Home Again, Jiggety-Jig.
A week in the Bahamas was nice, but I had enjoyed Curacao, Belize, and Cozumel much, much more. Nothing horrendously wrong in Nassau, but nothing overwhelmingly nice about it either. Erci wanted to declare a few extra pounds of body fat at customs because we ate pretty well most of the time we were there.
We got out of Washington National Airport just fine on Saturday, transferred in Charlotte flawlessly (as usual) and landed in Nassau, Bahamas with no problems. This time US Air did not lose any luggage and we were able to get to our hotel, the Wyndham Resort Nassau with no problems.
Word of advice, don’t arrive early at the Wyndham Resort Nassau. They are on “island time” here and you should arrive several hours after the nominal 4pm checkin if you want your room ready when you check in. Desiree at the check-in desk wins the award for the rudest hotel staffer we have ever met on any trip in our lifetimes. The room has two beds, one with mid-1970’s mattress and box spring, the other with a late 90’s (which is ok). We have an “island view” room rather than “ocean view” and frankly it would not matter except we are directly above the busy street and traffic noise is an issue.
Now for the good stuff… The hot tub is very hot, the pool is very cool, there is a waterfall, a waterslide, and a swim-up bar. The ocean off the hotel’s beach is not particularly nice to swim in, but the sand is nice and the beach has plenty of shade from our hotel towers as the beach faces North. Moso (asian fusion food) was fabulous, and so was Twin Brothers over at “Fish Fry” (a strip of local places halfway between Nassau town and Cable Beach). Skans cafe in Nassau is awesome and cheap (going to write a glowing review for chowhound when I get back). Mike and Joan got in last night and were missing one bag (dive gear), but the bag caught up with them by the time we finished dinner.
So far it is just good to get away from work for a while; this is the most I have needed a vacation in a long time. I post more on the trip and embed photos later. We cancelled yesterday and today’s planned diving because my sinuses are still blocked. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll be ready to ‘get wet’ in the Bahamas.
Nextel has finally pissed me off. They are apparently gradually replacing their towers and connectivity in favor of Sprint PCS connectivity. Gradually my reception in areas I live, work, and play is getting worse and worse with Nextel.
I am very sad by this, because they are about the only mobile phone company that apparently shares my priorities: a phone is a phone; not a camera, not a pda, not a dance partner; just a phone. However a phone should do full-duplex speakerphone, and store a lot of numbers for me to call, and the device should be rugged. Nextel gets all that; but if I cannot reliably make calls going forward, I am done with them.
This puts me in a tight spot. I love my venerable Motorola iDEN i90c. Full-duplex speakerphone, 2 lines, 256 numbers stored (I could use more), standard 2.5mm headphone jack, and it just plain works. Yeah, bluetooth would be nice to have in my Prius for even better hands-free mode… yeah longer lasting batteries would be nice, so would a larger stored numbers list… I don’t need a camera, I don’t need it to be a PDA, nor a calendar, nor have colors, nor IMs, nor SMS, nor GPS navigation. I just a phone that continues to work well.
Anyone have recommendations out there for a good solid phone that just plain works?
A friend posted this video on her live journal, and it is a really cool idea. I dug a little deeper and discovered that there is a world peace movement based on one to one connections between people; kind of like Soka Gakkai Buddhism.
If nothing else it will make you smile to watch the video.
Go out and hug someone!
Virginia holds elections every year. Typically federal offices are done on even years just like the rest of the country; but state office elections are held on odd years. In 2007 there will be re-elections for all the House of Delegates seats and all the State Senator seats.
Thanks Karen, for sending me this incredible video. I am laughing so hard my orange juice shot out my nose! “Private prayer meetings” indeed.
In protest over the bigotry of the Marshall/Newman amendment to Virginia’s constitution, and in support of all our gay and lesbian friends, Erci and I have decided to stop calling each other husband and wife. Henceforth we shall call each other domestic partner instead, and we shall introduce each other to people we meet as “my domestic partner” in the hopes that it will cause more people to really think about having some compassion for their fellow human beings.
I mentioned this to some guys a work and Rob suggested extending it from just spouses calling each other “domestic partner” to using the generic term partner to describe all kinds of relationships between same and different sexed people. What an awesome idea. So now you are all partners!
In other news I wore my “Jim Webb for Senate” t-shirt today and walked into a Baja Fresh for a burrito. Another customer said hello and asked if I worked the Webb campaign. I told him I had as well as several other campaigns. He said he used to be involved in politics, got focused on family and career for a number of years but would like to get involved again. He asked me to hook him up with the local Democratic party, that the Webb victory gives him hope, and gave me his business card. Now I am glad I wore that shirt today! I met a new partner in continuing to bring compassion and democracy to the state.
Just got back from a very long day working as an Elections Officer at Mullen Precinct in Prince William County, Virginia. We started preparing the voting place at 5:00 am and finally called in our statement of results at around 10:00 pm. We had 1063 registered voters cast their ballots, and one provisional voter.
