As you guessed it, there has been lots going on for the last couple of days. 

Wednesday began with my Aunt arriving into town fro Israel, and Ezra and i going up to the airport to pick her up. She ended up catching a flight that put her here 5 hours before she was scheduled, which wasn’t that big of a deal…but it was a contributing factor to Ezra not eating his mid-morning snack for the second consecutive day. The weird thing is that he wasn’t hungry (or at least acting that way) on either occasion. Don’t know if this is a new trend, or we were just too busy…so stay tuned.

Wednesday night brought our return to family dinner for the first time in a couple of weeks. We had suspended our attendance in an effort to establish a bedtime routine for Ezra, but Wednesday of this week was our turn to host and cook. It was great to see everyone again, and we were thrilled that Mary was back and everyone could be together for the first time in seemingly 50 years. 

My tour started back at work on Friday, along with class and studying. Saturday however, brought the annual Chili Supper and Starlighting Event to Castle Rock. For those that don’t know, accompanying the Starlighting, the fire department (and now the union) has hosted a chili supper for something like 68 years. For the past couple of years, I have been part of the cooking crew….we start at 730 in the morning, and finish the cooking around lunchtime….and the clean up around 6pm. 

For the past two years we have made 105 gallons of chili. If it sounds like a lot, it is….it’s almost three bathtubs completely full to the top of chili. We end up serving around 3000 people (in the last picture, you can see the line for chili stretching outside of the station) over the course of a couple of hours. Since I cooked, I was able to enjoy the evening with Ahna, Ezra, Mom, Dad, and Rena. We hung out for the Starlighting and the fireworks that followed, then proceeded to head home through lots of traffic. There have been estimates of 6-10,000 people downtown. 

To wrap up the weekend: the Broncos stink. 

A few weeks ago, after looking at the schedule for days that Ezra would be in daycare this month (and realizing that it would only be one or two) we decided to include another day in the schedule to allow for him to become more familiar with Peggy and gang. 

Of course, the little man with skis sitting on my shoulder had absolutely no objection to this course of action and we made arrangements. The day was yesterday, and while Ezra spent the day with Peggy, I spent the day with Arapahoe Basin. 

A good friend and his new wife happened to be in town as they drove across the country to their new home, and they came along. They got married in a foreign country Alabama, and are on their way to San Diego where JJ will be stationed – he is a helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps. It was a lot of fun to spend some time with them, as well as to enjoy a beautiful day skiing and drinking beer in the mountains. 

Quick funny story: we arrived into Idaho Springs on the way up to A-Basin to get fuel (for the car and for us), at which point I realized that I didn’t have my wallet. See, earlier in the morning, I overslept my alarm by 45 minutes at work and was scrambling to get out of there to make the meet time. I thought that I had miraculously pulled it off, until we got to the gas station when I came to the conclusion that I left my wallet at work. We got the gas taken care of, I worked a free beer at the bar through the mug club, and scrounged enough change for a soda and fries for lunch. Argh. Wallets and I haven’t gotten along recently….and it’s been mostly a one-way street sort of relationship. 

Oh, I forgot to mention that on Sunday Tori, Mary, and Alex came down and spent some time with Ahna and Ezra. Mary has been back east since the end of the summer, so it had been a while since she had seen the little boy. Everyone had fun, but there are no pictures to prove that it even happened….so I am going on Ahna’s word. 

It’s been one of the most amazing events of our lifetime, and I’m not sure that I have ever been more proud of our nation. It has been a thrill to watch on TV tonight the movement become a reality; and I am thrilled to be part of a state that moved from red to blue in this election. There is much more to write on this, but for now it’s time to celebrate….

Here’s a picture I took from the first Obama event that I went to in January, held at the University of Denver. 

On Thursday afternoon Ahna, Ezra, and I headed to the local library to cast our ballot during the Early Voting. We arrived just after lunchtime expecting a large crowd, but found a system that was set up very well, little lines, and lots of open machines (they had 6 rows of 8 machines).

There was lots of energy for us as we approached the voting booths (I took Ezra with me) and the excitement for what we were about to do was nearly overwhelming. I wrote to a friend of mine that after being so wrapped up in the election and supporting Obama for so long, the significance of what we were doing was a little emotional. I know that it is a little cheesy, but we are in such a desperate need for change in a time that we need someone like Obama so much, that it really sank in at that moment that we were voting for all of this. 

