Well, we're back, and even though our television now seems humorously small and I strongly suspect the clementine peels we left in the garbage converted to penicillin in our absence, it's still nice to be home. (Especially with a newly functional vacuum cleaner, a bag full of kitchenware from the Crate and Barrel outlet, a suitcase full of clean clothes, and a redemptive sweater.) The drive today went fine and cost a mere two dollars, which is almost a reasonable price for a road, and now we're comfortably ensconced in the living room, although I'm thinking about getting up and unpacking soon.

The rest of our visit since my last update passed fairly uneventfully, I think. Let's see. Yesterday I just worked most of the day while Robbie met with some people on campus, and then we had fried-fish tacos for dinner, which were really good. Oh, and we also ate cyprianas for lunch, which were also outstanding, although I think George's stiffed me slightly on cheese. The eating on this trip was generally excellent, I must say. I'm probably not more stuffed than anyone else out there, considering it was Thanksgiving weekend, but I'm stuffed with extremely high-quality food, which must count for something.

And tomorrow I'm getting blondenated and making cookies with my mother, which should pretty much cancel out the virtuousness I feel for working all day yesterday. I'm also anticipating a victory soon for two lucky readers in the 20,000th-hit contest. I'm still working out the prizes, but I suspect that photos and anecdotes will be heavily involved. They're really all I have to give that won't involve walking to the post office, after all.

You'll forgive me for what will doubtless be another lackluster bloggernation, but Adam left this evening and no one's made fun of me in the past three hours, and it's starting to make me edgy. I think that, after spending the past week with him, I might have separation anxiety. That or Stockholm syndrome.

So, let's see. Friday Matt Lippert and his friend Jeff came over from Matawan, which I think is where my freshman year roommate and her odoriffic boyfriend came from, and we took them to Hoagie Haven and then hypnotized Jeff with the high-definition TV that's recently been hooked up in the family room. I'm not a technophile by any means, but I have to say, it is pretty incredible. Anyhow, so eventually Matt and Jeff left, and a little while later Chi, Emily, Robbie, and I headed over to the big reunion, which was lots of fun. I got to meet a lot of supporting characters and the bar was not nearly as dreadful as I'd been led to expect. It was a little loud, though, and I was hoarse all the next day. After the reunion a bunch of us went to the Annex, which some readers will remember as the site of my bachelorette party, and then to the Hav, and then we came back here for a while, and it was all very fun. Oh, and Megan, you have to meet Robbie's friend Anne. The two of you really remind me of each other.

Then yesterday Robbie went golfing and I worked, and then we went to the Crate and Barrel outlet and had a fruitful shopping experience, and then we all went to a great Italian restaurant in Trenton, and I ate and ate and had a lovely time. Then Chi and Emily came over and Robbie trashed us all in Wise or Otherwise, after an abortive attempt to play a game called Fact or Crap, which is stored next to the third-floor bathroom and thus has intrigued me for the past several holiday seasons. As it turns out, though, it's no fun at all.

Today we had brunch at the golf club (some people who will remain nameless tried to hijack our car to go to dim sum instead, but nothing came of that), and then Robbie's mom and I went shopping and she bought me a perfect black turtleneck sweater that's sort of chenille-y and that I plan never to take off again until July. It's truly the redemptive sweater to go with last year's redemptive pants. Then Robbie and I went for a walk around campus and found a dorm that we'd never seen before and got disoriented and cranky and hit some undergraduates with our walkers, and then I followed Adam around and watched him pack, and then Adam and Amy left and the rest of us ate sushi. And that brings us to now. We tried to watch "Arrested Development," but it's not on tonight, so Robbie is playing Halo and I'm listening to my iTunes through AJ's awesome headphones and vaguely looking like I might be working.

Tomorrow Robbie has some stuff to do around here and I'm going to work, and then Tuesday we're on the road. Keep your fingers crossed that the turnpike's still on strike then...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I'm sitting in between Robbie and AJ at the Sedgewick Wall of Computing, who are playing Call of Duty in a very discussion-rich manner, and thus I'm finding that my bloggernating muse isn't really on her game right now. But never matter.

So the rest of Adam's visit was fun. Highlights included a lecture by Russell Banks, a trip to Primanti's, and game night at the Squirrel Cage, including a highly competitive game of off-brand Jenga. It turns out that I rock at off-brand Jenga, by the way. Probably because of my mojo hand. Then yesterday the three of us drove across Pennsylvania, a trip that was greatly enhanced by the toll-takers' strike, which made the drive 1) free and 2) faster. Despite decent traffic and constant rain, we got here in just over six hours including two stops, which is some sort of speed record for us.

