Marques's weblog

A new hope err... I mean home

The old place

So I know I have never blogged about it, but anyone who has talked to me since I have been over here probably knows that I have kind of struggled with my living situation since I have been here.

Toward the end of July I had felt that I had pretty much settled into the city. I had found a flat that I really liked. It was exactly where I wanted it to be. It had two large flat screen tvs. What more could I want? So I put a deposit down on the room I wanted. Then the lovely real estate practices in London taught me a thing or two about the big city.

With a week before I moved into the new place I finally got my contract and it had me leasing the smallest of three available rooms. It is actually the room that was advertised, but when I went there two larger rooms were also available. There is a reason that I didn't try to put in a deposit for that room. It was just way too fucking small.

The next couple days I spent frantically trying to find out what my options were. Problem was my bank had messed up so the landlord actually had both the first months rent and deposit (same as first months rent). I had no hopes of getting that back so this meant I would be walking away from a shit-ton of money. Ultimately I had to move in and work it out from there.

Move in day was devastating. I was already of course tainted by the fact that I got screwed over with my room. I dropped off my meager belongings at the place knowing full well that they would be I would have until I moved out. I had yet to actually take on anything I shipped over here other than my bike even though it was all waiting for me somewhere in Essex.

When I returned home from work that day I just laid on my bed with my feet hanging off the end and stared at the ceiling contemplating how the first act of my grand settling in London made me feel more like a transient at a hostel than a resident. My only comfort was a book I picked up on the way home called "I lick my cheese". It is a compilation of notes left to flatmates. Hopefully this was painting an extreme picture and not something I would have to deal with.

Other things just seemed to compound on top of my already sour attitude. The first night I was greeted by a roommate who was... what's that saying about kites? Anyways she went off on me for having my fan running while I was away. This was in a smoke filled living room. When I woke up ashtrays were still full of old butts. I threw them out. When I asked that they throw them out the next day I only woke up to find a whole new batch creating a stench.

Like I said three rooms were open so technically we were almost all on level ground in terms of seniority, but I had no interest. I tried to impart some opinions into the settling of everyone, but things were too busy at work for me to even get home while they were up. Then I started traveling heavily. In the first 6 weeks I had lived there I had only spent 3 weeks staying there.

The roommates were pretty nice for the most part. Seriously they could have been a lot worse. Even the kite person was extremely nice when she was not with the kites or drunk. Socializing was a bit tough because they would be in their rooms when I got home and gone when I woke up. Even on the weekends I wouldn't see them a lot. I tried hanging out with one of the couples once, but they had Italian friends over and were only speaking Italian. I don't speak Italian so I went to watch Friends because they speak English.

Over time though I preferred not seeing them because I couldn't really hang out in my room and this schedule mismatch gave me some sense of control over my me-time. In the end it is a lot to throw yourself in with 5 strangers. This seems weird given that I used to live in a house with 50, but I think moving to a new city has a lot of do with this. Also there things were so huge that you could find someone who did what you wanted to do.

The place too was nice in general I mean it had a lot of area and even when people were smoking in one room you could usually go watch tv or hang out in the other. The biggest problem with the place was that it had accumulated so much junk over time that the place could never feel like yours. It could only feel like those who had already left. With all my stuff in storage it seemed like this is something that would not change.

In the end no matter how much things got better they would likely not be good enough so I needed to figure something out.

Pictures

My room


The photo set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marquesk/sets/72157609723885170/

The new place

So ever since I found out that a coworker, Matt, was moving to the London office I figured we could give a go at living together. He got here in October and so we started to look for a place. We looked in a couple different areas, but mostly focused on Shoreditch and Camden Town. The latter being where I live now. This process was different than the first one because in the first case I went through essentially an ad on craigslist because it was a flat share. Here we were going to find a 3 bedroom, get a lease and rent out the extra bedroom. This exposed us to a whole new side of shadiness in the leasing industry.

So after about a week of viewing we found a place and wanted to put an offer down. Now they way it works here is that once you want to start the offer you pay the leasing agent a weeks rent and they will take it off the market. Now that you have put that money down you can start the offer process and if it accepted then that money goes to the rent. If not then you get your money back.

Well we put our money down and the offer took a couple days to settle, but we had our offer and a move date. Things were looking up an up for Matt and I. And why wouldn't they? We had went through a reputable leasing agent. I mean they had used the motto "Your soul agent". That makes you feel warm inside.

