Five days and counting!

Well, the fundraiser for myself and Ricardo was yesterday, and it was a nice party, even though there were not a lot of people there. We had a handful of folks from the district, my mother and stepfather, some friends of mine, and Representative Geoff Simpson, his wife Kathy, and soon-to-be Representative Pat Sullivan and their campaign manager, Eric. I got a couple of sizable donations from my mother, a cousin, John's nephew, and a friend, and we got several quite respectable donations from district members (including Representative Simpson and his wife Kathy, which was a surprise, as they're running a reelection campaign and probably need every nickel). Ricardo (bless him!) said that since he was getting some funding from his union, I could take somewhat more of the proceeds. The upshot is that I almost have my hotel expenditures paid for - thank goodness. That's the most expensive part of the trip, by far. I owe a big debt of gratitude to Tyler and Betty for organizing the party, and to Dennis and Karyn Higgins for graciously hosting it at their house. It really was one of the nicest parties I've attended in years.

Five days until I leave. I'm starting to jitter and second-guess everything, and freak out about not having received confirmation of my hotel reservation from the hotel, etc. Kind of par for the course for me.

They just released the delegation seating plan. Washington state got a pretty plum spot, however, they don't have seats reserved for the alternates. I guess we're up in the rafters with the bloggers and other such riff-raff (irony intended - this IS a blog, after all). Very disappointing. I don't know how we're supposed to be seated if a delegate has to leave.

I've been arguing - as politely as possible! - with folks on one of the email lists I'm on about Kerry's military record. One person in particular is being snide and (she thinks) cuttingly sarcastic about his Purple Heart for a "fingernail scrape" and she's citing WorldNetDaily as a source of information. Gah. What can you do? Well, what I did was to post about 50 links to other articles (and rather more substantive sources) which hopefully, if they don't outright refute that nonsense, certainly provide another perspective.

I'm so tired of people who think it shows some kind of sophistication to be cynical and disengaged about the whole political process. Who the hell is going to change things for the better if we all just give up and stop educating ourselves and being involved?