I will be in bed with my knitting and mindless sitcoms at 8 tonight. I'm not kidding. Kerstin is still fresh as a...well, daisy! And her sister's guest blog entry had me on the floor - those are some very smart and wiseass women in that family.

I'm on a news hiatus, 'cept for online reading. This works fine - I am aware that Yasser Arafat passed away. I'm aware that the stock market is joyful because oil prices fell. The Fed bumped rates up and mortgage rates are inching up. Ashcroft resigned and the guy who replaces him feels the Geneva Convention is an anachronism. Okie-dokie, things are normal in Bushworld. See? I'm informed, and I watch zero tv news. My mornings are so much nicer without Katie Couric, I should have turned off the TV years ago.

Last night I attended a social function, the specifics of which will be obscured for privacy reasons, but I got to spend time with a woman whose very job function is all about protecting civil liberties for the underdog. She voted for Bush. He's going to protect our country from terrorists. She went on at great length - sounded drunk but appeared to be drinking iced tea, so perhaps that's just how she sounds - and I just sat there and listened, I couldn't have gotten a word in with a crowbar anyway.

Her reasoning made no sense. I mean, it really didn't. It was that surreal Iraq-911-Saddam-war-must-support-president-to-support-troops-terror-terror-TERROR! chickenshit self-interest masked as patriotism that has no basis in reality but carried the election. It makes my head spin when I read it online, a barrage of it live was really quite dizzying. I didn't even bother to respond, I just listened and then talked to someone else about something else. I also heard snippets of some other tale from the right-wing paranoia rumor mill, something about a Kerry visit to Orlando, but I didn't get enough of it to be able to retell it accurately. It was way out in tinfoil hat world.

Don't buy into the smug line that Dems are tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists and the Republicans are all about logic and maturity - this is another juvenile "I'm rubber, you're glue" game I saw played out among Republicans I know personally (like, I work with them). They were totally primed, prepped and psyched to see conspiracy and "Democrat shenanigans" everywhere by election day. I listened, quietly, to stories about "protecting" the polling places from those Democrats who were going to disrupt and try to steal the election. I kid you not. And let's remember, we're in Brother Jeb's Fiefdom, where Republicans rule - and they were still feeding the faithful a scary bedtime story of an election about to be stolen. And the faithful bought it and were duly paranoid and afraid. I don't think they actually were about stopping people from voting, but they were primed by whatever shit they were being fed to "expect trouble."

Apparently trouble came in Ohio, where there were way more votes than voters. And trouble came in precincts where the exit polls went Kerry but the no-paper-trail touchscreen machines went Bush. But don't worry, if you ask the Republicans I know they'll tell you that election day was rife with Democrat Shenanigans. Seriously.

Knitting and sitcoms, that's the ticket.

Abrupt change of subject time - I'm finally reading The Artist's Way. Have known about it for decades, bought it a year ago and flipped through and wasn't ready yet. I'm reading it through this week, will start on Sunday. It feels like the right time, and it's definitely the right message. I absolutely do believe that God (the universe, whatever you want to call it) gives us what we need when we're open to get it.

Last night, at the same function where Tinfoil Hat Woman shared tales of Democrat Shenanigans, I signed up to do Christ Renews in February. The function wasn't remotely Catholic, it just happened that the sign-up woman attended too and she figured it'd be a good time to get my info on the form. Girlchild will be getting a call or email from them, I know not why - we had to give the name of someone who knows us best, and it was her or her brother or the Boss, they are the top three. I'm looking forward to it - it's a weekend retreat and I've heard only the most amazing things about it.

Speaking of retreats, I missed the Knitter's Review retreat this year because of a trial schedule that totally cratered. When registration opened, we had five cases set for trial in Oct/Nov. Two settled, three were postponed. I coulda gone, if only I had known. Next year I will sign up and let the chips fall where they may.