On top of that, the ‘errand’ to go and vote quickly lost it’s ‘errand’ status and transformed itself into a historical moment that we were able to share with Ezra. For the first time (even for the first time throughout this campaign season) I felt as though I wasn’t voting for my candidate, rather casting a vote for Ezra and the world that he would grow into. There is an old Native American teaching that says that the earth was loaned to us by our children. For the first time, I think I truly understood the concept. 

I haven’t gone deep into the reasons that I support Obama in this space, but we have also made no attempts to mask our political beliefs as based on social justice and therefore fit on the commonly understood scale as very liberal. There are a lot of ways that I would love to get into a discussion on politics, who to vote for, and why you might be right or wrong…but that’s for face-to-face. All that I ask is that you go out and vote (for Obama, and I can help you fill out your ballot if you like). It doesn’t matter who you support (as long as it isn’t McCain), it only matters that you exercise your responsibility to be part of this democracy. 

I will, on the other hand, let my friend do some of the talking. While a lot of our politics and fervent belief lies on the social end of the spectrum, Andrew does a great job of addressing some of the economic reasons to support Obama. 

So, I keep having an idea in my head of what I think is the perfect theme song for this election; Mike Watt’s Against the 70’s. The main refrain being “The kids of today should defend themselves against the 70s”. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam is the singer on it. It just seems to me like those of us of my generation will be voting to defend ourselves against a conservative ideology brought about to solve the problems of 1979. And conservatives have basically been in power since that point, during which time they’ve knocked marginal tax rates and capital gains tax rates way down and deregulated just about everything. And at the time it was probably necessary, and I think led to the great economic growth in the 90s. But in the last 8 years the tax cutting and deregulating has been taken too far. The rich get richer, while everybody else stagnates, and without regulation the markets went off the deep end. My view of the American version of capitalism is that it has been a balancing act between empowering those who make money from having wealth and capital, and those who make money by their labor. Things get out of whack when you go off balance too far in either direction, and I think we’re off balance too much in favor of wealth and capital. The republicans still want to push the pendulum more towards the benefit of those with capital with tax cuts for capital gains and higher income brackets. It strikes me as trying to fight the battles of the late 70s, and it’s not really relevant today and would actually be pretty harmful.

And this whole “Joe the Plumber” jackass really gets me fired up. He whines that basically if he’s lucky enough to be able to make 250k/yr owning a small plumbing business, no way does he want to give a little more back to the country that allows him to succeed. Maybe he was raised in a hand hewed log cabin and schooled by his mama, but as for me, I was educated in public school and attended public, land grant colleges where I got a world class education for relative peanuts. In grad school, the government even picked up the tab for it, including some living expenses, and just asked for a little bit of my time in research in return. Now I drive down an Interstate highway to work, work at a job partially supported by federal research money, come home and eat food from the safest food source and water system around, and can rest at night knowing the finest military the world has ever seen is watching over me. And if I’m so lucky as to make a living most only dream about with a salary of 250k per year, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that I give a little extra back so that when my brother is in Afghanistan, he’ll have some decent body armor. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to give a little more back than those who don’t have as much do, so that other people can get the same benefits I’ve enjoyed and continue to enjoy.

So, I don’t need a damn tax cut. Use the money to keep the bridge I’m driving across on the way to work from falling down. Let the policemen, firefighters, teachers and soldiers I’m depending on make a decent living. The “Spreading the Wealth Around” that Joe calls “Socialism”, I call giving my fair share for all our benefit: teamwork.

So, you’re probably figuring by now I’ll be voting for Obama, and you would be right. I actually think McCain is a decent guy, but I just think he formed his views in the late 70s and they’ve never changed, and that’s not what we need. Here’s hoping that Obama wins and can get us all moving in the right direction together again.

Here’s a picture of Ezra participating in the event of a lifetime (they wouldn’t let us take a camera into the voting booth, so this will have to do). Make sure that you go and do the same.

So the afternoon resulted in some errands preparing for the evening. We went and found a pumpkin….and by ‘we,’ I meant ‘Ahna drove all over town looking for one.’ It’s surprising predicable how difficult it is to find a pumpkin at 4 in the afternoon on Halloween. 

