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election day diary, returns edition

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8:05pm Holy god, they aren’t calling Mississippi and Alabama right away? I might yet get my BLOODBATH! In other news, of course Pennsylvania went to Obama, it was polling nearly the same as Michigan and Wisconsin. Thank you for acknowledging that, NBC.

8:13pm THANK YOU, KAY HAGAN! BOOYAH, LIDDY DOLE! BITE ME, JOE LIEBERMAN! In other news, is Shep still going rogue?!

8:25pm The Chinese food delivery person basically ran up to our door, said ‘We’re VERY busy tonight!’ and grabbed the check slip to dash back to the still-running car. Yum, americanized Chinese food!

9:01pm I’m glad to see that the shenanigans around Detroit didn’t make the presidential race competitive there, I have to admit I was a little worried this morning. Also, they are not calling Arizona yet! Woot! Shep just introduced Karl Rove as the architect of something, and I swear I thought it was going to be ‘of McCain’s demise.’ Seems like everyone’s calling Georgia for McCain, which probably means a runoff for the senate seat.

9:19pm OHIO! How sweet was it to hear Shep Smith say ‘There is NO PATH TO THE WHITE HOUSE FOR MCCAIN without Ohio.’

9:35pm We are going to the new bar near our house to celebrate with the masses! Also with big TVs and cable!

10:55pm Virginia goes to Obama! Everybody in the bar cheers! There is lots of speculation about whether Obama will just declare himself the winner before the polls close or what (we wish).

11pm The polls on the west coast close and the bar erupts into cheering and yelling and screaming and clapping and that is why I needed to be somewhere with other people! We listen to McCain’s surprisingly normal-sounding concession (where was this McCain for the past 6 months?) and then we all start crying and clapping and cheering when Obama starts speaking and Jesse is there and everything is just totally surreal and not yet sunk in.

12:30am We keep hoping they will call Indiana, but they haven’t yet. Everybody leaves after we all hug each other and shake hands and congratulate each other and remark upon the enormity of the first black president of the United States. Also we express the desire to be at the White House and regret that the metro isn’t running because it’s a weekday. Instead, we walk home and I have my partner take my picture with our Obama yard sign.

1:15am I am still really wishing we still lived a mile north of the White House so we could join the ecstatic crowds down there! And also waiting for the Indiana result to be finalized; it’s been holding at 99% reporting and a 20k gap for a while now.

election day diary, returns edition

election day diary

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7:30am First pot of coffee of the day brewed! We are checking out the morning TV news, for the first time in memory, to see how long the lines are in Virginia. Not too long, and we catch one really happy looking black guy about our age coming out of the polls and waving to the news cameras. It’s on!

8:30am I go over to our polling place to check out the length of the line (still inside the building) and to talk to the folks in charge about bringing over some coffee for the voters. I get the all clear and come back home to make it in a pot I borrowed from the Women’s Club, with a little help from the interwebs.

9:30am The coffee finally finishes percolating and I take it over to the school with some cups. The line is small now, just inside the main room. Realizing that I don’t have anything to offer folks with this coffee, I head to the grocery store, to pick up some fake creamer, sugar packets, and more cups.

10:30am When I get back to the school — with day old donuts in tow! — the line is again stretching outside. I am heartened to see that the Obama volunteers are still outside: if they are at our polling place in Prince George’s County, Maryland, they are truly everywhere. Once inside, I relocate the coffee station to the hallway from right beside where you check in, figuring there would be more takers farther back in the line. Former mayor and current Town Council member Margaret Mallino happened to be in line just then, and graciously agreed to pose for a shot near my new coffee station.

11am Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m finally mixing up the cookie dough I didn’t get to last night. It’ll go into the fridge to chill while I shower (!) and then into the oven and it’s off to Virginia for the afternoon. Somewhere in there a lunch consisting of something other than day old donuts will get consumed. Depending on demand, I may perk another pot of coffee at the school for the post-lunch crowd before heading out.

1:30pm A guy I went to junior high with, who now lives in Florida and I’ll refer to as Rainbow941, sent me his analysis while I was in the kitchen making Pumpkin Cookies For Obama: “This is the classic mismatch. Horrible economy, stagnant war bleeding the country dry, old out of touch candidate versus the new, free- thinking, idiologically super hot liberal. GAME OVER.” With which I tend to agree; a similar analysis led me to observe to my partner last week that I could ‘totally see’ why voters elected FDR over and over and over until he died. Which reminds me to share with you where the voting populous was with regard to this very matchup two years ago (no wonder McCain always looked like a pole was jammed somewhere unpleasant during joint appearances). I will feel sorry for the old dude and his dramatic decline at exactly 1:59am this evening, or whenever we get the Alaska results, whichever comes later.

