Monday, November 3, 2008

Monday Morning...

Some random Monday morning thoughts...

The photo at right is not mine. It's in this post only because it made me laugh...

Yesterday I answered emails from several friends in Europe, and prepared a package to mail to one of them. This was unreasonably pleasurable, taking a couple of hours to enjoy “talking” with my friends. All but one of my European friends has expressed a preference for Obama to be elected. I'm not surprised by this, actually – Obama would fit into European politics quite easily, while McCain looks (to them) like a typical American cowboy. Of course, my European friends don't have personal consequences (like higher taxes) to worry about if Obama is elected. The one exception? An Estonian friend who is afraid that Putin has a goal of reincorporating the Baltics into Russia – and who is convinced that Obama would just let it happen, while McCain would honor our treaty obligations (Estonia is a NATO member).

Our body clocks don't know about Daylight Saving time, so we woke up at our usual hour – which is now 2 am. The dogs don't know about Daylight Saving time, so they thought we went for our morning walk at the usual time. The stars don't know about Daylight Saving time, so they were in their usual, familiar places. Orion, Castor, Pollux, and the Pleiadies are now all high overhead at that early hour, and Sirius is well above the horizon.

This morning is cold and humid – 46°F (8°C) and 100% relative humidity. The humidity brings up the intensity of the piney smell from our trees to the point where we can smell it intensely...ahhhh... The forecast calls for “likely rain showers”. From our point of view out here in the fire-prone chaparral, there is no better forecast than that!

In 48 hours we'll know the result of the election. Maybe – or maybe we'll all be learning about hanging chads again. Our local (and very liberal) TV station is reporting a last-minute McCain surge – is this on the level, or are they trying to scare more liberal-leaning folks into voting?

Now it's 4 am, and I'm headed into work.
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