Well the leasing agent was like the whiskey those dogs give you in the Artic. You may feel warm now, but you likely just end up colder in the end. Four days later we got a call that someone else had outbid our accepted offer now they wanted us to up the ante. It would have put us all in and we weren't ready for that given that we didn't know who the third roommate might be so we passed.

We were both so pissed. The idea of something to their store kept running through my head, but the CCTV cameras make a compelling argument not to do that. My final idea was to put the letter "AS" on piece of paper and then slap that over the "Your" in their logo.

The next day I went into the office to get our money. I walked through into the back and was informed that I was interrupting a meeting. Our agent walked me back out and and I had him give me every reason why it was not their fault. He said he could get my money back and I was like "You will get it back now" and so he went upstairs and got it.

In the end it is not really their fault it is the failure of the system. They lost commission just like I lost my home. The fault in the system here is that there is no such thing a single leasing agent. An owner can lease it through many agents at the same time. So our leasing agent took it off the market and guaranteed to not show it. Maybe they did and maybe they didn't, but another leasing agent did show it and that person put down a higher bid. That means we got fucked. So the lesson is that unless you have moved in you don't have a place to live. This system makes no sense to me because it just seems to cater towards shady dealing. Sometimes I wake up and wonder if I am in Moscow or something, but then I realize I am not because at least there you know things are supposed to be shady.

The good thing is that later that day we saw the place that I now write this entry from. It has some pluses and minuses over the other place, but ultimately I think it is better and slightly cheaper. Only time will tell.

The current place is right where I thought about living after being here in January. It is near the heart of Camden Town, but on the Mornington Crescent side. Some things are a little further like Hamstead Heath Park and the big Sainsbury's, but all the key things are super close. This also means the move is short. If shopping carts were easy to come by you know I would have used one, but they are not and I didn't have my tools to make a dolly so in the end it was just me carrying a couple loads of my crap from place to place.


View Larger Map

The rooms in this place are pretty big. I would say that overall the place is bigger than my place in Seattle which means it is gigantic in London. My bedroom is probably larger than in Seattle too and I got my own bathroom again. Sweet. My own bathroom is actually a big thing. I find this is just one of the conveniences I have really grown accustom to over time and it is hard to remove. Sharing a place matters a lot less when you can still go to the bathroom without getting dressed.

My bathroom


One added feature of this place is that it has the biggest fridge ever for a London place. It has both a full height fridge and freezer. Even though they are both skinny they are way bigger than anything else I have seen here. Now if only they had a ice maker.


There have only been a couple negatives so far.

• The boiler broke 2 days into living here. This left us with no heat and no hot water. This would have been less of a deal if I hadn't been home sick for a couple of these days. This is fixed now.
• The smoke detectors seems to be invisible. It really seems like there should be some of these, but I really haven't seen any. This is only a concern because Matt and I both have a lot of electronics and I don't have a lot of confidence in the systems here. I mean they have fuses in all plugs. Seems like that speaks to a larger problem.
• We don't yet know how well sound travels or who our neighbors are. It appears that they are mostly families or old people. When I first came into the place an old lady gave me the stare down and asked me what I was doing there. I told here I was moving in and it took the porter (oh yeah there is a porter) to explain to her that I was moving in. I have seen this old lady just sitting in the lobby at least 5 times in 8 days. She kind of scares me.
• This place isn't going to be cheap. We do probably need to find a third and that will be hard because Matt and I are both hardly going to be around before Christmas. Also we have no idea what power bills will be. I expect them to be astronomical. This would worry my less if Expedia's stock was over the change in my pocket.

So my stuff has arrived and I starting to get it put away and settled in. So yeah things are looking good with the living situation. Hmmm... this brings up other worries. Well I will deal with those later.

I am guessing there are a lot of things that I don't remember since so much has happened with regards to my living situation here in London and so much of my life is based around it. I will leave those for future stories or most likely just forget to write about them.

Photos

My room
This is missing. Check out the photostream. Hopefully I will get more pics up in the days to come.

Park out our windows


The photo set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marquesk/sets/72157609482957175/

An empty nest

Over the last two months I have had tons of visitors, but they are all gone now. No mas until maybe March of next year. The last one to go was Natalie. She had been here on an off for a duration of 6 weeks and it was certainly a lot of fun having her around. Honestly other than going to Les Mis we never really did too many significant things. I guess the other one was going to election night together.

Us on the the way to election night. I look stellar in this picture by the way.


