Seriously? September 22nd?

Yeah, I guess it has been a while. I'm sure everyone's found other things to entertain themselves with besides my blog, though.

Lots of stuff has happened, obviously, in the intervening 43 days. First and foremost, Jen had her baby! Little Annabelle came into the world on October 7th at 4:30pm, weighing 4 lbs and having a score of 9.9 (would have gotten a perfect 10 but the Russian judge gyped her). Here's a picture of her that Jen sent me just this past weekend.

So now all three of you who haven't seen her picture by now know what she looks like! Jen and Tim and being kept quite busy by this new development, as I'm sure you can imagine, but I have managed to speak with them in a somewhat limited basis, and they seem to be coping rather well. No word yet on how Josie and Roscoe are dealing with the new addition.

In other news, we've had plenty of visitors down here over the last month and a half. As alluded to last time, Mom, Dad and Grandpop came down to visit the third weekend in September, and the following weekend Shelly and I went down to Myrtle Beach to spent some time with Misty, Robin, Josh, and Ashley. Here's some pictures from the latter occasion:

And just because there's no better place to put it, here's Misty, being the judge of what is just about the best selection of Apples to Apples cards I've ever seen:

The following weekend, Shelly and I traveled to Charlotte for Aaron Zambrano's first birthday (let's see- do I have any pictures of that I can use for filler? No? What on earth was I doing that whole party, socializing?!), and two weeks later, Stefanie and Julius brought Aaron up here so we could go to the State Fair (Ashley tagged along too). Now I DO have some pictures from that one to show you!




I have NO idea how that picture layout is going to look- I'm sorry if it's messed up. I'm on Shelly's computer (mine continues to be broken- and will remain that way pretty much forever, actually), and she uses Firefox as a browser, slightly different than IE, which is what I used before.

The next big event after that was Halloween. The Hawkinseses were good enough to host Shelly and I for dinner that night, though I think it was a transparent ploy to show off Charlotte's cute costume:
And then the two of us were off to Greensboro, for Martha and her fellow attorney's Halloween Party. Google used to opportunity to foist ridiculously bad directions on me and get me hopelessly lost, causing an hour drive to take a solid hour forty five.

Given that I didn't blog on October 25th or 30th, it's worth at this point to note I've been emancipated (and I don't say that with much irony) for three years from my God-awful job at Signature Special Events, effective the former date, and have been gainfully employed at SECU for three years, effective the latter. The karmic burden was apparently too much for my former tormentors, as they have virtually ceased to exist from what I can tell. My current job continues to move forward well- it was actually my boss who touchingly reminded me that it was my anniversary, asking me to take a celebratory three minute trip to the break room to get coffee for myself (and her, while I was going that way).

Speaking of celebrations, how 'bout New Jersey and Virginia, huh? I'd forgotten what it felt like to win elections. Granted, those two governorship have switched to the out-of-power party in every election for the last 30 years (roughly), but there's no ignoring the dramatic move of Independents AWAY from the Democrats (Obama won VA 53-47%, but Deeds got CRUSHED 58%- 40%). Hopefully this will give enough moderate Dems pause to stop that debacle of a Health Care plan oozing its way through the corridors of power.

Also of note from last night, the poor voters of Maine went from being "savvy, independent, freedom-minded" folk to "backwoods bigoted hicks" in the space of one election, due to them joining 31 other states in refusing to redefine marriage. (Seriously- read the comment boards on any article discussing the story). It reminds me of nothing more than a 3 year old being syrupy-sweet to his parents because he's trying to get his way, then falling on the floor kicking, screaming, and yelling "I HATE YOU!!!" the minute they tell him "no" about something.

In a related note, we have a very special guest appearance on my blog tonight, as Megatron would like to briefly weigh in on this issue.
Megatron? (<--click the link)


However encouraging those results might be, however, NY-23 offered a cautionary tale. Namely, even if Democrats are widely unpopular next year (and they look to have every intention of making that the case), we can still lose if we don't have our act together. In this case, though, contrary to popular opinion, it wasn't the conservatives who screwed that race up. Scozzafava was both a terrible candidate and barely a Republican, and the establishment Republicans in the district should NEVER have nominated her for the seat in the first place (there's no WAY she would have ever won a primary, had there been one); conservatives were right to reject her, but unfortunately the whole incident distracted from the main point, which should have been getting a fiscally conservative Rep in Congress. It's fiscal conservatism that's going to win next year, but only if the candidate's social stands don't alienate the base. The way forward is to nominate conservatives who are BOTH fiscally and socially conservative, but mainly stress the fiscal aspect. That's how McDonnell won in VA; that's how we can win next year.

Alright, everyone, that's all from me for now. Hopefully I'll get around to posting again before I see everyone for Christmas and Thanksgiving ;)