Downtown Castle Rock hosts a huge event for the kids to come and collect candy from the businesses, and while we didn’t participate in the cross between good clean small town fun and pure capitalism, Ahna was forced to drive through it twice in the hunt for pumpkins. Turns out that we think that the overall lack of trick-or-treaters is in large part due to the fact that they were all downtown….estimates of people downtown range from the lots-of-hundreds (by the town) to well over 3 million (by Ahna). 

We were surprised last year when we got a whopping 6 kids stop by for candy – especially for living in a neighborhood that has a ton of houses in a small area and is relatively full of kids – but we were pleasantly surprised when we had a steady flow of kids (still below 30 or 40) the whole evening….and not surprisingly, their age increased as the night went on. 

Once my folks stopped by, we did a little rice cereal with Ezra, gave him a bath, carved the mini pumpkin (we also discovered that the hardness of the pumpkin is directly proportional to the size. At least it was last night. It bent two carving knives in the attempt to make a face on it, but Ezra seemed to enjoy it, so the sacrifice was worth it), talked for a while, and had a nice and relaxing evening discussing politics. 

Here is the picture drop for the rest of the day….

Too many pictures for one post, so there will be another coming soon. 

This morning began with a ‘trial’ run for Ahna at getting up early, showering, etc….just like if she were going to school – which, by the way, she will be a week from Monday. Ezra must have known about our plan and decided to let us know that he wasn’t too cool with it by waking up at 5 and saying awake until 6, at which point he went back to sleep for a while. He and I hung out downstairs. 

The opportunity for the trial run was presented by the chance to go to Ahna’s school today for a Halloween celebration. Each of the kids are invited to dress up, and at 8:45 there was a parade where all of the kids walk around the entire school….it’s actually really fun. Following the parade, we joined Ahna’s class (well, it’s actually Judy’s – the teacher until Ahna gets back to work – for now) for a little Halloween celebration with some food, some music, and some scary story telling (written and told by the kids). 

Oh yea, I almost forgot: Ezra’s first Halloween outfit was a cow. Yup, with a Mom from Wisconsin, it was a must-have for the first year. 

Some pictures from the morning:

Thought you all might like to see what we did for the pumpkin at the firehouse. Since our logo is an evil looking jester, we came up with something that would work. It was a combination of 4 or 5 different patterns that we freehanded into the carving that you see below. The ‘5’ is our station number. Ah, the reflection is off of the kitchen table….thought it was cool.

100,000+!!! people. Holy crap! That’s 30,000 more than saw the speech at Invesco Field! Then on top of the Denver rally, 50,000 people showed up in Ft. Collins in the afternoon! This is a movement…

Ahna, Ezra and I headed downtown this morning to the Barack Obama rally in Denver. We met up with Teva and Micah at the Tattered Cover for a quick coffee before moving over to Civic Center Park for the event. We had assumed/hoped that there would be a rather large crowd, as reports of people lining up as early as 5am were filtering through the downtown area, but even with the preconcieved ideas of the number of people, the actual number exceeded our thoughts. 

We got down there around 10:45 for the program that was supposed to start at 11:30 (which actually started around 11), and the entire center part of the park was filled up from the City Building to the State Capitol steps already (for those that don’t know Denver, it’s a park that is two full city blocks long). Knowing that our chance of actually seeing anything was slim and slimmer, we tried for the closest spot that we could near the stage and speakers. The energy, excitement, and enthusiasm of the crowd was absolutely unparalleled. We also noted that we were thrilled to see the amount of diversity (gender, race, and economic) in the crowd. All ages, all walks of life. It was also the first time that Ahna, Ezra, Teva, and Micah had been able to be in person for a rally and their level of excitement was nearly through the roof. 

We were able to hear Gov Bill Ritter, Sen Ken Salazar, and Cong Mark Udall (running for US Senate) speak before Obama came on. Even though Obama was speaking to a crowd of “well over 100,000 people” (according to the Denver Police Department), he came across as very personable, very relaxed, and very much in his element. The speech hovered between the canned campaign speech and new attacks on McCain, but again came across very good; and was very well received by the crowd. 

It was a lot of fun, especially with the historic mark that our voice is bringing. It’s always great and very fulfilling to be part of something that inspires you, and to voice that opinion loud and proud.

Nov 4 is just around the corner……

(ps: the first four pictures are mine, and the last five are from the Denver Post and Helen Richardson…added to show the scale of the event since my pictures can’t)