2:30pm It’s now raining, lightly but steadily, and is predicted to keep doing so all night. I am heading to Virginia for the next few hours, to do whatever I can to support the voters and Obama volunteers. Here’s what you can do for me (and Barack Obama!) while I’m gone: (1) Live somewhere warm? (Arizona, Florida, New Mexico!) Buy a 24 pack of water bottles at your local store and drive it to your local polling place; (2) Live somewhere cold? (Colorado, Montana, Pennsylvania!) Buy a gallon of coffee at your local Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks and drive it to your local polling place; (3) Live somewhere rainy? (Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina!) Buy a few cheap umbrellas and drop them off at your local polling place; (4) Got more time than money? Stop by your local GOTV office and help them with whatever they’re doing; (5) Got more free minutes than time or money? Call voters from your own phone; and (6) Do all of this in the evening after work! Lines are going to be long well after the polls close, and poll workers — your neighbors who will have all been there since an hour before the polls opened this morning — and voters alike will thank you.

3:15pm Traffic is slow as I approach ‘that damn drawbridge,’ however it’s mostly going the other way out of the city, which makes me hopeful that people are rushing home to make sure to be able to vote. Once I get to Englin’s house, I make phone calls for about half an hour. I really hate making phone calls, by the way, but that’s what there is to do, so I do it. The local effort is so under control, though, that the calls are to Virginia Beach, in support of Glenn Nye‘s congressional race. As part of the organizing efforts extraordinaire, folks have canvassed the neighborhood twice already by 4:30pm to determine who’s voted. There are a few people left who they haven’t caught, so I head out for another loop of the surrounding blocks to knock on doors as ask if folks have voted. They have or they aren’t home or, in the case of two guys I catch on their porch, they’re on their way to do so right now.

5pm I am getting concerned about getting back to Maryland, and I want to stop at the polls themselves with the snacks I’ve brought. I was hoping for mobs of people after work, so that I could get some good pictures. Apparently I needed to be in Virginia at 6am to get those shots; by 5pm everything is moving along quickly. The Obama volunteers and Election Protection folks are still there, though, so I stop at two local schools and offer up cookies on my way back out of town.

6:30pm Once home, we head right over to the elementary school so that my partner can vote. Someone has very kindly cleaned up the coffeepot that I left there earlier in the day, and I pass around the remaining cookies to my local poll workers and get my photo taken by the local AP guy. The afternoon has been really slow (thus the opportunity to clean up the coffeepot) and everyone’s looking like they’ll be very glad to see the other side of 8pm. We also ran into our new neighbor, who’d been doing Election Protection down in southern Virginia all day. She tells us that she got stuck behind the Obama motorcade on the road last night and went all day on only three hours of sleep, and therefore declines our offer to hang out at our place and drink until the wee hours.

7:30pm Here we are back in our house, TV on, websites loaded, minimal precincts reporting as of yet. Expected first toast: Kay Hagan! In the meantime, I will be glued to the Indiana Secretary of State site. And, the returns blogging will continue in a new post.

election day diary

Boordy Vineyards Wine & Herb Festival

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Last Saturday we drove up to Boordy Vineyards, north of Baltimore, for their annual wine and herb festival. I was imagining something ‘a little more California,’ as my friend’s mother would say: linen trousers, platters of complimentary artisanal cheeses with crusty bread, and music wafting on the breeze. It was not like that. What it was like was paying an entrance fee for the opportunity to spend more money, a construct that I’ve never really found appealing.

Although it’s not something I would have attended had I known what I was getting, the festival as structured was fine. There was a live band, a dance floor, and a varied selection of local products available for sale. However, besides bringing in the additional vendors and the music, Boordy didn’t provide anything that couldn’t be had by visiting the vineyard during regular hours. There were no special rates and no complimentary drinks or food beyond the usual 1/2 ounce tastes of their regular products. This was the largest digression from what I’d imagined we were attending; for the $12 dollar entrance fee, I expected more than I could have gotten at any of the free Taste of [fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-city] events I’ve attended over the years.

The major disappointment of our visit, however, was the discovery that most of their wines were just plain bad. I’ve had their Riesling several times and enjoyed it; my mistake was assuming that a Riesling would be on the lower end of what they had to offer. Quite the opposite: the Riesling is by far their nicest (i.e. most authentic) selection. Granted, this was the first time I’d gone to a tasting of Maryland wines, and it probably shouldn’t have been surprising that the flavor and body were so consistently what I can only describe as young. I imagine this is an artifact of growing grapes in this climate, but I was still taken aback by how unappealing I found them. They were no competition for New York or New Jersey wines, let alone even moderate choices from California or Oregon vineyards. I suppose that people who enjoy California wines and don’t have expectations based on the French originals might find these local cabernets and pinots palatable; I certainly did not.

