Common Sense, Dancing

miscellanea [mis SUH lay nee yuh] pl n (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) a collection of miscellaneous items, esp literary works [from Latin: neuter pl of miscellaneous] (Doesn’t that sound grand? Don’t get your hopes up….)

Hi! It’s been a couple of ten days or so, I know. Do you wonder where I’ve been? I do — because I really haven’t been anywhere. Just here, there, and all over the greater Princeton area — oh, and with a brief stopover in St. Louis. So with no further ado, here we go:

I did not run the NYC Marathon yesterday. I wish I could say that I considered it, but even with the built-in excuse of a really bad knee notwithstanding, there was no way on God’s Big Apple that I would ever consider running a marathon. I wish I had the kind of ambition that propelled me to that activity, but I do not. So I stayed home. Putzed around the house, did a few domestic things, and read a Nora Roberts novel (that I’ve probably read before, but didn’t realize it until halfway in so I kept going. God knows I can’t recall the ending anyway).

How was your election day? Mine was interesting. I got to see democracy from a new vantage point — it’s always interesting to see something you thought you knew pretty well from a new point of view. Husband and I  flew to St. Louis on that Tuesday morning to be witness to the finale of my brother’s campaign for US Representative for the 3rd District of Missouri (which includes St. Louis and four counties including, if you know the area, St. Gen’s, Jefferson, St. Louis County and St. Louis City). He has spent the last 16 months or so running his campaign against a Democratic, long-time incumbent. Ultimately, Brother lost….but it was closer than I think most expected and a bit of a heartbreaker in the end. It was quite surreal to be in the ballroom on election night, watching returns come in on my iPad and listening to campaign volunteers chant his name and get all weepy over the whole thing. (I wanted to say, “Really? Him? He put gum in my hair on a million-hour road trip one time. Really? You’re all weepy and chant-y about him? Huh.”) It was an amazing night for democracy, regardless of what you think about Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party-ers, et al.

Coincidentally, there were a couple of other international elections right around the same time as ours — Brazil elected its first woman president, and Côte d’Ivoire finally had its long-postponed Presidential elections also. But Alyson, you ask, why are these two countries on your radar screen? Well, the Husband is Brazilian and thus compelled by law to vote (which requires, in this case for this election, two separate trips into NYC to cast his vote), and my adored college friend lives in Cd’I with her husband and family of five children (including a newborn) and as you might imagine, African presidential elections (or perhaps elections of any kind) are not the civilized affairs we have here in this country. You know, instead of mud slinging and attack ads, the citizens actually can get all worked up and throw actual mud, rocks, etc. and perhaps even attack someone. Riots, and such. So College Friend had her husband and children home from their various responsibilities in order to wait out what might have been riots. (So far, all’s quiet on the African front. Keep checking back.)

The addition to my family room is finished enough that the temporary wall has come down and it is now a giant great room. We are now, the six of us, able to sit on one giant sectional to watch tv, or spread far enough away from each other that no one needs to touch each other ever. Alleluia.

Speaking of watching tv in a pile, we watched National Geographic’s Migration series, episode 1, last night. The cinematography was gorgeous. I wish I could tell you I learned something, but I was seated next to a fifth grade boy who laughed uncontrollably and for minutes at a clip whenever Alec Baldwin, Voice Extraordinaire, mentioned the word “mate” or “mating” or any variation thereof. Thus is the nature of a fifth grade boy, I suppose. Or at least my goofy one. And, leave it to him to be the only one of the children to notice the whale’s, um, part during the scene where all the whales meet after a long migration. As you might imagine, he was beside himself over that.

I continue to get interesting junk mail on my hotmail account from Asian men who want to transfer money to me. This weeks suitors are Ming Yang and Wong Tang. They get points for good names. I haven’t checked out my spam file….I’m leaving that for when I’ve got the blues because I just know it will brighten my day.

On that enlightened and erudite note, I must leave you all. My Oreck vacuum is broken — again! Yeesh. What are we sucking up around here? — and I must go bring it to the hospital. I swear, if it’s not kids or dogs, it’s household appliances.

Carry on, people.

Tags: brain dump, election day, oreck

This entry was posted on Monday, November 8th, 2010 at 11:53 am and is filed under Bits and Pieces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.