Overall it was mostly just us hanging out and chatting about life and that is great because it was our ability to do that which helped us become such good friends in the first place. A lot actually happened while she was here. We got to ponder how my rapidly changing work situation might affect my position at work. We joined in celebration at the coming of a new president. We freaked out about her rapidly falling net worth. We discussed my nighttime bathroom patterns and how she could best accommodate them. We worried about her pending admission to the US. We commiserated over my continued screwing in the housing market and finally we rejoiced in me getting what seems like a sweet place so far.

Her leaving is kind of hard because she is a perfect example of the uncertainty I have with many of my friends. When she gets back her and her boyfriend are going to pack up their shit and get out of Seattle. Unlike most of my friends though she heads off to areas I will not happen upon during a business trip like NYC or DC. They are off to Mexico, Cuba and Columbia and it is highly unlikely that I will make it to any of those. I mean unless they are taken hostages and I have to go Jack Bauer on some commies or drug thugs, those areas just aren't my cup of tea. The time line is pretty free so I really have no idea as to when I will see her again in my fly zone.

The last hours were spent with her packing stuff at my place as I with a cold typed away at work email. I was kind of grumpy since the cold was back and probably should have been a little more pleasant during the last hours with one of my best friends. She finished packing and then she was off. At the last second I was like "Natalie don't leave." and she was like "What?" then I was like "Do you have my keys?" and she was like "Oh yeah that would have sucked." and I was like "Yeah. Ok later." It was very heartfelt.

Later Nat.

Someone hold my hair back

So I am pretty bad at this. The problem is that I get busy and then a lot of shit happens and of course I want to write about it, but I don't have time because I am busy. So it builds up and builds up and then bam nothing happens. I wanted to say that I had blogstipation, but other people already use that term and I can't invent the term I don't want to use here. So I am going to push it all out as fast as possible in a little segment I am going to call a blog puke.



Bleh... The back slide recap

When we last joined our hero he was heading back to Seattle. It is not where it all began, but it feels like it doesn't it? All I can say is that trip was great and it really helped my frame my mind for why I was in London. Still not sure how, but it did. I think it was the fact that I got to see a lot of many of my friends, but I also got to see how many were just their visiting or on their way out (Elaine and Molly). Also D&G left and this was pretty sad. This was of course on top of seeing people who had already left (the Chris's in NYC). In the end I did all the things I wanted to with all the people I care about except for maybe going up in the Space Needle.

Some notable things

Divya and Gautam packed up their things and left.


I sold my car.


I finally saw the gorge it was great even though it fucking hot as hell.


I grew out my neck beard to help the bears beat the colts.


I got a mohawk so I guess no one needs to hold my hair back anymore.


Bleh... So thaaaaat is why I am here

By the time I left for London The phrase that constantly repeated in my head was:
I didn't want to leave, but I needed to get back.
Besides the mass exodus setting in, being in Seattle reminded me of how comfortable I was there. It opened my eyes to that being the challenge in London. When I returned the weather was great and I could see what I needed to do to feel comfortable in this city.

1. Stop going crazy finding the best thing to do the weekend. Sometimes you are going to miss the coolest show. It is ok.
2. If you don't feel safe address that by doing things that will make you feel more safe. I now have a new messenger bag which is much more pursey than my old one. However I don't have to worry about people undoing my belt buckle and running off with my laptop.
3. ...This heave is too long already.

Anyways I think I know what I want to get out of London now.

Bleh... Hey Cousin

Not long after getting back Tim showed up for two weeks. It was great having him in town. The first night was awesome as we hopped from bar to bar in Camden Town. The theme on the bars was late 90s metal and that is great for Tim and I because this is really when we started to get pretty close. Every song almost had a distinct memory attached to it which involved the two of us. We even moshed to some System at this one bar. Did you know that hurts? I liked moshing with Tim better back when he was not yet in college and I was only 20. It was great.

Bleh... Here comes the Dish

Trish came just the next day so the weekend was spent sightseeing. Trish is a fellow big city dweller from the NYC class of 2008 and she loved walking. If you didn't know, I love walking. I also love making Tim walk. That weekend we walked a lot.

Bleh... Like home but not really

After a busy weekend I was off to Szeged in order to train up my team there. Oh yeah somewhere in here I became Mr. Manager again. I used to have that because Expedia got rid of leads. Then they brought back leads so I was one of those. The job here was the same. However now I am Mr. Manager once again.

Getting there was so shitty. I stayed up all night to watch the Bears beat the Eagles and as soon as the game was over I got in a cab and went to get on my areoplane for Budapest. I forgot my license though so when I got there I couldn't rent my car. There was train that could go there, but I that would make it more of a pain for when I left. I wondered a small airport for hours. Partly because I was to tired to deal with it and partly because all the ATMs either didn't work or were being serviced. Eventually I got on the train there.