Another element that I wasn’t prepared for was the prevalence of flavored fruit wines. When did coolers in a wine bottle become something consumed by anybody over the age of 20? I truly did not consider myself a wine snob before this weekend, but either the norms have changed dramatically in the past decade or my tastes have matured much more than I realized, because I was kind of appalled to see what people were drinking by the case and pronouncing excellent. I’m no stranger to fruit wines: Michigan produces lovely cherry wines, I’ve had delicious blueberry wines in Ontario and New Jersey, and my aunt bottles a refreshing peach flavored wine at her local DIY shop that’s perfect for a summer evening. I guess that’s the problem: I didn’t expect to find flavored wines worse than what my family can make on their own being touted at the local vineyard.

The upshot is that the wines were really not worth the trip, and it’s good to know what to avoid in the future. We did come home with several herbs for our garden — rosemary, ‘Italian oregano,’ and mint julep — courtesy of Putnam Hill Nursery, and two new honey selections — cranberry and blueberry — from the folks at Bees on the Bay. So, the trip wasn’t a total wash, and now we know.

Boordy Vineyards Wine & Herb Festival

new life birds at Lake Artemesia and Patuxent

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In order to try to catch sight of some of the migrating warblers coming through this area, I visited Lake Artemesia at what seemed like an unreasonably early — and cold! — hour this morning: 7:00am. When I first arrived, only the larger birds were active: Cardinals, Blue Jays, Robins, Mockingbirds, and Starlings were all making loads of noise, as well as a single male Eastern Towhee camped out at the top a tree singing its little heart out. Out on the water, a bunch of Coots, several pairs of Canada Geese, and the threesome of Wood Ducks were paddling around (there must be another male around somewhere, right?). By the time I reached the bridge to the peninsula, though, the smaller birds were starting to get going: I saw a goldfinch, loads of chickadees, and a Tufted Titmouse. Just over the bridge, I was geeked to see a Green Heron up in a tree. I know, intellectually, that they nest in trees, but it still strikes me as odd to actually see them up in the branches. I was also unduly excited to spot a Snapping Turtle in the lake near the bridge. It wasn’t as impressively large as the one I saw at the University Hills pond last year, but it was large enough to be clearly identifiable, especially with its long tail in view.

The peninsula yielded two new life birds, although not any of the warblers I was hoping to see. Near the restrooms I found a Field Sparrow, a bird I’d been told was around but had yet to spot. Nearby, along one of the ‘paths’ cut into the grass, I discovered a small group of Savannah Sparrows. They were neat, with their yellow head stripes and lovely streaky colors. The flash of yellow gave me hope that I had found a warbler, but I was just as pleased to find a type of sparrow I would never have been looking for. I did see some warblers in the trees along the bank of the peninsula, but only Yellow-Rumped ones. I spotted a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher catching gnats and the male Bluebird hovering around yet another new nesting box; I suspect that he keeps getting bullied away from the boxes by the Tree Sparrows, and I’m hoping that doesn’t mean the pair will move on completely.

I wasn’t too bent out of shape about not seeing any new warblers, as I’ve already seen two new ones at Patuxent this month: a single Pine Warbler and a few Palm Warblers; the latter were traveling with a large group of Yellow-Rumped Warblers, as I was told they likely would be. In a stroke of luck, I completely lost track of time and was sitting on a bench on the lake trail after the trails were supposed to be closed, which was exactly the point in the late afternoon when all the little insect eating birds became active again. I think I also saw a Black-Throated Green Warbler, but I wasn’t able to conclusively identify it. It wasn’t until the ranger directed me to return to the parking lot, via the bullhorn on the jeep from across the lake, did I realize how late it had gotten.

The Pine Warbler sighting was the result of sheer determination, and not a little neck-crunching. I had taken my partner up to Patuxent to show him some of the birds I’d seen there that were new to him (namely the bluebirds and the loon that had been hanging out on the lake), and we doggedly tracked the noisy little bird through the woods and then he stood patiently by while I peered at the very tops of the tallest trees following the little blur of yellow. In the end, I confirmed the identification by behavior, which seems to be the case more frequently as I move out of the most common birds into the still-pretty-common-in-the-right-habitat birds. Which is why I’ve switched to using Sibley’s as my primary guide: I find the behavior, habitat, and song descriptions to be more thorough and easier to understand than in Peterson’s.

In an effort to keep adding mostly-common birds to my lifelist, we’re planning to visit Bombay Hook this weekend to try to see the shorebirds that should have returned by now. I imagine it will be quite busy on a weekend afternoon, but I’m looking forward to it.

new life birds at Lake Artemesia and Patuxent