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That’s right: an iPhone and a Kindle. Both. I would never have dreamed of dropping that much money in one swoop, but it was Dave’s idea (he surprised me with the Kindle, then suggested we go get the iPhone), so who am I to object? They are both so cool, I can’t decide which I like better.

But seriously, I have to go see an eye doctor. The more I try to read these tiny little consoles, the more my right eye keeps going all wonky and blurry and then OH MY GOD, the headache. I love that the Kindle lets you make the text extra-large, or else I probably wouldn’t be able to use it for more than about ten minutes at a time. Trying to use Twitter on the iPhone, though, is killing me.

Other random stuff, in bullet form because I’m lazy:
* I finally got the pictures from Kris & Tony’s wedding uploaded.

(I know you read this site sometimes, so hi, Leslie! Love you!)

You can see the whole set here.

* We’re really enjoying having Mags here a few extra days. Her black eye is pretty impressive, but she’s otherwise feeling ok, so that’s good.

I think there’s a slight family resemblance there, no?

And for the record, my mother-in-law is a bad-ass, because I don’t think she’s taken so much as an ibuprofen for her concussion, and she still stood on her feet to make us a shepherd’s pie the day after her accident. She is one hardcore Brit.

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Tomorrow is my birthday. (Well, it’s 11 p.m., so actually it’s about an hour from now.) I’ll be 33 years old. Which, quite honestly, is really not a big deal at all. It seems as though you reach a point in life where the only birthdays you pay attention to are the ones that either end in a 5 or a 0, and all of the in between ones are sort of… whatever. Yeah, it’s my birthday. Meh.

The only significant thing I can come up with about this particular birthday is that I’m now the age that my dad was when he & my mom got married. (My mom was a young lass of 23 at the time; 10-year age gap between them.) When I was little, I thought he was soooo old. I mean, eww gross, my mom married an old man. Nice, right? Actually, come to think of it, 33 is also the age that Dave was when he and I got married. Huh. Weird.

Dave has made some noises about my present, so I’m not sure what he’s going to have in store for me. I haven’t even tried to guess, because if someone has gone to the trouble of planning a surprise, I don’t want to guess and ruin it. I told him he didn’t have to get me anything, because I’m a good wife like that. (He’s totally laughing at that sentence, btw.)

The only big thing happening for my birthday is that my brother and his girlfriend are driving over from Charlotte for the weekend. I’ve never met her, but she sounds nice, and I’m sure it’ll be a fun visit. Technically they aren’t coming until Saturday morning, which is the 17th, so really, it has nothing to do with my birthday and everything to do with the fact that they wanted to go someplace for the weekend since they have Monday (MLK Day) off from work. But it should be fun. Even though it means I’ll be frantically cleaning the house all day tomorrow in preparation for their arrival (sheets need to be washed, guest bath needs to be scrubbed, etc.). Not exactly my ideal way to spend my birthday, but oh well. A spotlessly clean house can be my birthday present to myself, right?

So, yep. Thirty-three. There it is.

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I finally signed up for a Twitter account. I’ve been meaning to do it for ages, but I thought that since my parents are coming tomorrow, and I really need to be cleaning the house, why not procrastinate and set myself up with yet another web application that I probably don’t really need? Yeah.

You can go see my Twitter page here, and my most recent tweets will be over there on my sidebar. There’s nothing interesting so far, but it occurred to me that when I’m stuck places with just my cell phone (like oh, I don’t know, the pediatric emergency room), it might be handy to have a way to communicate.

Alright, now I’m going to clean. Really, I am.

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Hi, it’s 11 p.m. but I blogged today. Damn you, NaBloPoMo. And thank you, wonderful fun neighbors with your fabulous wine.

Now excuse me while I either go throw up or fall asleep. I haven’t decided which.

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When we lived out in the boonies, we never put decorations on the outside of our house during the holidays. What would be the point? We lived on a remote, dead-end street. Barely anyone would’ve ever seen it other than us. So we never bothered.

Halloween was our first holiday in the suburbs, and our first experience seeing just how nuts the people around here go with their decorations. I was a little embarassed that we didn’t do anything. Well, ok, I put a pumpkin on the front stoop as sort of an autumn-type decoration, but I didn’t carve it or even draw on a jack o’lantern face with a Sharpie, because I suck horribly at all things that require even a teeny-tiny bit of artistic talent.

So, we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re going to have to step things up quite a bit for Christmas. A couple of our neighbors have informed me that everyone puts their Christmas lights up the weekend after Thanksgiving. Um, ok? Seems a bit ridiculous to me since it’s going to be up for a month, but sure, whatever.

To be honest, I’m a little excited at the idea of getting the outside of the house all spiffed up for Christmas, because my parents never did that. My mom would hang up a wreath on the front door, and since our front porch had white columns on it, she’d take a wide red ribbon and spiral it up the columns to make them look like candy canes. But we never had lights outside or anything. I’d really like to get in the habit of decorating the house for Christmas, I think Cate will really get into it as she gets older.

