an official announcement to the House at large, requesting contributions to buy an animal at the Junior Fat Sale at the Stock Show.

It was interesting to watch the House at work, voting and discussing and all. The guy who reads the bill titles can talk really fast–he could be an auctioneer! Today they had a really cute little first grader from Centennial lead the Pledge. On the downside, Doug Bruce ran his yap a lot, but I guess you have to take the bad with the good.

On a different subject, me: I have been trying hard to do the January resolution thing and get a lot more stuff done. And I’m doing it, but that seems to mean that by the end of the day, the part of my brain that comes up with the new and original writing stuff has closed up shop.

So I am going to try to shift my daily schedule and get at least my basic blogging stuff done during the time of day when my son is away at school, and I have peace and quiet…’scuse me, I have to go make the puppy quit trying to play with the cat, who don’t wanna….

I hate to admit it, but Texas has out-whacko’d us this week. (Wait, there’s something not quite right about that…oh, what the heck, let’s go with it.)

A guy named Dean Hrbacek, who is pretty well known in his part of Texas (kind of near the Gulf and Houston and Sugar Land and all that), wants to run for Congress. He seems to have everything he needs, including a crack Photoshop specialist who morphed his head onto the body of (possibly) a former political rival who does not have NEARLY the, ah, gravitas that Mr. H does in real life. (Think Doug Bruce’s head on Andy Romanoffs body…IF YOU DARE.)

I had been enjoying this saga from the beginning, because I am a regular reader of Kiss My Big Blue Butt, (formerly The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.), and it’s just been getting better every day. TODAY it reached the apex of net notoriety by getting picked up on DAVE BARRY’s blog.

All I can say is, our politicos are going to have to try a whole lot harder from here on out.

To really get the full effect, click on over to Kiss My Big Blue Butt, scroll down to January 18th, and enjoy!

I’ve been meaning to get this pic up for a long time now. Our VP Jillane got a bunch of candidate signs to make this great display in Randa’s storefront window (her office is also the Sekrit DemHQCave!!), and then I cobbled together a sign with the info about where our Dem caucuses are going to be on the 5th.

Today I’ve been working on a project to kind of go along with it. I got a map of Prowers County (well, okay, I left the first one I’d bought at home today, so I actually ended up getting TWO) and took a digital pic of it. Then I went back to the courthouse to highlighter copy the lines of THEIR map that shows the precinct boundaries. Turns out it was lucky I got a spare, because I made lots of goofs….

If all goes well this weekend I will end up with a neatly marked paper map with no mistakes, to add to the above window display, AND a Paintshopped .jpg version for our web page at prowersdems.org!

In other news, I had a great time tonight, observing a meeting that our House Rep Wes McKinley set up for some of our local agribusiness folks. After the meeting (which I will tell you about maybe next week or so), some of us stayed to grab a bite at the Cow Palace. You know me, getting to sit around yakking about the political scene is a rare treat, and I don’t think I was the only one who felt that way, because we only FINALLY got up and left when they started pointedly turning out the lights in the dining room!

…why does it take so much time to do them?

Don’t worry, I’m not really complaining. Just wondering where the heck my day went.

Let’s see, I got the more-or-less-kinda-sorta weekly e-newsletter for the Prowers County Dems done and sent out. I listened in on a conference call type meeting where Andy Romanoff answered questions about what the state legislature is probably going to be doing this year. (Short answer: lots of good stuff) Also, of course, I read about eleventy-thousand pages of blogs and newsletters and emails. (No, not ALL about the DougeBruceacle at the State House yesterday. Only about half….)

What else? Oh, yeah. I got the forms in the mail today that confirm we can use the high school Commons Area for our county caucuses on February 5th. (Except for the two Holly precincts – they are going to save the gas and not drive 30 miles each way, but instead have their meetings in homes in town.)

Hmm. There really should be more on this list, I’m sure. Oh, well, tomorrow’s a whole nother day….

I really wish I could be up in Denver for the Stock Show when they hold the contest for “the most beautiful and photogenic ass of the bunch as party mascot for the 2008 Democratic Convention.”

Seriously, how much fun is that?