Szeged is like 2 hours south of Budapest near the Serbian border. The countryside reminded me a lot like home. It was flat. You could see churches miles away. The city itself was a college town along a river like greater Lafayette. All in all I thought I would have a lot of time and relax some, but I enjoyed walking around the city at night.

The place was so quiet at night and yet there was a nightlife. The basement bars just prevented the sound from spilling out onto the streets. This made them incredibly difficult to find. A lot of times I would tend to end of following the neon lights only to be led to a hardware store.

Daddy needs a new chainsaw


Photostream for Szeged

Woo that was a long one.

Bleh... New tall things in old cities

On the way back I stopped in Prague to see what Timmy and Trish were up to. Turns out no good. They had also met up with a friend Sara at Oktoberfest. Trish had a case of The Trish so she was kind of out of commission which led to Tim and I hanging out alone. Somehow we wondered into this sweet bar when I had been to when I was there in 2006. It looks like a tiny little bar outside, but underground it has a lot of rooms connected by narrow tunnels. Picture catacombs.

The next day Tim and I conquered a tall thing. I had been up the space thingee before, but this was the mini eiffel tower. It was great. Also I made Tim walk up the hill which was nice as well. After we ended in the free music festival with some local music that was crazy for real and crazy good. It was for a group that helped mentally challenged and was a pretty sweet fundraiser.

Tall thing


Photostream for Prague

Bleh... The Trish just won't leave

For a week or so. I was pretty much decommissioned and stayed home from work a couple days. This kind of sucked because it would have been nice to go out with Tim more. However Tim had a goal to search out Banksy murals. I accidentally showed him this one which is like one of the sweetest things ever.



Bleh... Tag your it

So right before Tim leaves I get a new resident at Chez Marques. It's Natalie. For the most part it was just me hanging out with Natalie. We met one of her friends and she bummed around the city during the day. She left to visit the mainland for while. This meant that for the first time in like 4 weeks I was the only person staying in my tiny tiny room. Actually it hasn't been too bad with people in the room, but you can't open the door with air mattress very well so it was nice finally being able to not have to think about going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

A notable thing is that I saw my first West End musical with Nat. It had been her dream to see Les Mis and that is one of the three shows I figure I will go to while I am here, Phantom and Spamalot are the others. Natalie was so psyched. All I can say is that I was so glad that she didn't shout out "It's so good" during one of the softer numbers. Ok a couple more things...

• Apparently France was a super small place back then because everyone keeps randomly running into everybody they know in different parts of the country.
• Cosette sucks compared to Éponine. Marius is an idiot.
• It was weird to hear people who were supposed to be poor and French have poor (poverty not bad) British accents. Then again if I was British they would just be poor people accents.
• Would the song "Master of House" really stick in my head if it wasn't for Seinfeld planting the idea that it would stick in my head?

bleh... Halloween sucks here

That can be found here

bleh... Peanut butter new president time

That can be found here

Wow that was exhausting and quite messy. Well I am sure I forgot a million things and have even intentionally left out some, but now you know what I have been up to.

Halloween sucks here

So if you know me then you know I love Halloween. It is a chance for me to try to be far too clever for my own good and come up with a costume that only makes sense to me. 3 months before the holiday comes around I start to freak about my costume. October is then mostly spent with me making a costume as I watch the baseball playoffs. So you can imagine how disappointing it is for me to live in a country where it is an afterthought.

The fact that people here didn't celebrate it kind of put me in a state of denial with regards to how it approaching. I contemplated what I would do for a costume and how I would theme my party, but all those thoughts revolved around being back in Seattle. In reality I didn't know if I would have a costume or even go to a party. I tried to fly somewhere to make it more special, but that never happened either.

Eventually I got a text from my friend Miguel saying that he had a party for us to go to. Even with that, I was unsure how to reply, but ultimately I said I was in. I still didn't have a costume, but figured I could fall back to my Jesus costume that I bought for a superhero party I attended earlier. See that is the problem. This country loves to dress up, but when the holiday comes along to do so they don't do shit. Lame.

