Catching up

Man, have I ever let this blog get out of date! Between the craziness at work (NEVER work for a school district at the beginning of September if you can help it!) and the lead-up to the primary, it's just been nuts. I dropped off the chorus for this season; it was either that or wind up in a rubber room.

We had our regular district meeting on the 1st; notable mostly for the remaining endorsements (we had a bit of a battle over the endorsement for the Superintendent of Public Instruction - there are those who feel that supporting any standardized testing is a mark of the beast) and for the presence of a number of high-school kids interested in forming Young Democrats groups in their schools. We brought John's son Jake with us, as he may be interested in doing voter registrations and such at Auburn High. Tyler went over what the available district elective positions will be in November, and which do and do not require the person to be an elected PCO.

John and I doorbelled for his write-in campaign for PCO on the weekend of the 11th and 12th. We got fairly good response, considering. John had tried to doorbell the previous weekend, but found almost no one at home over Labor Day weekend. I'd worked all weekend to bring up a new email server, so I didn't go around with him that time. We have hopes that John will get enough write-ins to make him the PCO instead of the person who's actually on the ballot, who told the Coordinated Campaign office he didn't have time to doorbell the precinct! Um, hello, that's the PCO's function!

Tuesday the 14th was the primary. What a berserk day that was. John and I both took the day off work: John to poll-watch and me to work in the Coordinated Campaign office as the data production coordinator (which basically meant I ended up acting as office receptionist while waiting for the poll-watchers to call in poll data). I worked from 8 a.m. to 8:45 p.m., and at that, I think there were people who were mad that I left when I did. The whole job is kind of pointless; there's no reason that data has to be entered live. The poll-watchers need to get the data to the phone-bank coordinators to let them know who from our list has and has not voted (so they can call them and remind them to get to the polls), but there's absolutely no reason the overall numbers can't simply be input the next day. For the general election, I think I'm going to volunteer to be a poll-watcher - much less frustrating job. I did get most of the office's backlogged new voter registration data and voterfile updates input, though. ;-)

John and I went to the Westin's post-primary party after I finally got away from the office. It wasn't a bad party, although not anything too exciting. Several of the candidates showed up, I got to see a number of my fellow delegates again, and Tyler and Bryan Kesterson were there from the 47th. The drinks were horrendously expensive, although I did end up getting one free drink ticket, which is always a plus.

I felt so worn-out and ill the next day that I ended up taking the day off work, which was a mistake; my primary email server went totally south. I spent the rest of the week fighting with it, and finally had to do a complete database rebuild over the weekend. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed hoping it did some good. Like I don't have enough headaches at work right now, with 5 new schools opening up, all with new servers and dozens of new print queues.

We went to the fundraiser brunch for Geoff Simpson and Pat Sullivan at the Muckleshoot Casino Saturday morning. It was a nice fundraiser, although I was jittery as all get-out the whole time, worrying about how my database rebuild was going. Maria Cantwell was there, Julia Patterson, and Frank Chopp. I was rather impressed that Frank Chopp actually remembered me from the King County Democrats picnic. That's a talent I may have to learn. I was actually standing next to him at the Kerry rally, too, although at the time, because it was out of context, I couldn't for the life of me think who he was (and I'll bet he had the same reaction - "I know I've seen that face, who the heck is that?"). Geoff gave an excellent speech, almost as good as the one he gave at the Legislative District caucus. Greg Markley, who'd been with us in Boston, was the emcee; it was nice to see Greg again. He was a good emcee, too. I hadn't realized he'd been a candidate for the state House himself in the past.

Tyler asked me if I'd be willing to act as the 47th District head of Washington Women for Kerry. I said sure, what the heck. John already got asked to be the South King County organizer for Veterans for Kerry, so I guess now we can kiss our copious free time (ha ha ha) goodbye until November.

Got a really nice surprise Sunday afternoon. Paul Berendt called me at home and asked if I'd like tickets to the Eastside Democrats dinner. I'd been wanting to go, but we finally decided that $70 apiece was more than we could afford, so it was quite pleasant to be invited to go. Both our Senators were there, Mike Lowry emceed, Jim McDermott spoke, and there were lots of other candidates and officeholders present. Dinner was good, and I won one of the raffle prizes, so it was a fun evening. I'm hoping that's a sign that things are looking up for us - that my server will stabilize, John will get the big contract for the apartment building re-siding he's been bidding on, and John's older boy will finally move out on his own (I even offered to buy him a TV if he'll just GO!).