Today, Cate and I met up with Cat, Tony, e-baby, and Tony’s sister Diana to do a little pre-Christmas shopping. We hit a couple of stores to check out their selection of Christmas decorations. I didn’t buy anything today, I was just trying to get some ideas. Lowe’s hardware store has some great stuff – Cate and e-baby both loved all of the animatronic dancing, singing toys – but let’s get real, I’m not going to drop $200 on a giant inflatable Santa and stable (with a stall for each reindeer, labeled Donner, Blitzen, etc.). We also went to Big Lots (or as Cat calls it, Poverty Barn), and they had tons of stuff, which was pretty cheap, so I’ll probably end up heading back there to pick up some stuff. And I noticed that the dollar store near our house has Christmas decorations, so I think I’ll definitely be able to find sufficient supplies for the house that won’t hurt our bank account too much. I haven’t decided how extensive we’re going to get with the decor, though. I’ll have to balance my ambition with my hatred of working in the yard when it’s cold outside.

What about y’all? Anyone else go crazy with Christmas decorations, do you boycott them altogether, or do you find a happy medium?

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I literally can’t stop misting up right now. I am so happy that Obama won, I just have no words for how incredible this is. I saw Jesse Jackson on TV crying a few minutes ago, and I just lost it. To try to wrap my head around what a huge moment in history this is… well, words are failing me right now.

The numbers still aren’t in for North Carolina. I know that it clearly doesn’t matter in light of the landslide that Obama’s got so far. But I have to say that I do feel like I have a vested interest in the NC election, and yeah, I’m going to take it just a little bit personally if this state doesn’t go blue. Conversely, I’ll be taking all the credit if he does win NC. Because you know, it’s all about me. (Ha!)

For what it’s worth…

That volunteer work that I did? I did for that little girl right there. Because I want the best for her future, and I truly believe that Barack Obama will work to improve the lives of all of us, and our children in particular.

Ok, it’s almost midnight, I’m about to fall over from exhaustion, and I have to get to bed. I’m just… yeah. Overwhelmed. Verklempt. Filled with pride for my fellow Americans. And just so, so happy.

Pleasant dreams, everybody.

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One of the great things about NaBloPoMo is that there isn’t enough time to leave an entry at the top of the page waiting for more snarky comments. So! Moving on!

Today is Election Day, and since I voted over a week ago, this morning I headed off to my local Obama campaign office to volunteer. Originally they told me that I was going to be making calls, but when I arrived, they said that they needed more people to do neighborhood canvassing, which is what I did on Saturday. I had worn comfortable shoes and felt up for it, so sure, why not? Whatever way I can help out is fine with me. I joined up with a team – an older man who said he had bad knees but was willing to drive, and another much older lady (around 80-ish), who said she was volunteering so she wouldn’t be sitting at home staring at the TV and worrying all day. Boy, could I ever relate to that. (Seriously, CNN is on as I type. Cate is napping so I’m enjoying my break from Noggin.)

The difference in my experience between Saturday and today was absolutely astounding. I don’t even know exactly how to describe this, but it was truly profound.

Saturday: It was a beautiful sunny day, and the neighborhood that I was assigned to was predominantly white and upper-class (some Asian and Indian mixed in, but for the most part it was Caucasian Central). We were smack in the middle of suburbia; an upscale mall was nearby, a Whole Foods, several well-manicured green spaces, local parks, etc. It was posh, to say the least. The houses were close enough together that usually the driver would park and the other three volunteers in the car would fan out and go to a nearby house. No one ever had to walk far from the car to the assigned house and back. The people we met were generally polite, but some of them were a little icy and very rarely seemed enthusiastic about our presence.

Today: The weather was cold, gray, and rainy. The area we were assigned to was very rural; most of the roads were gravel, not paved. Instead of McMansions in suburbia, I was knocking on the doors of run-down, delapidated mobile homes, most of which had chickens and turkeys running around loose in their front yards. Think of every stereotype you know about poor, rural, Southern life, then multiply it times ten. I’d seen places like this from the highway before, but I’d never been in it. I’d never walked up those muddy driveways, shooing the hens out of my way as I went, and knocked on the doors. I was almost attacked by a watchdog who clearly believed that all unknown visitors had bad intentions. The residents we met were almost 100% African-American.

The people I met today were generally friendlier than the ones I met on Saturday. Perhaps being in such a remote area, they haven’t been targeted by as many political campaigns this year; maybe it was Election Day Fever, who knows. People seemed excited, even if they were just informing me that they’d participated in early voting. However, many people seemed taken aback to see me – a 30-something, suburban-mom-looking, white woman – as the representative from the Obama campaign that was there to speak with them. Lois, the older lady I was working with, got even more shocked reactions than I did. But then, why would you expect a frail little old lady to come out advocating for the more progressive candidate? The surprised reactions made total sense to us. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt quite so insanely overprivileged and blessed in my entire life.

It just struck me how very different these two worlds are, how very different these people are, how very different their issues and concerns must be, and yet the two groups have both come to Barack Obama as the candidate that best represents them. I love that I had the opportunity to see the diversity firsthand.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay awake until they get the election results announced tonight, but I’m going to try. I have a feeling that if I decide to crash early, I’ll be needing a Tylenol PM to settle myself down and turn my brain off so that I can sleep.

SIDE NOTE: I shouldn’t have to add this on my blog entries, but apparently it’s necessary. You’re totally allowed to disagree with my viewpoints, but respect for others is requested – nay, demanded. Nasty, hateful comments will be deleted. Thank you.

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