In Mullen, voters preferred Webb over Allen 587 to 449 with 21 voting for Parker and one write-in.
Mullen also preferred Feder over Wolf 533 to 493 with 17 for Wood and 11 for Nigam.
Mullen voters narrowly preferred Stewart over Pandak 493 to 488 with 5 write in votes, including some Donald Duck votes.
The really sickening news is that the Marshall/Newman bigotry and hatred amendment was approved with 567 over 485 votes (what the heck is wrong with people?).
The other ballot questions and Prince William County bond issues were all approved with overwhelming margins.
We are tired, but had a lot of fun. We thoroughly enjoyed working with people in the precinct, though the hours are quite long.
Update: According to the Prince William County government website (click the unofficial results links for chairman or bond issues) Mullen precinct has 3,422 registered voters. That amounts to a miserable 31% turnout in that precinct, which is making me feel sick to my stomach, though admittedly I’ve had very little sleep and the roof is leaking. In an election this important, only 31% could be bothered? Hopefully I am missing a key element in my fog of sleep – perhaps there was a huge proportion of absentee ballots? Anyways, it looks like Cory Stewart may have won the race (up by more than 5000 so far). I am nervous, as I just don’t trust him.
Update 2: If I am reading the Virginia State Board of Elections results page correctly, the difference between the two candidates in the special election for the 50th seat race for the house of delegates came down to 861 votes! Only 41.88% of the voters in that district showed up and 862 more votes could have changed the outcome. I am not sure if the absentees have been counted yet, but that could be interesting.
Josh Marshall says it quite succinctly on Talking Points Memo:
Only one party has a nationwide campaign to deliver millions of intentionally-harassing calls disguised to appear that they’re from the opposite party. That party is the Republican party. And the calls are funded by the NRCC — the House GOP election committee.
It’s the party of election subversion. Deal with it.
In the distant past the Republican party stood for abolition and the rights of the individual in the face of corporate interests. That was a Republican party worth fighting for. More recently the Republican party shifted to being about economic prosperity. That was a party worth accepting representation from. Today the Republican party is all about stealing democracy and and elections, this Republican party is about bigotry, racism, fear, gay-bashing, and hatred. This Republican party deserves zero votes.
In case you have not heard, the news is chock full of widespread reports of voter-suppression and storm-trooper election tactics, all perpetrated by the Republican party. Go vote Democratic. If you cannot do that, vote Green or Libertarian, or Independent, or Constitution or anything but not Republican.
Update: Washington Post has information with links to DC, Mayland, and Virginia voting information.
This last weekend before the election we should all be getting voters to commit to going to the polls or voting absentee, and I certainly have been doing that and will continue, but only after a short break from politics. My wife and I are sporadically celebrating 14 years of adventure together (yes, sweetheart, I know the wedding was only 13 years ago, but our adventure began about a year before we stood up for the ceremony). We are seeing the Cirque du Soleil show Corteo in Washington, DC tomorrow night. We usually get the cheapest tickets at a show, and that is always awesome, but this time we splurged and got Tapis Rouge Tickets so we could see a little more of the behind the scenes point of view. It will be a nice cap to an whole day with the Smithsonian Resident’s Association at India in all Its Senses: Understanding What You See When You Go.
Life is a wonderful story and a grand adventure, and for us; marriage is about sharing that story equally and all the time. All of you extremely motivated and altruistic election volunteers should take a small breather and appreciate your loved ones out loud and with complete focus this weekend, at least for a little while. I have been so caught up in the election that I have not spent the time I should have with my beloved, and I plan to change that this weekend, if only for a little while. It has been wonderful having a partner in the revolution; for us sharing our efforts has been a reward, but a short break is needed.
Sunday morning we are going to cheer for a friend who is receiving his own Gohonzon (NOVA Community Center, 11:00) and being formally accepted into our Soka Gakkai community. Then we may jump back into literature drops, get out the vote efforts, phone banking, and staffing to change our government into one that responds to and for people.
Update (6 November): India in all Its Senses was an awesome series of mini-seminars, giving a tiny taste of the rich history and culture of the sub-continent. Corteo was spectacular, and the Madera is a very comfortable hotel to stay at, and has a restaurant/bar called Firely (how cool is that!?!). Sunday morning the community center was packed with SGI-USA members and 4 gohonzons were conferred.
Now, do your last minute research and go vote. Specifically, in Virginia, vote for Jim Webb for U.S. Senate and Vote NO on the first proposed amendentment question (please make us all proud to be in the first state to reject this bigoted and mean-spirited hatred). Depending on your congressional district, please vote for Judy Feder, Andy Hurst, Jim Moran, Shawn O’Donnell, Al Weed, Phil Kellam, Jim Nachman, Rick Boucher, Barbara Jean Pryor, or Andre Peery. If you are in Prince William County vote for Sharon Pandak. If you are in the 50th house of delegate’s district, vote for Jeanette Rishell. Most important of all though, please go vote.
