In several hours, after my biology lab, I will be going down to the elementary school by my parent's house to vote. As a 20 year old, this is the first presidential election I will have the opportunity to vote for. It will also be the second time I have ever voted, as illness prevented me from doing so when I was 18.

And honestly? I have NO idea what I'm going to be doing when I get down there and stand at my place infront of the voting machine.

Yes, my friends, I am an undecided voter, and it's coming down to the wire.

I have little doubt that, knowing me, or just noting my age, most of you would assume I am an Obama supporter. Others may assume that I would support McCain, seeing as my parents are well off and TEND to lean slightly towards the republican (they're fairly moderate in most elections, but have a history of voting republican in presidential elections).

Now, my undecided status is not born of apathy, ignorance, lack of comprehension of the issues, or even indecisiveness.

I have done my part, researched the issues and platforms, listened to the speeches...And come to the conclusion that I hate BOTH options. And I won't vote for the unknown libertarian who has no chance in hell whether I vote for him or not.

Both Obama and McCain hold values and positions that go against my own core values and intrinsic beliefs. Voting for either of them would make me feel as though I were untrue to myself.

As a whole my political beliefs are very moderate. While my most VOCAL opinions would lead people to believe me a democrat (I strongly support gay rights, abortion, dislike war, and other similar values), my economic values are significantly more republican, and I dislike the democratic ideal of a highly involved federal government.

Now, what it boils down to:

Obama honestly bothers me with all this vague "Hope!" and "Change!" stuff. He keeps going on about redistributing wealth and other similar things, but I have yet to see any plan for such acheivements that actually seems feasible. He is very vocal about very general, and quite frankly inspiring, ideals- but I don't see as much substance behind it as some people seem to. Granted, for all I know, he may pull through and do the things he talks about, but I'm not sure. Additionally, despite being a democratic candidate and babbling about chance, diversity, and acceptance.. He is STILL against gay marriage. WTF?
However, all of that would not be enough to make me truly dislike him. No, the thing that clinched it for me, that took my vote away, was one of the few things he actually DID put forth a plan for, early on in all this campaign nonsense.
His education plan. Now, on the surface, there's not MUCH wrong with it. Restructuring budgeting to pump more money into education, and revamp the "No Child Left Behind" nonsense! How wonderful! Well, except for the fact that pumping money into things doesn't always work, but hey, it could. My PROBLEM with it came when I looked closely at what sort of budget changes he proposed. He wanted to cut funding from the constellation program. For those of you who don't know, my father is on the Lockheed Martin team that has been contracted by NASA to design and build the Orion Crew Transport Vehicle that is the first step of the program. It will replace the shuttle. And the shuttles are being decomissioned in 2010,  whether or not there is a replacement. They just aren't safe anymore. Now, though it would suck to have my dad stop working on the project because it gets delayed due to funding issues, he wouldn't lose his job or anything. But his involvement with the space program for most of my life has left me deeply in awe of the wonderful wide universe out there and all the amazing things that could be learned from it. Continued space exploration is something I value VERY DEEPLY. I cannot countenance cutting funding from a program designed to educate the world and humanity as a whole, to transfer it to another area that's kind of screwed ANYWAY.

Now, Obama has more recently retracted some of those plans, amidst criticism and public outcry, but he still thought it was a good idea. I cannot allow a man that thinks that way to be MY president. I cannot bring myself to vote for him. Honestly, I'd probably lean towards him otherwise. I'd not be a rabid supporter, but he'd still be better than McCain. Except...>.<

On to McCain. There's a lot less to say on this one- He's Bush Lite. Most of his social and moral values go against my own. Gay marriage. Abortion. War. Etc. While he MIGHT be closer to my values regarding economics and such, he's still in violation of other core values.. I cannot allow myself to vote for him.

Plus, the man is old as sin, has skin cancer and might drop dead in office. And Palin's a *#@%ing idiot.

So what the hell do I do?

Two days ago, I had resolved to not even bother with voting at all. I knew very little about any of the other elections besides the presidential, so I would be incapable of making an informed choice.

Then I found out about the District 6 State Board of Education Trustee candidates from my parents. Now, neither of them exactly shine out... But one, Terri Leo (R), is a batshit crazy creationist, and is on the board that decides what textbooks are used. Being a scientist, and the CHILD of scientists, I must do my part to prevent this woman from being elected. Even if it means voting FOR the completely nondescript libertarian candidate that is running against her, Mary Ann Bryan. I plead with all you out there who have NOT yet voted to take this bit of information with you to the voter's booth, and do the right thing. For science. I will not quibble with families that choose to teach their own children creationism, no matter how fervently I disagree with the viewpoint, but PLEASE keep it out of science, textbooks and public schools. It's only place is in church or private living room discussions.