So it was the big day and, for a country that doesn't celebrate the holiday, the costume shops had huge lines outside. Finally Miguel got back to me and the party was in some far off land I had never heard of called Woolich. I asked my coworkers where this was and they said it was near Greenwich (pronounced Grinich, this matters). As soon as they said that I had my costume. I would go as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

As soon as I got home I needed to hit the costume store. I had some ideas in my head, cut didn't know where I could get my supplies. Where are you when I need you Jo-Ann Fabrics? At first I couldn't think of how I would do the green and this ultimately caused the biggest flaw in my costume. In my head I kept thinking about I would be a lot of green or something that is green and then be "greenish" mean time. The reason why this led to my downfall is because having that run through my head caused me to lock on the "ish" and miss out on the "wich" which would have been really easy to pull off. I did fail here.

The costume store was packed and I was actually one of the last let into the store. This was fortunate for Miguel because I could attempt to pick up stuff for him. All in all I spent an hour in the store and ultimately only bought two things and none of them were really used. I had hoped to at least get a flava flave clock, but they didn't even have that.

It was all of 8:30 which meant that nothing was open except Sainbury's, but grocery stores are lame here and don't have anything except groceries which meant I wasn't getting my clock there either. I was kind of devastated because it meant I would have to use a marker to draw a clock on my clothes. Turns out they don't even have a marker. Ouch.

Luckily the market across the street which has lots of random shit had random wall clock and it even had a screws so that I could attach string to it. Probablem is that I didn't have string. All I had was a green clothes line and of course no wire cutters. After trying various cutting tools I had to break the line by heating it up over a gas burner till it got white hot and then pulled it apart.

• Greenwich - I am pretty green
• Mean - People with swords are mean
• Time - I have a clock don't I

Cause I'm GMT


Finally Miguel and I headed out. He was going as Willie Wonka, Johnny Depp style. As we headed out Miguel warned me that it would be lame and that only the Canadians would be dressed up. I was dressed up so that point I didn't care.

So obviously I got a lot of stares. No one on the tube was dressed up. Where were all those people clogging up the lines at the party store? The best was on one of the trains a girl sat across and chuckled until she asked what I was. It took like 3 tries for me to explain it to her. One problem was of course the lack of a witches hat, but the other was actually a comment that I made to Miguel on the train prior. I said to Miguel, "You know I bet people won't even get it because of how you pronounce the town.", and I was right. Even as I broke it down to her she was getting really stuck on green part of it. The good news is that once she got it she loved it. She even said that if she ever dressed up she would steal the costume just because it is so great. This reaction ended up being par for the night. I think people just weren't use to any sense of originality.

So we got to the party at 11 and one guy was already leaving so you knew the party was going to great. We opened the door and no one was dressed up. The hosts were dressed as tourist, but that was it. So depressing.

This was not a halloween party, it was 10 people sitting around drinking on October 31st. I was one of 2 people that didn't work with Miguel or at Google. Even though nothing was happening I did stay quite late, but that is mostly because I didn't know how to get home. I quit drinking around 2 and then didn't head out till 5:00.

The good thing about London is that you can get home at night, but it just takes forever. For me it took 90 long minutes. I got home at 6:30 and hit the sack right away. Obviously I was upset with London, but at least I was happy with myself.

A look at what could have been

Price Is Right - Halloween 2007


Won't go fully into it, but definitely not poo - Halloween 2006


A hand - Halloween 2005


A bear - Halloween 2004


Stay Puft Marshmallow Man - Halloween 2003

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

For the festivities Natalie (a fervent Obama supporter) and I headed to a bar at about 8:30pm. We were attending a London expat party in Shoreditch and it promised to be packed which meant we needed to get there early. Actually it was supposed to be so packed they got a second venue. From the pictures I would say that venue was more fun than my own.

The better party. Everyone at my place had suits on.

In any case we sat there, drank and waited for the results to roll in. It was beer for Natalie, but All-American brother Beam for myself. The Beam was actually a smart choice because it is way easier to stay sober on bourbon here than beer. Just ask Natalie.

It was quite a long wait and quite a packed house. If it wasn't for the drama regarding our food we would have probably been quite bored. The biggest disappointment is that the crowd was not that American at all. I would guess less than half. I mean few people were wearing party colors while I racked my brain beforehand about which colors to wear. The internationalness of course meant that it was almost all Obama. In fact I kind of got annoyed at how people made fun of the few McCain fans present.

To clear it up I did vote Obama, but it wasn't a slam dunk for me. (I wore a blue shirt, but kept the red socks just to stay grounded. Yellow would have been preferred, but technically I didn't vote for any libertarians.) And while I am quite international and Obama would obviously go over better than McCain it pisses me off just how certain outsiders are that only dumb people would pick McCain. That kind of a assertion seems to display the same sense of arrogance that people have draw upon to create their negative view of the United States. If you don't think we know what's best from others then how in the world do you think you know what is best for us?