Today we got up and started in on Thanksgiving preparations. I have to say, after nine years I figured I could, you know, roll with everything, but Thanksgiving here is pretty different from Thanksgiving anywhere else I've been, though very good. There was less gluttony and the food was of a higher quality, so I feel sort of not totally Thanksgivinged. I mean, I'm still awake and it's midnight, so clearly there's less tryptophan coursing through my veins than I'm used to. The food was really good, though. I made the mashed potatoes, and I was really excited about the ricer.

Then tonight Robbie and I taught AJ and their dad how to play doppelkopf. It went pretty well, I think, although I lost by about a dozen points. And now I may go watch "Arrested Development."

Well, this weekend has been awesome. First of all, Adam's here, which obviously would be enough right there, but no, there's more. Last night after we picked Adam up, we went to this restaurant on the South Side where I got a sandwich with kielbasa and pierogies, and we also had a basket of fried mushrooms, and all in all we got so full that we didn't even want to hit the town afterwards. Then today we went to the Warhol museum, where, despite Robbie accidentally punching me in the ribs, we had a lovely time.

But it was after that when things really got good. First, we went to my parents' house, and my mother took us on a tour of my great-aunts' basement, where we found a mouse skeleton sunk into the new cement floor. Then my mother opened the door to the fruit closet, unleashing a torrent of water. It was very The Shining, and I think Adam was really impressed.

And then the five of us went out to dinner, and lo and behold, I ran into the guy I had a crush on for like three years in high school and his best friend, neither of whom I will name here because of the power of Google. (The best friend is the protagonist in my well-known story of homecoming humiliation, which I'll be happy to retell if any of you haven't heard it before.) I hadn't seen either of them since 1995, and it was incredibly exciting. It made me sorry that I won't be at the reunion this weekend, although they're pretty much the only people I hadn't kept up on that I was actually curious about, so maybe it's just as well.

And then Adam, Robbie, and I went to see Sideways, which we really liked. It made me homesick, or something along those lines--I didn't realize that the whole movie was set in the Central Coast, but they really did a good job with it. And it was a good movie, too, even for those few of you with no Santa Barbara affiliations.

In lieu of a regular entry tonight, because I am sleepy and not much has happened anyhow, I would like to announce that in honor of my 20,000th hit, which I believe will be coming sometime close to Thanksgiving, I will be offering two prizes: one for the person who hits 20,000 right on the nose, and then a runner-up award for whoever made the most visits between 19,900 and 20,000 hits.

The prizes are being polished (have yet to be determined) and wrapped in shiny paper (no clue what they'll be) but will be announced soon (very soon). Come on, you know you want to.

Before I move on to today, I have to tell you all that the janitor in Robbie's building, who is probably Robbie's best friend at work, was looking over his shoulder yesterday while he was IMing me and she said that I looked "fly." This totally made my day yesterday, even though I have to admit that my IM photo does make me look perhaps more fly than I actually am. Robbie's day was also made by this incident, because he'd never heard anyone use the word "fly" before who wasn't making some sort of ironic whitebread statement.

And now, on to my day. Because I said yesterday that my mother and I were going to make cookies today, all of you astute loyal readers must already have guessed that the one thing we didn't do was make cookies. (Actually, that was kind of a lie. My mother found a cookie recipe that consisted only of angelfood cake mix and cherry pie filling--I'm not making this up--and we made those, but those took about twenty seconds and, though tasty, were alarmingly pink, so I don't think we're going to be packing those in any gift tins anytime soon.) Instead, we went grocery shopping, did laundry, discussed painting the front room at my great-aunts' house, ate roasted red pepper sandwiches, and waited around for George the lawn man to arrive and have a frank discussion of my fertility prospects. Still, though, it was pretty fun.

Then I came home and, after a long period of inertia, Robbie talked me into going to the gym. Now I'm going to work on the quilt for a little and then start the baby blanket. I have a bunch of paying work to do suddenly, so that should keep me busy tomorrow.

We're watching "The Amazing Race" right now, and a couple just fell prey to the old regular-gas-in-the-diesel-tank trap. Have they never seen this show before? Sheesh. Adam and Brett, when you're on this, one of you will always have to pay attention to the diesel issue.

