Once was Lost...

Life in general has been excellent lately. I've revamped some of my classes and made them a lot more interesting (though a lot harder to prepare for), and I had a really fun (and tiring) weekend. I'll talk about the school stuff another time.

Saturday night was an adventure and a half. Some friends were house-sitting and wanted to have everybody over to hang out and enjoy life well outside the city limits. It was awesome and worth all the wanderings and frustrations that it took to get there.

First, I learned something: even if it is rude and annoying to be a backseat driver, it's not always a bad thing. I didn't drive to the house, and my wife didn't either. Instead, our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Smith drove. We started out and expected a half-hour drive, so we went for quite a while before realizing that the directions were not matching up with our surroundings. If my wife had been driving, I would have probably been a real pain in the tail and hollered
from the back seat, and if I had been behind the wheel, she'd have done the same. But we didn't want to be rude. So when we found that we were on the wrong highway, on the wrong side of town, heading in the wrong direction entirely, nothing was said. Honest mistakes...they happen. As my wife and I talked later, we found that we had inklings that may have led us in the right direction before this point, but we didn't want to be annoying backseat drivers.

Later, I started feeling a bit squeamish. I think it was the heater that did it, but it may have been Arby's--who knows, really? It was in this unfortunate condition, and 20-30 minutes later that we realized that, again, our surroundings and directions were not lining up. We called the hosts of our eventual get-together and were informed that though we were on the correct highway, we were heading in the wrong direction.

To wrap this up, an hour later we rolled up to the house, two and a half hours late, almost out of gas, and with a very apologetic driver. We had a great time over all with some Wall-E and some Killer Bunnies. And the night is already filed as a ridiculous romp through the Nebraskan wilderness that was a good time for all.

Voting: Not So Thrilling

I guess nobody has ever said that doing your duty as a responsible citizen is exciting, but I was kind of hoping it would be. Living in Nebraska, I found that my vote really did count for almost nothing. I looked at the paper today and saw that only one county voted for Obama. One. Out of the entire state, one (and I think it was Lancaster, where I live) that had a majority for the democratic nominee. Even though the guy I voted for won, I feel like I lost because those in my more immediate vicinity were not really with me.

I don't take sides with politics, at least not when it comes to party lines, and over all, I hate even talking about it. I blame my parents. They are both die-hard republicans that get all of their political news from Fox-News. They talk about O'Reilly tells them, and have little time for anything else. Over the years, this has driven me further from even wanting to listen to the republican side of things. I fear doing the same democratically. Though a registered independent, it is kind of hard to look at the lines and not sway more one way than another.

This is most exemplified by an amendment that I voted on yesterday. Democrats seem to usually talk a lot about leveling the playing fields, helping those less fortunate. An amendment yesterday focused on prohibiting discrimination of any kind in any situation. It did not pass. Somewhere, an idea of equal rights got ingrained into Nebraska thinking.

I know that republicans don't all think that people should be denied rights based on sex, religion, and race. But honestly, how can you look at something like that and say, "Nah, I like making sure that people don't have equal opportunities. I like make people work harder and get less."

I don't know how to end this...

ROAR!