Oh, God, THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

I know we have friends that don't agree, but I have never felt so hopeful before in my life. Thank you, God! Thank you, for giving us a reason to hope that something significant and realistic will happen in our lives.

Even Bunnies!!! Luv Obama!

Our encounter on the way to Liz's.

We went to Liz's and for the most part, all of us Ph.D. students watched quietly-making the occasional joke, eating chips and laughing over Liz's cat Schnell. There was nervous laughter when McCain took the lead super-early on, then silent hope and slight disbelief when we, eventually, saw the polls on two different channels call Obama the president elect. I should explain that we were skeptical because the states they were calling had only reported 1-2% of their votes. It seemed too uncertain and days past of election nights of our youths when we were tucked into bed with the understanding of a certain positive president only to awaken to a new reality danced in my head. We just didn't want a disappointment. We didn't want to celebrate or go to bed with one certainty and awaken to a reality we had no real warning of.

Fi was stuck at play practice until just before Obama gave his acceptance speech, just after McCain gave his concessional speech, but he showed up right when it counted. We all piled into Liz's living room in time to watch Obama take the stage.

Above and Below: Still Skeptical, Before the Acceptance Speech.

As he spoke, I couldn't help but gaze around the room to gauge the reactions of my fellow classmates and peers. In the eyes of most of my friends, there were tears, silent sighs of relief, glistening cheeks and dazed, hopeful gazes. My heart elated and I felt hopeful. Not the kind of uncertain, make-believe hopeful we feel when we first meet someone we might connect with or like, but the kind of hopeful we feel when we know we are in the company of our soulmate-the person we were made to complete. We felt the same hope with our president elect this evening: the hope that exists when we are certain our lives will change for the better.

We have invested in President Barack Obama. I would like to say we have invested in him only superficially, but we haven't. It wouldn't be the truth. We have invested in him on a personal level because we feel he has invested in us in the same way. So tonight, Senator Barack Obama-president elect, we salute you. We believe in you and we thank you.

Congratulations to all of us for a significant and meaningful change!

xoxo

N

"I'm freaking out!"

The above would be Fi's final words on the subject of voting this morning. 

It was 5:15ish when I felt two hands quietly shifting my body. "Hey are you still going to come?" Last night I had excitedly declared that I wanted to accompany Fi to the polling location this morning when he said he was going to get up and get there to wait on line for an early morning chance to vote. Now he was calling me on it. I opened my eyes and in the dark, I could make out the fact that he was already awake and dressed. I wondered if he'd already had coffee, too, and rolled out of bed to play catch-up to his prepared Voting self.

As I got ready to accompany Fi to the nearby poll he was assigned to, I thought about the fact that I have never voted in an actual voting booth in my life, only by absentee. I've been in school for so long and in so many locations, I decided not to change over my legal residence everywhere I went (I didn't get any in-state benefits so it seemed pointless otherwise), therefore, I've always voted by absentee ballot. I haven't seen what a voting booth looks like since I accompanied my mom as a child and fought over which of us children would get to pull the lever. What I imagined I would see at the Missouri polls is not at all what came true. Our voting location growing up was the fire station down the street from our house. The polling station here in MO was at a place the Shriners (my impression is that they're like an Elk Club?) use or own. We were super excited when we got there and, luckily, since it was only 5:30am, there was still a place to park in the lot, though not many. This is what greeted us at the entrance to the polling location.

No Campaigning, bitches! Not even a t-shirt!
And outside the polling location.

When we got inside, there were at least fifteen people waiting ahead of us. Lucky for him, Fi did not finish his coffee before we arrived.

We waited! And Fi was the tenth person to vote that morning, though it took way longer than I thought it would (you can see the waiting voters in the background). The above photo is the BEFORE photo.
This is the AFTER photo. Doesn't he look like a better person, now?

When we were done, we drove around Columbia and checked out the rest of the voting locations we could find. They were completely packed and busy. While I was waiting for him, people just kept coming to vote...again and again. D explained that inside the voting room they had set up sit-down areas with dividers and the voters filled out the ballots with black, felt tip markers. Hmm. Not what I expected. I think that explains why it took so long for him to come out and the line to dwindle. More people kept coming, the parking lot filled up and spilled over into the street and neighboring empty lots. There were old people, young people, all kinds of ethnic backgrounds...etc. I could feel this swelling of pride in my stomach. It didn't matter, at that moment, who they voted for, it just mattered that there were so many people turning out to vote. Two first-time voters showed up with their dad, an old-barely-ambulatory woman came with her daughter. A historic turn-out for an historic election. Can it be more exciting???

