Now, why would we get 2 or 4 days off of the week this week? Thanksgiving, of course! Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks. Oh, who am I kidding. It's a day to eat, and eat a lot. We're actually going to two houses (both in the Portland area). At the first house, they don't really like turkey, so we're having lasagna and Cornish game hens instead. At the second house, we're actually having turkey. I also made molasses cookies the other day. They're ridiculously good. I also used 3 sticks of butter. Maybe that's why they're so good. In any case, they're doing their part in expanding my stomach for thanksgiving.
Another thing I like about Thanksgiving is that it celebrates the pilgrims.
The pilgrims were the only colonists in America who weren't basically Nazis. The puritans (or, as my history teacher calls them, the American Taliban) were all about religion over person and stuff, and they were not tolerant people. I could go on, but basically, the pilgrims believed in a separation of church and state and tolerance. The quakers were good too, now that I think about it, but the
American Nazi party tends to obscure them. The pilgrims were also one of my favorite parts of our summer reading for AP US. In fact, that whole page which went from Bacon's rebellion to Anne Hutchison was the best page of notes ever. That page of notes can be seen to the right. They're pretty awesome, I know. I even drew a picture of a turkey next to the pilgrims.
Now, I guess I haven't updated my blog in so long that I haven't talked about the gubernatorial situation here in Oregon, or at least how it turned out. I did talk about how John Kitzhaber is freaking awesome and that Chris Dudley is terrible. What I have not yet mentioned on here, is that John Kitzhaber won it! It was a terrible night, though... As we know, the Democrats got massacred in the house, although I thought we would do worse in the senate, so it can't be that bad. Better than both the house and the senate, though, is the west coast! I don't know much about how things went in California or Washington, except that Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown and Patty Murray won. I can tell you, though, that in Oregon, We didn't lose either houses of the state legislature. Not a single one of our federal representatives lost his job. Our senator absolutely dominated. For governor, that was really exciting. The night of, I went to John Kitzhaber's party. We went in knowing it would be close. Kitzhaber took the first few votes, but Dudley started climbing quickly. A teacher from my elementary school was there and saw those numbers. She then went on to describe Oregonians as "fucking idiots," which is completely true. That night, I was pretty sure Dudley would win. I totally couldn't imagine Governor Dudley, so I was running that through my head. At 11:00, John Kitzhaber made a speech. Not only did he say that he was optimistic, he did what he's great at: he explained why. That could be because he's a doctor, or maybe just a really good politician, but in any case, you could tell he wasn't just saying it. He explained quite clearly that the only real set of votes left was in Multnomah county, which is hugely democratic. I went home not knowing what would happen. I didn't think Kitzhaber was going to win, but I didn't think Dudley would either. I went to bed that night, but I didn't sleep much. The next day, I had AP US, and we went to the computer lab. Since it was an AP US class, instead of going on Facebook to screw off, we all went to the New York times or Oregonlive or whatever to screw off and look at election returns. By that point, there were no significant voting centers left other than Multnomah county. Kitzhaber was still behind by about 25,000 votes, but by then I was feeling pretty optimistic. I had C++ third period, and so my AP US friend and I were looking at the results. The numbers hadn't changed much, but we extrapolated the numbers, and found that, unless the only part of Multnomah they hadn't counted yet was Dunthorpe or something, there was really no way that Kitzhaber could lose. With that knowledge, I was fine for the rest of the day. I went home after Orchestra and went to check the results. Sure enough, Dudley was still ahead, but I kept watching. When Dudley was still about 5,000 votes ahead, KPTV, none other than our local FOX station, called it for Kitzhaber. At that moment, I felt so relieved that I was able to go up and get the mail. As I was doing that, my mom called out the door that Oregon live called it for Kitzhaber. By then, I knew it was a done deal. As other stations started calling it for Kitzhaber, I felt that I would be safe going to Jew school. So I did. And I made a lot of Jews happy with that news. After dinner, I checked the numbers, and much to the satisfaction of many of my Jew friends, Kitzhaber had pulled ahead. It was done. As I was leaving, I saw that my mom had texted me that Chris Dudley conceded. I remember, I was walking up the stairs, but they weren't the stairs I normally use, for some reason. So, that's how my election went here... Yesterday, I learned that my rich-ass and fairly conservative suburb of Lake Oswego, home of former NBA player Chris Dudley, ended up voting for Kitzhaber by a margin of about 200 votes, which was quite surprising but extremely satisfying to me.
So, I guess that's all I have to say, but now you can't be mad at me for not updating my blog...
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