Peeking into the rock

If I could figure out a way to go to Wiscon, I could be part of the reading for Glorifying Terrorism. The nice fellow said it couldn't be that expensive. It's not only expensive, it's difficult and time-consuming to get to Madison from here. Flying from San Jose costs $400 round-trip, with three airplanes and almost 9 hours travel each way. From San Francisco it's a lot cheaper but you have to leave at 1 in the morning and fly to Dallas/Ft. Worth and hang out there for four hours for more than 9 hours total. Oakland is worse.

I had thought about flying someplace close-ish and taking a bus, but I can't figure that one out either.

The bus takes two days each way.

I just don't understand routing a flight from San Jose to Madison through Dallas. It adds 700 miles to the trip. Why not route the flight through someplace more on the way?

Baycon is nice.

What I won: remember I got attacked by a story about a couple of boys who don't? The story grew, and so did the boys, and now it's a story about boys who grow up and when they're grown up, they do.
It really seems appropriate for Iris except for one thing: it's 14K long, and their limit for shorts is 10K (their lower limit for novel-like objects is 50K, but there's no way I can stretch this that far). So I've queried.

What I lost: no room at the inn, because I called too late. Both Jules and David have already offered room at their houses, but I'm not sure whether that's actually better than going home (well, yeah, it is, because it's not over Highway 17 in the middle of the night). I'm all sort of glum about BayCon anyway because I really did try to sign up for the writer's workshops and the guy who's organizing it never answered any of my emails and, well, that didn't happen. And the story I submitted -- on time, too, according to the main website -- I would have been revising if I hadn't sent it in.

However, I won another thing: I did finish revising the one about the last people and the baby quilt, and it is a whole lot better, which is surprising because I had thought it was pretty well finished before.

It's midnight again and I'm still up, but that's because I was finishing the boy story and querying Iris about it.

Not because I was playing puzzle games online and eating puffed rice with almond milk, not me.

On another front: my absentee ballot has arrived. I think I will turn it in at the precinct I'm working at on the day.

I have made some decisions, but they were difficult:

governor -- Phil Angelides. All of a sudden Westly and Angelides have started running really mean nasty ads -- Westly started it. Oddly, the first nasty anti-Angelides ad was what pushed me over the edge: Westly accused Angelides of wanting to raise taxes on the rich, and praised himself for starting up eBay. No, eBay is not a bad thing, but it's weird to contrast yourself in that way -- "I'm not going to raise taxes, and I'm a super successful entrepreneur?"

Apparently a lot of other people feel the same way and said so to the pollsters who called them up, because the latest anti-Angelides ad accuses him of being a real estate developer. And says that Angelides' ads about how he got support from all the public service unions were paid for by real estate people.

See, context is everything.

County supervisor, for my district (3rd?) I have weird choice. Let's really get into this, okay?

Here they are:

Neal Coonerty, who owns Bookshop Santa Cruz, has been Mayor, and publishes bumper stickers that read "Keep Santa Cruz Weird --" context is everything, again: these bumper stickers are in favor of lightening up on the street musicians already. This is the conservative candidate, the one that the chamber of commerce and the downtown business association and the hotel owners like. I was really pissed off at him for a couple of years because of his behavior on the City Council, but I've forgiven him. He's reversed himself on a copuple of homelessy issues and he was always good on a couple of others and he might support the living wage. and he's definitely all for keeping open space and supporting kid things.

Chris Krohn -- also used to be on the City Council. Kind of volatile sometimes, but decent, lefty (a Green), and seems to have integrity. I can't remember getting pissed off at him.

Jonathan Boutelle -- former secretary of the Central Labor Council, used to be really active in labor and peace things, has laid low for a long time because of manic-depressive things. Can be a loose cannon, but generally progressive, and I can't help liking him because our kids grew up together (Emma: I don't think you know Tommy Boutelle, he's a year or so older than Frank), because we demonstrated for peace together back in the day, because he sang "Silhouettes on the Shade" with Tim McCormick and Chris Matthews (not that Chris Matthews, the local one who own the "Poet and Patriot" bar next to the downtown Bagelry) at the very first re-establishment of the Labor Day picnic which was organized by yours truly and a bunch of lefties because we wanted to sell sodas at it to raise money for the Texas Farmworkers.

Anyway. I'm expecting Coonerty to narrowly win, or maybe a runoff between Coonerty and Krohn. I'm voting for Boutelle. My reasoning is this: if he gets ten or fifteen percent of the vote, he has a parley with Coonerty and a parley with Krohn , and he says -- at the runoff I'll throw my supporters at you, if you make some agreements about labor issues, capisce?

It worked when whatshisname ran for City Council -- (no, not Robert Norse. This other guy whose name is Joe something and whose last name I cannot even bring to the tip of my tongue right now)I believe he gave his support to Emily Reilly and we sure could do worse than her (she's the one who comes from the bakery up the street and she's so thoughtful and comes out way to the left of where you expect a small business owner to end up)

County Schools Supervisor -- beats me. I'll figure it out soon, though.

Living Wage made it to the ballot, and the City Council is taking it pretty seriously. The Sentinel is all over it, saying how bad it is for the economy and all that.

Bed!