Then we celebrated with a Panera egg sandwich that I've been dying to try out for months. (Tasty, but un-exciting.)
Celebratory Panera Breakfast Sandwich.

I've heard several places are offering freebees for voters today! We didn't need that incentive, but if you do head to Starbucks for a free tall drink (after you vote, that is).

I've been glued to the t.v. all day and need to convince myself that by going to the rec center I will not miss out on anything (though, did you guys hear that the two smallest towns in the country-both in New Hampshire and below 20 people in population, I think, voted in Obama as their candidate???). What if I miss another update like that!?! Aaah! The pressure and excitement!!!

Tonight, we'll be at Liz's "freaking out" together! Stay glued to your t.v. sets and cheer like you're on Team America (cus, after all, we all are, aren't we?).

More to come later.

xoxo

N

Our GO VOTE Blog!

Last night we had a tasty dinner of Moroccan Couscous. What made this so tasty, aside from just the yummy veggies and tofu and fab spices, was half a cup of vinegar (it should've been red wine vinegar, but I'm allergic to wine). I adore veggies. Have I mentioned that? My mom is sick of me eating broccoli. Whenever I go home, she knows she'll be making lots of dishes that include broccoli and she gets super sick of it. But, there are a few weeks before she has to deal with it, so here is a beautiful photograph of our tasty couscous with broccoli (is broccoli Moroccan?).
Yummy! However, today we stopped at Panera for lunch so there was cheddar broccoli soup, of course! And half an asiago roast beef sandwich without mayo. When we got home, I took a nap and ate the other half (I honestly can't resist it...that sandwich is amazing! I don't even usually like roast beef!) in that order. No gym today or running, but as you see from Fi's blog, we had a busy day yesterday. We ran around a ton and ended up at David's Bridal for a little while (where I shockingly slipped myself into a size 2 dress...it must run super big or something cus I can't wear my size 2 pants at this juncture. I'm stuck at a 4!), hung out in Shelter Gardens and enjoyed some tree-climbing, hiding/seeking, a dinky pita from Quizno's (also with nothing on it but tasty veggies and grilled chicken) and a trip to the grocery store for some essentials (we've been out of milk for days!).

Right now I'm watching SNL's Presidential Bash. I feel as if I'd be doing myself an injustice by not doing so the night before the election. Liz and I are thinking about volunteering down at the Democratic headquarters at some point tomorrow before heading back to her place to watch the polls. Low key election night with some friends (Fi, of course!) and lots of excitement. In preparation for election day, Fi and I decorated the lawn. We got an Obama/Biden yardie a few weeks back and stuck it in our lawn. It was sort of to silently combat our neighbors who put a McCain/Palin sign in their yard, but mostly it was because we really wanted one. Just to be on the safe side, we bought an extra one so we could quickly replace ours should it be stolen. Today, Fi went out there and proudly stuck the second Obama/Biden sign in our backyard.

He was so excited! Awww!
Read Between the SIGNS :)

I think he looks like a rapper in this photo, but can you blame him? We were super excited about our dual Obama signs and by the fact that no one stole our original sign :) So excited, in fact, that Fi had yet another brilliant idea. It went something like this...

Take One...

Take Two...and three...and four...and five.......

Take Ten! Finally! We have a high-five!

Set Your Alarms, Get Up and GO VOTE tomorrow!!!

If you do, we'll find something equally entertaining to do with our time and capture it in photogs for our favorite blog readers!

xoxoxo

N

update from It's a Grind

Dustin here, writing from the safety of It's a Grind. Neesha and I had set up camp at Panera, but we withdrew after a crazy person started talking to us.

Such withdrawals are rare for us. Crazy people love to strike up conversations with us in public, and most of the time we stick them out until their handlers retrieve them or they receive an important telepathic message from their silverware and have to cut things short with us. The Panera crazy was the worst kind of crazy -- the talkative type who's coherent enough to form sentences and informed enough (he had a laptop) to be really dangerous.

From his booth, he told us the following during our hurried, borderline panic lunch:

Educators are fascists and always try to "lock kids up."

Students like the Hickman high school student who's in trouble for trying to make a pipe bomb should be encouraged because they show creativity.

Regarding real estate, this is a seller's market. "I'm making deals on trailer parks and properties! I'm in Panera with a laptop. My family is all working jobs!"

"China has a mountain of wealth, the U.S. has a hole of an abyss"

The U.S. dollar will collapse within one year of today, November 3, 2008.

Doctors are fascists.

Students should be selected randomly in high school, placed directly into medical school, and indentured in the community, working in public health centers so that everyone can have the best health care there is for $10.