But seriously....The way it's looking, that's the ONLY race I'll be voting in. How wrong is that? It's a presidential election year, and the only race I actually feel passionately about is... State Board of Education Trustee?

Oh Emma, Emma, Emma.......

I know we drifted apart and went in different directions in our teens. But NO amount of drifting can completely rip apart all those years of friendship, laughs, and games. We spent so much time at each other's houses that it was sometimes hard to tell which house belong to whom. We had each other through all the wonderful parts of growing up, all the awkward parts, and the inevitable social issues that people like us are beset with when the teens hit.

I STILL have dreams about the fantastic worlds we let our imaginations create...

Damn. I KNEW you were sick, but only vaguely. I kept thinking "I should find out more, and go visit her. It's been too long since we've seen each other, and I miss her." but somehow I just never found the time. I know I'll always regret not going. How could I have been so lazy and selfish? I was afraid that things would be awkward after all this time, or that you'd be disappointed in the person I'd become, with my issues with school and crazy hair and tattoos... So there was always something ELSE I ended up doing. I should have made the effort, though. I think we had finally reached a point where our thoughts and interests might have drifted BACK together, but now we'll never know.

I guess I never thought that someone like you could be taken away, after all the battles you'd fought and won over the years.

Oh, Emma.... You sweet, beautiful, angel.

Damn. I mean...God DAMN.

The opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics. Seriously. So, SO beautiful.....

I can't imagine how ANY other country will top this in years to come..

Posting because I replied to bindusara:

1. Add a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It’s actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I’ll assume you’re playing the game and I’ll come to your blog and leave one about you.

*contented sigh*

The world is full of sunshine, kittens, puppies, and happiness, all living in perfect harmony!!

Current Mood: ecstacied ;)

 

Happy MLK day!

And yes, those is my kitties.

Nightingale and Ivory. Betchya can't guess which one is which. :P

*blink*

I have bought my first car on my own. Yeah, it's not my "first" car, but I've never actually bought my own before...Granted, it's not 100% mine yet cause I financed it, but still.

I am now the proud owner of a bright purple 2001 Chrysler PT cruiser.

My car is teh HOTNESS.

*grin*


(actual car pictured below!)
 

Current Location: Worky worky
Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: "Less Than Zero"- Elvis Costello

Ugh . Motherfucker.

My car= probably totalled. I'll find out for sure on Monday, but yeah...Fuck.

I was driving to Kroger, and some fucking pedestrian ran out in the middle of the street. Not even at a crosswalk..Middle of the fucking street. Like, 3 feet in front of me. And I basically had the choice of either hitting him, or hitting the car in the lane next to me when I swerved. So I hit the car. Cause, well, damaged vehicles, while still uber sucky, are much better than a dead body. But FUCK. It's a VOLVO. It's not supposed to get totalled this easily. Well, I guess it still did it's tank-ish job. It was capable of being driven. No mechanical damage or anything. And the body isn't fucked up TOO badly...The problem is, my bumper fell off and is broken too badly to be fixed, and my headlights were utterly anihillated. And the hood is kinda bent, but that can just be hammered down. The problem is replacing that damned bumper and the headlights. Cause my car is OLD. It's a 95. So parts for it are hard to come by. And the car isn't worth a lot, even though it's in great mechanical condition. So it's highly likely that the bumper and headlights will cost more than the damned car. Fucking HELL.

This is my 4th damned car, and I'm not gonna get another one out of my parents. Which is perfectly understandable. I don't hold it against them. I'm no longer living with them OR being supported by them (I was out of the house, but they were still paying my rent and I wasn't working when my other Volvo decided it was never ever ever gonna start again, so they replaced it). So yeah. They really shouldn't buy me a new one...But there's no fucking way I can scrape together the cash to buy a new one flat out, and with my complete lack of a credit history and the fact that I'll be buying a relatively old/cheap used car, there's no way in hell I'll be able to finance something...>.<

For a bit, it seemed like it wouldn't be TOO bad, cause we (kinda) still had Nathan's car. I figured I might be able to hold out, using it, until I could get the money together..But yeah. His car is...Special..(and technically mine..)