Today I worked, did laundry, and made pasta. It was pretty fun, actually, although drying it was a bit of an issue. I think I'm going to ask for one of those drying racks like my mother has for Christmas. Robbie liked it, although childhood experiences had led him to believe that making pasta inevitably led to a visit from the nearest university president, so I think he was a little bewildered when that didn't happen.

Then after dinner we went out shopping, where Robbie bought bike degreaser and I got yarn to make an afghan for Robbie's officemate and his wife, who, due to the magic of loose-fitting, modest Muslim clothing, managed to conceal the fact that they're having a baby next month until last week. I think that, though impractical for most of us, this is totally the way to do it. This way, people find out and then, bam, there's a baby--no waiting, no boredom, just instant gratification. Nine months probably seems long enough for the parents, after all, but not really for those of us who are just spectators.

Okay, I have to go do some exercises and then fall into a blissful sleep. Tomorrow I'm going to my mother's to bake cookies, as a sort of kickoff to the holiday eating orgy, so I want to be in shape for that.

As befits a weekend that follows several weekdays of weekend-like behavior, my weekend was extremely uneventful. On Saturday Robbie and I went to my parents' house for a while and then went out for dinner. Oh, and we bought a scale that measures body fat, early experiments with which have left both of us horrified. If we were foods, Dr. J would not eat us, that's how bad it is. (We're well-suited for Atkins dieters, though.)

Yesterday I talked to Heather and then finished the back of the quilt and started quilting, which was enlivened when I smacked myself in the eyeball with the non-sharp end of a pin. My eye still hurts a little and I had a hard time leaving it shut when I went to bed last night--blinking seemed to be the only thing that made it feel better--but it's definitely on the mend now, which is good. Then after the pin incident, Robbie and I went to check out a bike path in McKeesport. I brought the camera, hoping to present you with another photo essay, but it turns out that you can just consult the Aliquippa photo essay. It's more or less the same place.

Then today I worked, worked out, worked on the quilt, and cleaned. (And IMed a fair chunk of the day with Heather. I'm only human, after all.) Tomorrow promises more of the same, possibly enlivened by laundry. This weekend Adam's coming, though, which I suspect will be the culminating event of our residency in Pittsburgh, if not our lives. So we have that to look forward to, although it is admittedly several days away at this point.

Well, I was wondering how Heather and Matt's move, but then my going without Robbie, would affect the rockingness of my visit to the DC metro area, but I realized on the ride home that mathematically this was a foolish question: DC is actually infinitely rocking, so slight fluctuations in the rockingness due to the addition and subtraction of key people leave it, of course, still infinitely rocking.

So let's see. I left here first thing on Wednesday, and the drive was easy and actually kind of fun. When I got there I checked out Heather and Matt's apartment, which is very, very nice, and had French onion soup, and then Heather and I went out to buy fabric for her living room curtains. Then Meagan came over and we went into DC and met up with Matt, Adam, Brett, and Amy for dinner, where I paid ten dollars for a cheeseburger that, in all honesty, was at most an eight-dollar cheeseburger. Brett kept giving me pieces of his chicken, though, which was delicious, and the fries were really good. Brett also revealed at dinner that in his spare time, he's been learning the provenance of various cuts of beef. After dinner, we went out to a bar in Adams Morgan for dollar drafts, which was pretty fun. We neglected to get jumbo slices, however.

Then yesterday we worked a little on the curtains, and had sushi buffet, which was outstanding as always, and then we went to Great Falls. I'd tried to talk Adam and Brett into coming with us, because I'd been there before and knew it was pretty and thought an easy hike would be fun, but it turns out that, like the duck and the sea otter, Sedgewicks are uniformly at home in the water, especially if the water is supporting their sailboat, but deeply mistrustful of the solid-ground portion of the outdoors. So it ended up just being me, Heather, Matt, Meagan, and Meagan's boyfriend Chris. The hike was great--it was really more of a stroll over rough terrain--and we got to sit and look at the falls for a while, and also I got to recount to Heather in more or less real time the plot of the episode of "Cold Case" that I saw by accident on Sunday while waiting for "Dallas" to start, which I think really brightened things up for her.