Barack Obama is a fascist (this was new; normally crazies call Barack Obama a socialist or a communist)

Barack Obama is part of a sinister plot involving serial numbers and bar codes (this is about the point I darted up for a to-go bag)

So anyway, I'm at our favorite cafe now. No crazies here ... yet. Neesha took off after she got her papers graded. Hey, speaking of fascists, ask Neesha about her students' grasp of the events of the Holocaust. Seriously.

We had a busy Halloween weekend. We rented costumes from Gotcha! earlier last week -- Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. Clearly, the Little Red Riding Hood costume is the superior get up. Things I learned from my night as the Wolf:

1. I look pretty disgusting in a dress.
2. A plastic animal nose and cloth ears on a head band do not a wolf make.
3. House shoes in a night club = bad idea.

That's my best friend Andy in the Spartan outfit, and his roommate Nathan (el bandito), his sis Liz (Marilyn) and her bf Kevin (Tony Stark). Halloween was a long night. This is the beginning of it, at Liz's house. The end was of it was Neesha and I on a cold tile floor somewhere. At some point in the middle it looked like Sparta would be showing a cute lady Ghostbuster the secret of the phalanx, until some d-bag cowboy started spilling tequila shots on the Big Bad Wolf's dress. Sparta almost went to war for that, and by the time the conflict had ended, Ghostbuster girl was gone.

Little Red spent most of the next day recovering, and I opined about the end of Opus the penguin. You guys feel me on that.

Later, we climbed into a S.T.R.I.P.E.S. SUV and became rescuers to people like the ones we'd been the night before. That went late -- 'til about 4 a.m. -- but was quiet for the most part. We stayed busy picking up and dropping off, but nobody was rowdy or sick in our vehicle. We suspect they all had the party Halloweened out of them the night before.

Sunday, I somehow made my sluggish lurch to church, and during those sagging moments after communion, when the pastors and acolytes clean stuff up and people shuffle back to their pews, I texted Neesh to see if she'd meet me at Shelter Gardens for coffee.
Shelter Gardens, by the way, is one of the top reasons we like living in Columbia -- along with It's a Grind (and other, lesser coffee shops), Capen Park, Pinnacles, the Big Tree, Chipotle, Lance, Beth, Barack Obama yardies, bike lanes, and the glimmer of diversity.

I was walked around for awhile, trying to find her. She was in the gazebo taking pictures of me doing this. The coffee cups were warm in my hands. The sunlight winked through the remaining leaves and danced through the shedding branches, and I wondered where my fiancee was, knowing I'd find her soon, and I thought, what a good life this is.

Today I've been told I'm about to help elect a fascist maniac president and that the collapse of our national currency is imminent -- both very unlikely in my opinion. Still, I think that without Shelter Gardens and other places I like, without the comfort and hope I feel for getting to vote tomorrow for someone I think is good, without the expensive coffee and the money in my pocket still being worth something -- without all that, as long as there's still Neesha, it would still be a good life.

Two Last Minutes...

I almost forgot. Two things I want to ask/mention!

One: Does anyone have great advice on how to keep thick, yet very fine hair curly??? I wanted curls that will last for our wedding and I carefully curled my whole head the other night and used tons of product, but to no avail. My tendrils fell out before we even met up with our friends! Any advice???

Two: My goal is to look like this only better before our wedding on June 13th. Please encourage away because right now, as you can see from the pics, I am disastrously distant from this goal! This was me a mere year ago and I am not drinking, smoking or running as much. (I see the problem, but need some serious help staying motivated!)

Weekend Update (Recap)

Anyone see the McCain/Palin (Fey) skit on SNL last night? We were out and about last night volunteering for Stripes-Mizzou's free drunk driving service so we didn't get to watch it until this morning. I didn't think it was so funny, really. Now when Tina Fey played Sarah Palin without the real candidates appearing beside her-that was hilarious! Does anyone else feel like Fey is better on her own?

A week ago, I mentioned that Fi started to volunteer for Stripes. This is a free service Mizzou offers to students where they can call anytime from 10pm-3am Thursday through Saturday and ask for a ride home. As long as they are within the boundaries of Columbia, Stripes will happily go pick their drunk asses up and deposit them at their homes (note: not another bar or happening party, but home). This week, I volunteered with Fi and it worked out nicely. Since I hate to drive, but Fi likes it-I was his "passenger." In other words, I called back to 'home base,' so to speak, to keep them updated on the status of our drunkies (when they got in the car, if they didn't get in the car, when we dropped them off...etc.). I also got to read them their "Stripes Rights" which lists off a bunch of common sense stuff and asks them to agree (which they, of course, always do) and by the end of the night we had ridden all over Columbia and saved some students from attempting to drive home drunkenly or sleep on the floor of a stranger's/friend's house. It was incredibly fulfilling and awesome to know that we were helping students out and making sure they got home safely. I wish my college had offered something in the way of Stripes when I was a student!

