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Zup's Journal  Hello July! Ok, another few months have passed and I found enough time to feel guilty about neglecting LJ....LOL! I'm sure everyone is used to that by now. So no more lamenting....just time to catch everyone up on my life's goings on. It is summer, happily, but before I talk on that, let me tell you how we got to the present. I finished off my graduate school days in May, coming out of Cleveland State with a Master of Urban Planning Design and Development (MUPDD) degree. The last semester was a very involved one, with two classes that demanded a lot of work, and only enough time to do about 1.5 of them adequately. Actually, our big capstone class was like two classes itself at times....it was a huge 30 person group project. I ended up taking a leadership role with that, which really sucked away my time....editing hundreds of pages of text. You can read our full report The Lakefront Revitalization Plan if you feel like slogging through a few hundred pages of text. Quite proud of the product, though a more compact report might have been nice. My other class, Urban Design, was fun, but got secondhand time because of the major overwhelmingness of the first. Lots of drawing and sketching that should have been fun, but was mostly rushed. Some friends threw me a great graduation party, and even though I did not request gifts I got a lot of nice things. Now I am in need of finding a job that is in line with my degree. I'm still trying to get my resume up to par, but that is moving to the top of my priorities list very soon. With my radically less stressed schedule I am doing a few things this summer. First, I planted a real garden for the first time here, rather than at my parents' house. There's a small area of green behind the apartments that my landlord cleared of overgrown bushes and flowers a couple months ago. In May I planted a selection of herbs and vegetables in an 8 x 6 foot area. I've got both cherry and regular tomatoes, an assortment of bell peppers and hot peppers, zucchini and yellow squash, a ton of carrots, oregano, chives, mint, basil, and thyme. Everything has been growing like crazy. At one point last weekend my tomato plants grew nearly 6 inches overnight....I might have been able to see them grow if I stood and stared for a few minutes! As has become tradition, I also got my lawn ticket books for the Orchestra at Blossom Music Center this summer. We'll be starting that out July 5th with music by Copland and Gershwin (excerpts from Porgy and Bess), performed by the Orchestra, the Orchestra Chorus, and several vocal soloists. On my personal schedule for the summer is their Bravo Broadway! spectacular; more Gershwin (instrumental); either some Brahms or Mozart; a Sci-Fi Spectacular with music from Star Trek/Wars, Harry Potter, etc, narrated by George Takei; and a weekend of two shows featuring music from Frenchmen and Spaniards Berlioz, Faure, Ravel, Debussy, Ginastera, Lalo, Bizet and Falla. I am quite excited about getting out there and enjoying fine music, fine foods, and fine drinks. More to come later, but that's a brief capsule of some of my recent and future life happenings. Glad to be back to LJ again for the moment. Current mood:  relaxed.
Is there any way to preserve avocado once it has been sliced open? Or is this a case of just having to cook or eat it right away? There must be something, otherwise guacamole would turn brownish, I assume. Well, Thanksgivingness is on the way, or rather, we are on the way to it. Patrick and I drove to Chicago last night on the way to visit his family in Omaha for the holiday. We're enjoying the housepitality of some friends from college who are back in Ohio for the holiday, but kindly lent us their house in exchange for watching the kitties overnight. There is one very loving kitty here, so that's nice....the other one just hides. Also, I am on my new laptop right now. I'm really loving it to bits.....doing well with typing, though I think I'll prefer the wireless mouse to the touchpad most of the time....the keyboard might actually be better than my regular one in terms of typing. The impetus for getting a laptop right now was to have something that I could work on in the car during our long drive. I've got some serious schoolwork due in the coming weeks, and could not afford to lose this weekend completely, plus I have the concert program due to the printer on Tuesday for the Chorus. I've wanted a laptop for a long time, and am so glad that I got one now. Admitting...windows Vista is not totally impressing me so much. I might grow to like it, but so far, the things I like I think are mostly the speed of the computer and the portability. Anyhow, I need to do a couple e-mails and then we are getting back on the road, as we have another 7 hours of driving to do, and want to get there on time for Thanksgiving dinner. We are going to one of Patrick's cousin's wedding on Saturday, probably a bit of Black Friday shopping, or at least browsing, and going to see my old friend Ryan who is stationed at the Air Forse base outside Omaha. Hope everyone has a happy Turkey day today (even if you're not eating any turkey!) On another note in the midst of all the big items on the political stage: I just came across the fact that the Democrats have a majority in the Ohio House of Representatives for the first time since probably I was very young. Who knows what the full effect will be, but I hope it means positive things in the upcoming budget cycle for certain economic development programs and for the atmosphere for LGBT folks here too.... The Ohio Senate is still Republican, but every little bit helps. Current mood:  tired.
I'm going to break with the jubilation of Obama and the sadness over Prop 8 in California to make a quick observation about Sarah Palin before we let her go back to governing Alaska for the time being. All I really want to note is that a potentially lasting effect of the current election is that John McCain has ensured that Sarah Palin will potentially be a significant player in the Republican Party in the near future. His pick as vice-presidential running mate catapulted her from being known in limited circles to being recognizable across the entire nation (world even) by anyone not in a coma or a cave. The end result at the moment is that she has been through the grinder and national spotlight, she probably knows what she needs to improve upon if she wants to run nationally again. As the running mate the defeat doesn't taint her that much. And she survived without any particularly damaging scandal (trooper-gate is closed seemingly) beyond her own naivete and lack of polish. Just a note on ramifications for the future. Current mood:  good.
