Sunday Morn

It was wet, last night, and cold -- and again this morning -- but that turned out to be a good thing.

My daughter's color guard routine is called 'Above the Clouds', wherein they move through multiple iterations, eliciting that feeling. This time, the fog had rolled in just before their performance, so that when they were doing it, they literally looked as if they were above the clouds. And when they were done, the fog rolled out again. This was taken as a good sign by the crew, and indeed, they won. This morning, when I headed out to church, it was again foggy, which meant that I got to see the sunrise over the wetlands wreathed in plumes of steam. Quite nice.

Reading the paper, interesting things show up. One's an article wherein some Republicans are warning the people at their rallies that if the Democrats do as well as now appears possible, they'll not only have the majority in both houses as well as the White House (should that be referred to as The Third House? Used to be called The People's House, but last time I was there, they wouldn't even let me in the door), but they'll have a filibuster-proof majority, at which point, the R's can just stay home for the duration. I actually share that fear. I hope that the Democrats do not get a filibuster-proof majority. One protection that they hadn't mentioned: when the R's controlled Congress, back in the Gingrich days, they voted in lockstep, as a block, and effectively shut the Democrats out (its memory of that which makes this so sweet, and weakens my opposition to a filibuster-proof Democratic majority). When the D's are in power, though, they don't herd nearly as well, so it'll be like two or three parties -- and smart Republicans will pick them off to make deals and compromises. We've already seen how good Pelosi isn't at controlling the troops in the House.

I spent about two hours last night reading through the election material again. My feeling is that I'm about halfway to feeling confident about what I need to do, and what I need to do it with -- ie, who does what, what materials are used, etc. As I tend to do, I'm writing a checklist. Once I'm happy with it, I'll offer it to the elections bureau, but I'll bet they reject it. NIH, you see.

There are flocks of crows dive-bombing the cornfield next to our house, and every so often we can see a single bluebird industriously pecking away. Must look like an all-you-can-eat operation, to them. I tend not to notice whats going on in the field -- they run about three cycles of crops through, here and in the fields around our development and along the road that leads to my daughter's school -- but this is the first time I've ever noticed this many birds all at once. Well, except for one time about ten years ago when the field was barren and a whole flock of birds -- looked like about two hundred of them -- was hopping around on the ground when something startled them -- and all at once there was this great WHUMPH as they all lifted off at the same time. Impressive as all get out.

This morning, we had bacon, waffles, peaches, and coffee, all of which turned out well. I derive a slight pleasure from ensuring that the three main components are all ready within about two minutes of each other -- about eight minutes for the coffee, five minutes fifteen seconds for the waffles (cooking time), and between fifteen and twenty minutes for the bacon. Something additional today, though -- we have a stick of butter on the counter, softening -- I'm going to try making buttercream icing. I've done it before, and wasn't too pleased with the result. Ironically, we just ran out of the small amount of whole milk I'd gotten for a recipe. Sometimes my timing isn't so good!