Fi, Me, Our Stripes Vehicle

We didn't get home until ridiculously late and they fed us pizza and soda (I had a slice of pizza, no soda, just water), which was nice but bad for the health kick I'm attempting to leap into, but I've never heard people more grateful for a ride than last night. Thanks, Stripes!

In other news, we were the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween. I loved these costumes. In the past, my roommates from college and I always had a theme-our freshman year we were the Pink Ladies, sophomore year we were a basketball team, junior year-cowgirls, senior year-the Delta Delta Delta sorority (we were being funny-like the old SNL skit: Delta Delta Delta, Can I help ya, help ya, help ya?). Then after college I usually handed out candy on the stoop of my parents house in NY and never ever saw more trick-or-treaters than they received. Literally, they went through about eight bags of candy a year at that place. Their neighbor Matt and his wife Beth would sit on their stoop and I'd sit on mine next to them and we'd have a night of it-having a few beers and handing out candy, talking to the kids about their costumes and shoo-ing away those who came back for seconds. It was literally a Halloween extravaganza the likes of which I'd never seen before. The two Halloweens in a row I had friends to go out with and we were Soccer super-fans one year and the cast of Clue the second year (I was Ms. Scarlet and we carried around props-I had a candlestick-and even played a live version of the game "Clue" at the party we went to-people loved loved loved it! Who knew???).

Last year I was a blue fairy, complete with the coolest wings I'd ever seen and the worst health habits anyone has ever seen-especially on a fairy!

(See below for proof)

And my costume glowed in black-lights. Which I, of course, thought was awesome.

I suppose I haven't mentioned yet that last year I both ran and smoked and drank...a lot. The weird part is, I was in much better physical shape somehow. I'm not sure why or how. The first run I ever competed in, I won third place in my age division and was pretty proud that I'd run a 5k in 25 minutes when I'd never run before, really, in my life (except for team sports: soccer, field hockey, softball). Fi got me into running and my mom made a deal with me: quit smoking before the wedding. Most of the time that's not too difficult to do, once in a while I have caved. But, my conviction gets stronger every time I stop.

However, this is a blog about Halloween. This year, we had more friends and less time. Unfortunately, we ended up at maybe the most overcrowded and overpriced bar in Columbia, but with Fi's best friend, so it was worth it. I won't go into details, but will post some pics for you to get a feel of what our Friday night was like.

      Red and Big Bad
          The Halloween Crew
                CEC Halloween

Ugh! Now I am going to plan our food for the week, hit up the grocery store, then pilates later (for those of you who don't take pilates-you are SERIOUSLY missing out. It's amazing!), maybe have a run and make a midterm exam for my lit. class. Busy day, but maybe I can get Fi to write a more thorough and/or exciting weekend update later.

xoxo

N

Medals 4 Mettles

I had every intention of writing a blog dedicated to Halloween (which I'll get to later in the day or tomorrow), but REALLY want to write a blog about Medals4Mettle instead. 

I learned about Medals4Mettle when Fi and I were flying home to Columbia after a trip to the east coast to visit family over the summer. There was a very small article in one of the airline magazines (I forget what airline we were flying, but I think it might have been US Air) that discussed M4M. It peeked my interest and tugged at my heart strings. M4M is a nonprofit organization that accepts donated medals from half marathon, full marathon or triathalon participants. The medals are then taken and revamped slightly before being awarded to a patient that is unable to physically run a marathon, but is continuing a daily marathon to live life. Their own marathon against death, really.

The organization takes monetary donations, but Fi and I are students and only earn a stipend so we aren't able to afford donating. Instead, we decided we'd take the medals from the half marathon (my first half marathon ever) we ran in St. Louis this past April and send them to M4M to help encourage a sick patient to continue winning their own marathon. I would have thought the medal was more meaningful for me since I ran the marathon, but the symbolism the medals have for the patients is far more encouraging and meaningful than what the medal has for me. I know I accomplished the half marathon. We have pictures and tee-shirts and memories. I was able to get up and go out there and run it because I was healthy enough to do so. Now I want my accomplishment to work even harder. I want it to be able to lift up spirits of someone who is constantly winning a battle and accomplishing another day of life. Nothing could be more satisfying that knowing my medal is working even harder after the marathon and my running it has ended.

So I encourage you all to donate your half-marathon, full marathon or tri-athalon medals to Medals4Mettle (Mettle, by the way, means "courage.") and help glorify the accomplishments of those around us who are running their own marathons daily.

The website with more information is: www.medals4mettle.org 

                                           After the half marathon in April!

xoxo

N