I don’t think the Republicans will be joining in, even though they do have a sure-fire winner for the BIGGEST ass, right here in Colorado. Of course I am referring to Doug Bruce, who topped his own remarkable career in weirdness yesterday by KICKING a photographer right there in front of God and everybody as the House session got underway.

I say it was in front of God and everybody because he did it during the opening prayer.

To teach the photographer the right way to act in public.

Seriously.

Do you WONDER why people like me get hooked on politics like it was chocolate-coated crack??

Isn’t this always the way? You run into a string of days where NOTHING interesting happens, and then suddenly the whole bloggin’ world gets crazy!

OK, first I’ll just mention casually that CodeNeonBlue has been added to BlogNetNews

This is a site that collects headers and a few lines from good blogs, organized by state (or many other ways, it seems–I am still exploring around), so you can browse through a lot of blogs at once, basically. It’s a good way to keep up with what’s going on in the blogosphere. I’ve added it to my list of sites to check daily!

We are on schedule and feeling good about the progress we’re making on the upcoming Prowers County precinct caucus and, later, our county assembly. Yay for the wonders of conference calling, which we PCers used tonight, thanks to Jillane. More about that soon, with a little luck….

First global warming, now this.

One of these days I am going to find and buy a t-shirt with Will Rogers’s famous quote, “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”

So you can probably tell we had a meeting tonight. It was even, actually, a pretty good one as such things go, only about an hour and a half long, and things even getting accomplished!

Although those things were the forming of two committees and the scheduling of another meeting. But still. Progress. And I got half a dozen email addresses added to the list for the Prowers Dems newsletter!

Not that I am anything like a paragon of efficiency myself, since I still haven’t finished even the research on that future post about electronic v. paper ballots. But today school resumed, after the winter break, and I once again have peace and quiet for a large part of the day. So that will help a LOT.

While I was doing my usual blog-reading yesterday, I came across a post by Colorado Dem VP Dan Slater, which mentioned some things that are supposed to have already been done by county party folks, such as this:

“First of all, your county central committee should have already met — prior to yesterday — and determined a formula for allocating delegates from the precinct caucuses to the county convention and assembly. The formula must be uniformly applied and must take into account Democratic performance of each precinct. Each precinct must have at least two delegates. If your county party has NOT done this yet, you should schedule a central committee meeting as soon as possible to get this done.”

My reaction is…we do the wha in the huh to the who now, HOW?

So today I helped out by making some phone calls to set up the required meeting, and over the weekend I’ll be perusing whatever data I can find on http://www.coloradodems.org/ about the wha and huh.

Wish me luck.

I’m also trying to write up a good overview of what is going on with the whole paper v. mail-in v. computerized voting deal. If you hear an exploding sound coming from southeast Colorado this weekend, it’s probably my brain.

(I may have over-committed a little on my New Years’ Plan to Get A Lot More Done. Just sayin’. But I continue to have hope I can keep up a semi-regular posting pace here! Also? Catboxes = CLEANED!)

Although I think the caucus system is weird and flawed and in need of serious overhauling, I can’t help being riveted to the results flow tonight.

What I expected was a photo finish, the kind where you could through a blanket over the win, place and show candidates at the finish line and cover all three. So I wasn’t far off, eh?

I still like Richardson best going solely on experience and qualifications for the job, but I know realistically the best he can hope for right now is the VP slot. Which would be pretty good, actually. I would rather Edwards had been first instead of second, but second is not bad.

And really, it was so close, I wonder if it actually indicates anything about the chances for the top three? Probably not in reality, though I think each candidate’s team will spin hard to make it seem like SOME kind of victory and/or indication of what will come about when all is said and done. That’s what spin teams do, after all.

So next we see what happens in New Hampshire, then in slightly over a month it will be Colorado’s turn, along with 23 other states. (The name I like best so far is The Tuesday of Destiny! Doesn’t that sound GREAT??)

I sure am! But let’s get warmed up first, with a little food for thought, appropriate to starting a whole new year.

Take this quiz: mentally

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name ten Olympic gold medalists.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are not second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.
6. Name half a dozen heroes whose stories have inspired you.

Easier? The lesson?

The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care.