My former live-in nanny, Adriana, came back from Colombia for a month or so last year, and met Nathan. And found out we were sharing my volvo. She had a car that was sitting in storage here in the states. So she signed the title over to me, free, so that Nathan could  use it. Cause, well, she can't exactly get much out of it while she's in Colombia 90% of the tiem. It's a 1993 Mitsubishi Eclipse that, apparantly, has a newish engine in it. And at first, everything was fine. Yeah, it looked pretty trashed (broken parts on the body, lots of scratched paint, torn up seats, etc., but it ran great, and Nathan was really happy to finally have his own car. Then it died. And we took it to the shop, and my mother generously offered to pay to fix it. It wasn't that bad...But it KEEPS dying. I think my mom has put a couple grand into the fucker. And it's SOO not worth it. When I crashed yesterday, it was still in the shop because it had started dying when it idled. But we picked it up anyway, cause as long as you put it in neutral when you're idling, it's drivable. And better than taking the bus. So we picked it up. And this morning, I go to drive to work...And it won't start. Won't even TRY to start. Or even CLICK. Just...Silence. So it's the bus, and being late for work, for me! Yay!

I swear...That damned eclipse is just a REALLY big paper weight. There's just no point in throwing more money at the piece of shit....

*sigh* I'll figure out something, I'm sure...

Okay, I guess I can't keep from using LJ to bitch. And dammit, I feel REALLY silly bitching about this. But it is really annoying....

My job is officially too easy.

I work from 10-6, Monday-Thursday and Saturday. (Which, unfortunately, means no staying out ultra late @ teh club or party on Fridays, but oh well.)

I am the SOLE office monkey for a guy who sells shit on Ebay. Well, I suppose I shouldn't say "shit". He sells a couple of auto accessories that he manufactures himself in a plant in China. It's pretty well made stuff, even if I have no use for any of it, as none of it will work on my car. (Fucking Volvos and their seriously atypical design..) Anyway. I maintain his customer database, do customer support via ebay messages/email, and print out shipping labels that he then drives over to the warehouse. I think he has, like, 4 or 5 other employees @ the warehouse. But yeah. 

As a bonus, I also get free lunch. I work in a tiny office, all alone, in the back of his parent's Chinese restaurant. And they feed me whatever I want off the menu (and I get a 40% discount for myself and anyone I bring in if I come to eat there outside of my free lunches....So anyone who wants a really good discount on good Chinese, lemme know and we'll go out to eat..)

Here's the problem, though...I think he was expecting to end up hiring a complete dumbfuck or something. And he got me. I'm not necessarily a genius, but I type 70 wpm, and know my way around computers and database programs. So I'm normally done with all the accounts/messages by, like, well....Now. I just finished all my work for the day. And it's 2:30ish. Actually, it's probably been about 45 minutes since I finished, cause I've been surfing the net and eating. And I can't go home until after he comes by to go over my list of questions/issues I'm not allowed to deal with on my own (refunds, really REALLY pissed off customers, etc.)

Now, everyone must know by now that I'm a total intarweb slut. I get hardcore twitchy if I don't get my regular doses of lolcats, webcomics, and fark.com. And, of course, the myriad of games I play on the net, ranging from WoW to stupid little arcade games from gamehouse and popcap. So at first, it's great...For the first hour or two before he comes by, I get to surf Fark, read LJ, and giggle at lolcats. But then I run out of stuff that I normally look at, and get bored. And wanna play games. And CAN'T, because this computer= teh suxorz, and can't seem to handle them. I mean, I've got fucking solitare....But again. That is only entertaining for so long. The first week or two, solitaire was my friend. But now...Fuck it. It's a month and a half in, and I can't TAKE anymore of those damned cards. So I'm sitting here, writing in LJ, and waiting for him to get done with other business and get his ass over here to let me go.

Luckily, though, he does frequently let me go a bit early. Yay for being paid per diem! (Which, for those of you who don't know, means "by day", aka, I get paid a flat rate for every day that I work instead of a salary or by hour...I'm getting $70/day, whether I work 2 hours or 12)

Blah. I guess I'll just keep obsessively checking the inboxes for more questions from stupid customers that can't read the damned auction pages and figure it out for themselves....One comes in, like, every 15 or 20 minutes..

Oh! And I'll go ahead and give my boss, Andy, a bit of free advertising...

