Wednesday, October 30th — Old Friends

Today I Learned…

…that one of my oldest friends is back in town.  I met him at the Haunt last night, which was incredibly cool.  He seems like he’s doing well for himself, and it was really good to see him and find out that he’s not dead.

This also marks three straight karaoke nights at the Haunt that someone has purchased a shot for me.  I win.

Thursday, August 28th — Spamuel

Today I Learned…

…that my friend Spam (Sam) has basically worked for most of the Democrats in the Syracuse, NY metro area.  I met most of them tonight when Alex and I went up to Syracuse to watch Senator Obama’s acceptance speech in a big theater.  What a schmoozer.

Other things I learned on this trip:

1. I learned that there’s at least one less undecided voter after tonight, and in a blue way.  So that’s good.
2. I learned that the night clerk at the convenience store I parked at for the evening couldn’t handle Alex’s… shall we say… style?  I believe “you’re making me uncomfortable” and “you two live together?”  came out of her mouth.
3. I figured out why the Obama campaign has been kind of wussy lately in jabbing back at John McCain, at least coming from Barack.  It was to set up this acceptance speech.  Ever since the Berlin speech, people have wondered how Obama could possibly win the expectations game at the convention.  The answer was to change what expectations mattered.  People expected high-flying oratory, and they got some fine examples of it.  But what they didn’t expect were two direct answers to some criticisms that have been leveled at him — first, that his plans were all words and no details (there were plenty of details), and second, that the candidate himself was not comfortable enough with going negative (there was plenty of that too).  Those two surprising things allowed him to surpass expectations tonight, which is a big deal.