Well, one thing I am pleased about, that is not dependent on who won, is that Ohio is not the poster child for electoral dysfunction this year. It was gettign very old these last 8 years to be looked at askance with regard to our voting problems. Little things like this give me great hope for my state even. Another thought is that I feel like I am empowered, if there is something that President Obama does or supports that I think is just stupid, to speak up and have my voice heard and affect the outcome. I don't want to feel like my voice is likely to be ignored in the political process. This feels much better. And I still have the greatest respect for John McCain....I think that he would have done a good job too. I was despairing of recent that I had to choose between two candidates both of whom I disagree with about many issues. But in actuality I got to choose between two candidates, both of whom seem to me to be upstanding capable leaders and both of whom I share a certain number of agreements with. I'm feeling very glass-half-full finally for some reason. :) Current mood: content.
I voted around 6:15 this evening. I hope that I made the right decision for President. I'm not going to share my choice with anyone for the moment and maybe ever.....I've been very torn about the amazing number of issues on which I'm concerned about each candidate. I suspect that I'd have had regrets about my vote with either candidate. I hope that whoever is elected exceeds many of my bad expectations and fulfills all of my good ones. And I pray that the anti-gay stuff goes down to defeat...I hope we are getting further along as a nation... Current mood:  pensive.
So, I finally started my ballot reviewing last night. I always go through a few days before an election and fuss through the various and obscure items to make sure I'm at least moderately informed on everything. We actually have 8 choices for President/VP on our ballot. This is the first year since before I could vote that I can recall there not being any big angsting out there regarding third party candidates... Ralph Nader is on there, but he's not the Green candidate this time. The Socialists, Libertarians, and Constitution party are all represented. I'm 99.9% sure of who I'm voting for....as usual I've been displeased about my choices, but I'll probably never find a President that I'm 100% happy with. I hope that whoever is elected surprises me with their performance as President (and even moreso I hope the VP surprises me, whichever that is....) We have the usual 5 million judges to vote for. I'm doing my due diligence on them, as best I can anyhow. It's also a County election year. I think I'm voting for Peter Lawson Jones for Commissioner. He's my favorite of the 3 current ones, so it's too bad that Debbie Sutherland is running against him, as she'd quite possibly get my vote if she ran against Hagan and certainly against Dimora. One thing I appreciate about Lawson-Jones is that he seems to genuinely listen and take into account the feedback people give. He came to a town hall panel thing about the Ameritrust Tower (an ugly but significant piece of architecture here in Cleveland...the only existing skyscraper designed by noted brutalist architect Marcel Breuer.) He really seemed to be interested in the opinions of people about whether or not to demolish it. The fact that he was interested in hearing from people especially the planning community and that he was willign to consider that feedback in his decisions is very important to me. Jim Rokakis, the County Treasurer is running unopposed, but I just wanted to say that I also have a high opinion of him due to his study and advocacy for issues surrounding the foreclosure crisis locally. My impression is that he's a very thoughtful and good elected official. We have 6 state constitutional amendments on the ballot. I urge people to vote yes on Issue 2. That renews the Clean Ohio Fund, which has been one of the great statewide success stories. It issues bonds that are used to fund brownfield remediation and open-space and farmland preservation. It has had very measurable economic impacts and has good effect in both urban and rural areas. I'd also encourage a yes vote on Issue 5, which caps interest rates for "Payday Lending" institutions at 28%. Currently these places are able to charge something like 300% interest, and have had a very harmful debt effect on people who are desperate and economically vulnerable. I'll be voting no on Issue 6, the casino thing....I'm sorry, but I just have no desire to see casinos here in Ohio. Then finally we have a bunch of amendments to the Cleveland City Charter....mostly basic stuff, although one would reduce the number of City Council members (it would apportion one seat per 25,000 people to be revised after each census.) This would reduce the council from 21 to 17 in the short term, as population has been falling for some time in the city. This is probably a good thing, so I'll be voting in favor. Oh, and people in California especially, and Florida and Arizona also, I think. Please do not amend your constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Make sure to vote and make sure you vote the correct way on those measures. I am hopeful that more states will grant marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples in the coming years, and constitutional amendments would be a huge setback to that. That's my election thoughts...I hope that everyone gets out there to vote this Tuesday! Current mood: sleepy.
I'm sure that many will beg to differ, but frankly I thought it was more or less a draw. Folks that disagree with one candidate or the other will think their man (or woman) won, but frankly, as I have problems with both of the tickets, I don't see either one as a winner or a loser. Palin showed that the Katie Couric interviews were not the only spoken exchange to judge her by. Biden showed that he can encapsulate his answers and not get drawn into some stupid outburst or comment. I was was annoyed by Palin's mis-pronunciations of Nuc-you-lar, and I-ran, and her Maliki and Talabani were questionable, but her Ahmadinejad was pretty impressive. I do think she suffers from an unfortunate informality of speech, especially her use of "ya" instead of "you", that makes her sound even more inexperienced than she is. It's a lack of polish, but also speaks to her having lived more or less a rural life....I'm not going to condemn her for that even though there's reason to want a polished vice-president. As far as content, Palin dodged more than was good for her, and jumped back to energy too much. Biden had a tendency to need to respond to things a bit too much. My thoughts on policy are very mixed, but usually they are after any debate, as half the goal is to dredge up past actions and votes that usually had good reasons but look bad on the surface. There's a real need to visit the candidate websites and really look at the details of their stated policies and maybe compare to independent facts and sources. For at least some of the fact checking, check this Yahoo! news article. Actually, I might give Biden a slight edge upon further thought, but the real challenge for Palin was just to demonstrate that the Katie Couric interviews were nto the final word, and I think she did that. So, Biden might have been more impressive, but Palin had a lot more ground to make up based on her previous week or two. Current mood: sleepy.
Quick update in bullets:
I'm sure other things happened, but those are some highlights. Current mood:  apathetic.
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