Ok, I know my last few posts have been link-heavy and light on the other things I blog about. But really, I'm not so self-centered to think that this has been an enormous loss to your worldviews.

A couple of thoughts for the day.

1) Caucuses are really confusing and slightly ridiculous. They may well be forms of "pure" political expression, but if you actually look at the milllions of steps in a caucus it reminds you how arbitrary elections in America can be. And also how confusing the whole system is. Quite frankly, it doesn't really matter who "wins" tomorrow--in a couple months, when Iowa's delegates are actually confirmed, some of the results will most likely have changed.

2) I'm really glad I don't live in an early state. I still have 2 months to make up my mind.

3) Too bad Carol Mosley Braun had all those corruption problems. She's remarkably smart, poised, and honest. But as (some publication I can't remember) said, that has no place in modern politics. Ouch.

4) Meetings that start at 9am on a Sunday are no fun for anyone involved, especially since no one wants to be there and consequently everyone is grumpy.

5) One of my classes divides readings into 3 categories, required, recommended, and optional. Since there are at least 500 pages of readings in the "required" category, who beside the most committed reg-rat will do the rest? Particularly when some of the "recommended" reading is in French? Nothing wrong with French, it just isn't the language we're studying in.

6) Hedy Weiss came to the show Friday night, but no review yet. Jack Helbig of the reader was there last night, but that won't make it until Thursday, if at all.

7) t's bar, at clark and winnemac, serves beer as singles or doubles, mixed drinks as tall or shorts. If you get a double (which is a double pint--or as someone pointed out this morning, a quart), you will feel like a hobbit.

8) The advantage to a 9am sunday meeting? On my way I heard Andy Serkis on NPR. I'd heard most of what he had to say on previous interviews or the extended DVD of LOTR:TTT. However, I had never heard his "Sound of Music" tour as gollum/smeagol impression before. Imagine this in the gollum voice "climb every mountain / shut up". That alone pretty much made the meeting worth it.

9) If you call a meeting for 9am and promise to bring breakfast and coffee for those who are a few minutes early, you should show up early and with breakfast and coffee. Otherwise someone like me will unwittingly walk into a crowd of tired, uncaffeneited, hungry people waiting outside a locked door.

That's it. Back to the grindstone, this is day 2 of my 2-day plan to catch up on 2 weeks worth of work. If you run into me in the next couple of days please don't ask about distributive justice, I might growl.
- posted by Heidi @ 2:32 PM