Anyone who wants aftermarket fog lights for their vehicle (He makes them with color changing LED rings around the lights, for all you raver-monkeys out there who loves teh pretty colors), go to his ebay store here:
http://stores.ebay.com/OEM-Automotive-Fog-Lights-Xenon-HID_W0QQsspagenameZL2QQtZkm

Anyone who wants an LED light bar for the back of their truck/etc. go here:
http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/foglightking

And lastly, anyone that wants some decent seat covers (in a few nifty colors, etc.) go here:
http://stores.ebay.com/Seat-Guards-Covers_W0QQsspagenameZL2QQtZkm

Current Location: Work
Current Mood: bored
Current Music: Love Her Madly- The Doors

God damn. It's been nearly 3 years since I've done anything with this journal besides look at my friend's page (which I do regularly, fyi)

Heh. It's amazing how easily this journal slipped away from me as soon as my life wasn't nearly as drama-filled. I guess that's LJ land for you.

A fuck of a lot has changed since I started ignoring this journal. Most of which has resulted in a distinctly lower degree of whiny shit in my life to be emo about, which is mostly what I used to post.

Yeah...One of my last few posts about Nathan and I and breaking up? Hehehe...Yeah..*laughs* That lasted all of, like, a month? I dunno. Doesn't matter NOW, though, does it, seeing as we've been living together for over a year and a half, and everything is going MOSTLY smoothly (no, I'm NOT in fact living in a fairy-tale relationship. They do not exist. Nathan and I DO have our problems. We are both young, changing, and learning about life and each other. This results in conflicts/emotional issues. HEALTHY and PERFECTLY NORMAL issues.) Anyway. A decent relationship + getting out of my parent's house= a lot less emo bullshit. That, and, you know, growing up a little. I certainly have a long way to go on that front, but I've certainly come a long way from the 17 year old highschool student who had never been on her own and was only JUST figuring out the depth of her anxiety issues who last posted in here. Which brings me to one of the reasons I decided to post in here again..

The past month or so (particularly around Christmas), I've been running across all number of little details that make the fact that I am no longer a little kid REALLY hit home. Some of it makes me proud of myself, some a little sad, some a little funny. I figured I'd post a few of those observations here.

You know you're starting to grow up when...:
1. Christmas is not as cool as it once was. Seriously. Even in 2006, I was still giddy and excited on Christmas morning, desperate to open the loot.  This year, 2007, was in my opinion my first "adult" experience of Christmas. Whereas previously, Christmas was all about candy and gluttony and getting all kinds of silly, frivolous presents, this year was different. This year, Christmas= stress. Stress about where the money for all the gifts we needed to buy was going to come from, stress over what the fuck to buy my cousin's boyfriend, whom I hardly know. Stress about dealing with all that family, and what I'm going to cook to contribute to the meal. Stress over the extra calories hiding in that stocking stuffed with chocolate.
But the biggest change? You KNOW you're growing up when the 3 things on the top of your Christmas "WANT!!" list are a coffee maker, a toaster, and an excercise machine. (Even if said excercise machine is TOTALLY FUCKING GEEKY AND COOL.)

2. You stop sleeping in on days off "because it'll screw up your sleep schedule". I mean seriously. It makes me feel old. But it's the truth. If I sleep in on Sunday, I'm fucked because I won't get to sleep at a decent time and I'll be in horrible shape Monday morning. Fuck.

3. Cold medicine isn't as icky as you thought it was. Christ. Just a coupla years ago, it was a fucking BATTLE to get me to down those two teaspoons of Nyquil. Seriously. Ugh. No. I'd rather have been stuffy. Now? I'd chug the shit if it wouldn't kill my liver. Yeah, it makes you gag. But where as as a highschool student, being sick and nasty= getting to stay home in bed, being sick and nasty NOW= missing a day of work and not getting paid. The cash is worth the medicine.

4. You actually utter the words "Oh, I'd love to go out partying with you tonight, but I have work in the morning"

5. You're actually HAPPY when someone gives you socks for your birthday. Yeah, it's SOCKS. But you kinda needed them, and now you don't have to worry about buying them yourself! You save your precious shopping time and your cash! Wow! Socks rule!

6. You're seriously thinking about the idea of opening a Roth IRA and beginning to save for the future.......>.<. I feel OLD, and I'm only 20. WTF is wrong with me?

7. You've got a trick knee. And have actually said "Well, I just don't get around as well as I used to". Again with the "I'm 20, wtf?"

 

But yeah. Life's been interesting. Working on the process of growing up and learning about life away from parental units. And I've got a great job. And a great guy (even with the little issues..). Maybe I'll actually bother to occasionally update this thing now...

Current Location: Work, fixing to head out
Current Mood: silly
Current Music: None, unfortunately. Forgot my damned Ipod today.