Then we went back to Heather and Matt's apartment, ordered pizzas, and waited for Adam and Brett to get there. In the meantime, I made myself useful by fixing the elliptical in the apartment complex exercise room and dumpster-diving for coupons for Heather. Once everyone and the pizzas arrived, we ate dinner and refined Adam's genius concept for a television show, "Drunken Detective," in which in each episode a chronic binge drinker attempts to figure out what happened to him the night before using only his cell phone log, whatever he finds in his pockets, and any suspicious bruises, to now include a segment where the friendly neighborhood butcher, played by Brett, tells the Drunken Detective what cut of beef he ordered while drunk the night before, and then delivers a brief informational lecture on the provenance of that cut using a pointer and a pulldown map of the cow. Then Brett had to go marinate something, so he left, and Adam and Heather and I ventured into Old Town and found an Irish bar with singalongs. Heather and I got hit on by someone without incredibly obvious flaws (okay, except maybe for the pink shirt), and although naturally we declined, I think I can speak for Heather when I say that this was the secret highlight of our lives to date. Then Adam left to catch the metro and Heather and I walked home in a completely uneventful fashion.

This morning Matt went to work, and Heather and I were rather slow starters, so we just watched Arafat's funeral procession and then the E!THS of "Beverly Hillbillies" (we are nothing if not catholic in our tastes) and worked on the curtains, which are going to look fantastic. I left after lunch, and the drive back was pretty okay, although it was raining a lot in spots and as it turns out, the Geo Wash Mem Pkwy pools water like no one's business. Once I got out of DC, it was fine, though. Actually, and this really surprised me, but although I'd rather have Robbie around for company on practically any other occasion, I think I actually preferred driving by myself to driving with him, even though obviously I did twice as much driving as I otherwise would have. I got to listen to any 80's station I could find, didn't feel socially obligated to change the station the third time I heard "Simply Irresistible," and stopped at McDonalds without hearing anyone make retching noises for the next half an hour. So that was all good. I'm glad to be home now, though, and especially to go to sleep, which I think I will do extremely early tonight.

You'll notice that I didn't blog yesterday, and that's because nothing happened. Oh, stuff happened--I went to my mom's, and we went to Home Depot and I discovered their color-choosing computer and in a very real sense my life will never be the same, and then I got some wicker hampers--but I didn't feel like it was much of a day, overall. Today wasn't much of a day overall either, but I'll do my best.

The only big event today was that I went to the doctor for a checkup, or more precisely the nurse-midwife (sit down, they just do all the things regular doctors do). I cannot recommend this system of medicine enough. Today I discovered that for several years none of my common tests given by previous doctors were conclusive due to small sample size. Now, call me a fool for the PMPOC method if you must, but don't you think that, since ostensibly the point of testing for something is to find out if that something is there, if there's not enough material to test with, someone at a previous doctor's office might have given me a ring and asked me to come back, one of those years? I mean, I'm one hundred and mrph mrph pounds of testing material, just cruising around, assuming that since I never heard anything from the doctor, I must be A-OK. She actually showed me the lab reports that said this, by the way, and an informal poll of women of my acquaintance revealed that none of them have actually gotten to look at their lab reports ever. It wasn't that great, just a stack of lab reports that all said "inconclusive due to insufficient sample size," but still. Actually, I suspect that the real problem is that many regular doctors were educated during Sputnik and are therefore more interested in sending a baby to the moon and less in, you know, thoughtful patient care, and the demographic for nurse-midwives tends more towards young women, who probably make better doctors too. (Except for Tizzed's ex-fiancee, who I suspect will eat all her patients.)

Anyhow, tomorrow I'm going down to hang out with Heather and Adam and Brett (and Matt and Amy and Meagan and JR) for a few days. We have big plans, involving sushi and curtains and dollar drafts, and I'll be back Friday with a carefully pruned report for all of you.

Well, this was a lovely weekend. Tizzed showed up yesterday, and we went to the sandwich shop that's serving the new locally famous Roethlisburger. Tizzed actually got and finished one, but Robbie and I were content to split a mushroom cheesesteak. Then I introduced him to his Sim, and I think he was quite impressed. For dinner we went to Aladdin, and then we hit the Squirrel Cage, and then we came back and Robbie and I shared our opinions of all 1100 people in our graduating class using the visual aid of our yearbook, which Tizzed sat through very patiently. Actually, it's possible he fell asleep around the "F"s.

Today Robbie and Tizzed went golfing, and I went to work out. If there's such a thing as a fitness nerd, I think I may be becoming one. I started a little notebook to keep track of my weights, because I couldn't remember everything I was doing day to day and that made it quite a bit harder to progress, and I'm very excited by this whole concept. I plan to make charts. After they got back from golfing, we went out to Zyng, which I liked a lot better than last time, and then Tizzed left, and I talked to Heather, and Robbie and I discovered the Homework Help call-in show on the Pennsylvania Cable Network, which was surprisingly addictive.