This feeling also surfaced during the senate vote on the bailout package. News for that mostly consisted of BBC interviewing senators for 10 mins, economist for 10 mins and then EU leaders going on for 30 mins on how they had to approve it. Whew, good thing we listened.

Anyways the pain of all this is that his acceptance by the outside world is definitely a solid check falling into the category of "Why to take a chance on Obama".

There really weren't too many distinct memories at the party. People we sat next to were drunk and mostly ranted about shit that I didn't care about or made jokes that I didn't care for. I blocked them out as much as possible.

The most notable point was when I was outside writing an email before the big kick off and I had a conversation with a couple of ladies who were from London and black. They felt like it would be forever until something similar happened in the UK. It is hard for me to port this experience to another country because honestly this is not something anyone would have predicted 8 years ago. In my mind, and I tried to explain this, it is very much a case of the right person at the right time and he happened to be black. The fortunate thing is that the US provided a unique environment for the right place and right person phenomenon to happen. I am not an expert on the UK system yet, but it seem like it is much harder in the UK due to how the structure is just more filtered. So even if the right person was there at the right time it doesn't mean they would settle to the top. This point is actually being confirmed on the TV right now by politicos as I write this.

We also got into a discussion about why Americans don't know as much about international politics. This argument mostly involves scope of influence. UK knows about strikes in France because it directly impacts them. We know about strikes in California. The fact is that in many cases we just aren't forced (notice I didn't say "don't need to") to because the whole US is bigger than the the EU.

The demographics of this conversation also played into something else. I noticed the crowd as it was much more diverse than what I have seen here in general. Natalie will debate this, but I just write it off to the fact that I traveled the crowd more and most of the black people I saw were women. This really drove home the importance of his race. During the coverage they kept showing that 90 percent of people said that race wasn't a factor in their vote. I really don't agree with that number, but I don't credit that to people hiding their racism. I think it is the opposite. I would like to know what of that 10 percent considered race an issue and then voted for Barrack. That is what I think makes the 10 percent number incredibly low. For better or worse many of us thought about how it could be beneficial to society to have a black president. It just may not be the only reason you voted for him.

Oh and the coverage, my god the coverage here sucks. We had the BBC coverage. They did barely anything of value. All they did was echo ABCs numbers. No analysis whatsoever. Where was my fucking hologram BBC? Ok that was probably dumb, but still.

On Indiana, honestly I was surprised. Obviously I am not that connected anymore, but I really felt like this was something that the media was trumping up to give us more to talk about. Guess I was wrong about that.

Our party ended at 3 so we headed out at 2 to be home for 3. We got home right as it was announced.

Obama is our new president.

We stayed (read I stayed up) for the following speeches. Actually Natalie woke up for Obama's.

McCain's was an excellent speech and paralleled his campaign exactly. His crowd was less than excellent and demonstrated how they ruined his campaign exactly. It further cemented the idea that he is a consummate statesman and would always do what is best for America. He took credit for the failure and while I definitely think his actions lost my vote, I am not sure how much control over those he had. The party just didn't give him any choices.

Obama's was of course great. That is one of the reasons we love him after all. The call to action reminiscent of JFK was great. The references to the opposition were great. The idea of nearly a million people hanging on every word in his hometown was great. There will be 4 years to see how that plays out, but that start was exactly what you expected when you voted for him.

When it was all said and done it was 5:30am on Guy Fawkes day and bed time for me.

Meanwhile in Seattle...




It kind of sucks missing big events like this. Technically the attitude of the people probably would have drove me insane, but by being in London I definitely felt like I was missing out on something special.

Finally I want to focus on how I feel this election was a transfer of the civil rights torch. Without a doubt we took a huge step forward in validating our forward progress on how race is viewed in America. However the fact that liberal states like California passed amendments to ban gay marriage made my jaw drop. Obviously these battles have been going on for some time, but the gravity of this decision is amazing. 20,000 marriages now in question. I mean the idea that a state would pass a bill prohibiting unmarried cohabiting people from adopting or serving as a foster parent just to stop gay couples adopting is insane. The mere fact that the measure had to be a blanket one just to not be discriminatory points towards the motives being blatantly discriminatory. I think many people don't want to see this as a civil rights issue, but the question of why it wouldn't be is a question we all should reflect on.

Oh yeah, technically I only voted for Obama because he likes the same sports teams. Go ChiSox. Go Bears. Go Obama.