And now, to cap off the weekend, I'm watching the "Dallas" reunion special. I was quite a "Dallas" fan in my younger years, so I couldn't resist. I notice that while the rest of the cast have allowed themselves to age with a fair amount of dignity, Victoria Principal is at most 5% original. It's pretty creepy.

Just now, in the shower (yes, it's three in the afternoon), I had what I think is a genius idea. See, I read a lot of blogs, and I read the ones that are up in arms about the election and I think, yeah, right on, you go with your bad selves, and then I read far-right ones that are spewing vitriol about the horrid liberals, and I think, my God, it's one thing to disagree on policy, but how ignorant can these people be? Have they ever even met a liberal? I bet they haven't. They think we all have six heads, with which we are madly making out with members of the same sex and eating unborn children. And then I look down and notice that I am, in fact, a liberal, generally pleasant, with a keen sense of humor, and available for meeting.

So I'm proposing National Befriend A Republican In A Non-Political Way Month. (If, by chance, you are a Republican, for you I propose National Befriend A Democrat In--well, you get the idea.) See, the only thing that keeps the bile of resentment from spewing forth from my mouth when I read crazed conservative tirades is imagining them coming from my friend Buebbles (who as, and I am not making this up, an Alan Keyes supporter, is as capable of crazed conservative tirades as anyone), and then instead of imagining in great detail the mutilation death of whomever I am reading at the time, I can just say to myself, "Oh, Buebbles, that lovable douchebag with whom I vehemently disagree! What say we go get a snack of some kind?" (And here I'd like to interject an apology for using the word "douchebag" in front of my grandmother-in-law and the rest of my in-laws and also Heather's mom, but it's really the only word that seemed appropriate.) And although I am not in the slightest advocating that any of you change or tone down your deeply held political convictions, because I certainly don't plan to, I honestly believe that the more anyone, right or left, can substitute the face of their own dear lovable douchebag friend instead of the dark shadowy Other, the better chance we all have of a) surviving the next four years and b) then winning. After all, we are, at least in theory, the party of respecting people who are different from us, so 2008 should become a cakewalk.

I know that some of you will have a harder time finding a Republican than others--for example, those of you in Massachusetts may actually have to befriend Mitt Romney. And for that I apologize. Myself, I am painfully shy on first introduction and also work from home, so I'm not sure how I'm going to meet anyone at all, much less immediately ascertain their political convictions. I suspect that the neighborhood where I grew up is ripe for the picking, however, so maybe I'll move on that.

Well, yesterday after I made a fairly upbeat post and spent a pleasantly mindless morning planning out Heather's living room decor, I took a downturn and remained in modified pajamas for the rest of the day, refusing to bathe. All I had for dinner was a beer and some carrots. (For all you Sims fans out there, I think it's fair to say that my food, fun, social, hygiene, comfort, room, and energy levels were all dangerously low, although fortunately for us all, I was maintaining fairly well on bladder.)

But today was pretty good, and I'll tell you why: today my vacuum came, and although I was still nationally depressed, my own personal joy was tremendous. Anyone out there who doesn't understand how I could be so excited about a vacuum cleaner has either always had one that works or never experienced the thrill of a truly excellent one. It picks things up like no one's business, and it has a HEPA filter. Unfortunately, I had to leave for my mother's right after it came, and tonight we had to work out, so I only got to vacuum the living room before it got too late to humanely vacuum in a multi-family house. If Tizzed plays his cards right, though, maybe I'll let him vacuum this weekend.

And other than that, I pretty much just went to my mother's. We visited Dottie and Ethel (Ethel was in the hospital last week, and is now recuperating in a skilled-care home), and planted some perennials, and I bought her Sims 2, because she just got a new computer. I think she'll like it, although the new computer is not actually set up yet so we didn't get a chance to try it out. She was horrified to discover that her Sims could age and die, seeing as how that would provde her with effectively no escape from reality whatsoever, but fortunately that can be disabled.

Huh. Well, I'm very disappointed--I suppose it hasn't officially been decided in Ohio at this point, but it's not looking good--but I'm surprisingly not upset, if that makes any sense. Maybe I'm just tired. It's too early to say this for sure, but I'm heartened that it doesn't look like fraud was much of an issue. I'm certainly baffled that Bush could win the popular vote by three percent, but at this point I do believe that he did, which is making it hard for me to get too angry about the results, in a very short-term-past sense at least. Which is to say that I'm saddened and puzzled that he managed over the past several months to convince enough of the electorate to vote for him, but it seems that he has, so I guess in that sense it's democracy in action.

I am pretty appalled by some of the voting glitches yesterday, though. As a believer in Heinlein's Razor, I'm not going so far as to call most of them fraud unless more evidence comes out, but even if it's by sheer incompetence on the part of electoral officials, having to wait in line for upwards of ten hours to vote is horrible. (It's also kind of awesome that people would wait in line ten hours to vote, but even so.) It kind of cracked me up this morning that Iowa, among other reasons, is listing "fatigue" as why they haven't counted all their votes yet. Did election day take them by surprise somehow? You'd think they would have rested up.

And now I'm going to work on an assignment due this afternoon, about the electoral college. Frankly, at this point I'd rather write about anything else, but it's time to get behind the mule and plow, as they say.

We voted. Did you? (Yes, those are voting stubs, although it's hard to tell.)

I was anticipating all sorts of problems, so I brought along two forms of ID, a utility bill, and my voter registration card, but in the end an extremely pleasant elderly lady, who clearly thought we were a Nice Young Couple, checked us in with nary a glance at my driver's license (which is how it's supposed to be, since we've voted in this precinct before, but you never know in these troubled times). There weren't even any rival Dan Cohens to gum up the works outside the door, and the JCC preschool was having a very nice bake sale (is the election-day bake sale only universal in Pennsylvania? Robbie thought it was strange), and all in all it was a lovely fall day, perfect for voting for the candidate of your choice.

And then we got home and had the following conversation:

Robbie: What took you so long in there?
Jess: I like to pull each lever individually. I mean, I know I'm going to end up voting for a straight ticket, but I want to make the most of my voting experience.
Robbie: You do know that if you pull the straight-ticket lever, all the individual levers flip at once and it's totally awesome, right?

So I clearly blew that. I wonder if I can get a do-over--we won't be living here next fall, most likely, and most other states have switched to more modern systems, so I think I might be out of luck entirely. Why didn't anyone tell me?

And our downstairs neighbor was throwing up again. She must be pregnant, right? It's been nearly a week, and she's been out and about and going to parties this weekend, so she couldn't have the stomach flu.

Today was pretty busy, although I don't feel like I got all that much accomplished. We discovered last night that our kitchen faucet was leaking into our downstairs neighbors' closet, so we called the plumber, he came this morning, and now we have a shiny new faucet in our kitchen. We feel bad because the faucet had been leaking very slowly for a few months at least, but we figured it was no big deal and just left it for the plumber to deal with sometime when he was here for other things, which obviously we wouldn't have done if we'd known that it was running into the closet downstairs. But all should be better now.

And other than that, I just worked, played a non-excessive amount of Sims, and worked on my National Novel Writing Month project. I think National Novel Writing Month is a sort of dilettante-y thing to do, but I've felt really stuck on everything I've tried to write lately (where "lately" is a good six months to a year), so I wanted to kickstart it by starting something new, even if I just throw it all out at the end of the month. Sort of a once-a-month cooking, only with writing. I have about 500 words left to do tonight, which I think I can manage.

And I think we all know what tomorrow is. Obviously I'm going to fulfill my civic responsibility and I hope everyone else does too, unless you live somewhere other than Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, or Florida, in which case I'd rather you spent your time making me a present of some sort. And tomorrow night we're going to an election party, for which we are making elephant and donkey cookies (elephant and modified reindeer, actually--we discovered tonight that John Kerry's site is selling donkey cookie cutters, but that was a little late to order them). And then, I hope, it will be over. One thing I've realized this year is that I have no desire at all to discuss the minutiae of politics, ever, with anyone--and I suppose this would be a good theoretical argument for hanging out with a mixed group of voters, although I don't, since I think people are more likely to go on and on and on when they know they're in a group of like-minded folk. Which is not to say that I don't think this election is important--I think it's incredibly important--or that I don't have strong opinions about who I want to win, or that I don't want to stay informed on actual issues. I just find the endless batting-about tiresome, and although I'd agree to listen to several more months of it if it meant the slate of candidates I want would win, I'm pretty excited about the prospect that tomorrow it will be over one way or another. If, on the other hand, we get a repeat of 2000, expect me to be grumpy.