Cape Photos

Oma Eating her Lobster

Erin working on dinner.

Election Ballot Brackets

Note: Players are limited to 2 ballots each. All ballots must be submitted, by 6:00 p.m. on Monday, November 3, 2008.

1st Prize – 50% 2nd Prize – 30% 3rd Prize – 20%


1. Who Will Be the Next President? (25 points)

[ ] Obama [ ] McCain



2. How Will the Battleground States Vote? (5 points each)

_______ Colorado _______
_______ Florida _______
_______ Indiana _______
_______ Nevada _______
_______ New Hampshire _______
_______ North Carolina _______
_______ Ohio _______
_______ Pennsylvania _______
_______ Virginia _______


3. The Hot Senate Races (5 points each)
Colorado _____ Udall (D) ­­­­_____ Schaffer (R)
Georgia _____ Martin (D) ­­­­_____ Chambliss (R)
Kentucky _____ Lunsford (D) ­­­­_____ McConnell (R)
Louisiana _____ Landrieu (D) ­­­­_____ Kennedy (R)
Minnesota _____ Franken (D) ­­­­_____ Coleman (R)
Mississippi _____ Musgrove (D) ­­­­_____ Wicker (R)
New Hampshire _____ Shaheen (D) ­­­­_____ Sununu (R)
North Carolina _____ Hagan (D) ­­­­_____ Dole (R)
Oregon _____ Merkley (D) ­­­­_____ Smith (R)
Texas _____ Noriega (D) ­­­­_____ Cornyn (R)
Virginia _____ Warner (D) ­­­­_____ Gilmore (R)

4. Final Electoral Vote (Tie breaker)
________ Democrat ________ Republican

Your score: _________

What your score says about you…
100 – 125: Big Time Pol 25 – 50: Sarah Palin
75 – 100: Academic / Pundit 0 – 25: “W”
50-75 TV Anchor

Relevant Websites
http://electoral-vote.com/
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/
http://www.270towin.com/

Cape Cod Dinner

Here is the family getting ready for the imported from DC lamb dinner - from left - Opa, Allison, Mom, Erin and Oma.

Have Lamb Will Travel

The annual Labor Day pilgrimage to visit my Oma and Opa started out as usual - Erin and I late for our flight to Providence, RI. Why were we late? Insert reason: 1) Alexis didn’t remember when the flight was, 2) Alexis didn’t factor sending out her “away from my desk emails” and closing up her work station into the time she would need to get to the metro, 3) Alexis doesn’t wear a watch 4) Alexis lost something 5) Alexis is just incapable of calculating time and travel properly. The list could go on and on. We are almost always late and when we are late, it’s always my fault. This was no exception. Scott ended up calling us car service. Although, I believe the car service was really a way for him to assuage some guilt for not taking us himself. I was so sick I was shaking, coughing, burning up and freezing at the same time, and that has to make a boyfriend feel bad.

As the car rolled into heavy holiday-weekend, rush-hour traffic, I promptly fell asleep on Erin’s lap. Meanwhile, Erin fished a glossy fashion magazine from the soft leather seat pocket and began to read. The magazine had some absurd name designed to make us feel like we were part of the lush crowd, but it really translated to “these people have too much disposable money for you to take them seriously.” The magazine’s suggested retail value? $35! What pray tell does one get for this $35? A bunch of beautifully photographed ads and some articles written by lovely PR people. We get to the airport, Erin dragging both our bags with her, remarked that mine sure was heavy. Yes, yes it was – It was filled with veggies from my CSA, and a large leg of lamb. One might ask who in their right mind boards planes with mass quantities of produce and frozen meat, but if one is asking that they haven’t traveled with me before. I know a sort of secret security line at BWI, we zip right through and go wait by our gate. I knock my purse over three or four times and in my delirium have a hard time locating all the scraps of receipts and flotsam and jetsam.

Our trip is slightly different this year, since we will be joined by our friend Allison. She hasn’t joined us in about 5 years or so and moved up to NY several years ago. She will be driving from NY with my mother, we will meet in Providence, grab dinner and head up to the Cape to visit the grandparents. Allison is texting us taunting emails about her trip to Rockland Bakery, the bread Mecca of our world. Our anticipation level is running high and Erin and I finally get on the flight and head off to paradise.

We wait for our luggage and I am so out of it that I can’t manage to hold my purse and my luggage at the same time. By the time we leave the airport building I feel so horrible I have to lean against a “no parking” sign to hold me up, and the cold, dirty metal feels fabulous against my face. I can’t lift the heavy lamb-filled luggage into the backseat, I have to rely on strong, healthy, traveling companions to look after the precious cargo. I all but collapse in the car. The one thing that can perk me up is Italian food! Next stop: Angelo's. On the way to the restaurant Allison tells us how my mother has talked her into quitting her job and becoming a Waldorf teacher, I know this conversation, I have had it many times with my mother. We eat to our stomachs outrage and I am so ready to fall back into the car and sleep for another hour while being chauffeured to my grandparents house. When the bill arrives and I reach into my purse to pay it, and surprise…NO WALLET! NO WALLET! It’s gone.

We look under the table, dump out the purse, look in the parking lot, pull all of the stuff out of the car… no wallet. I call Scott who agrees to wire money. Mom, Allison and Erin find a flashlight to search the car, they enlist the parking lot guy to use his good – young eyes, nothing. Then we start calling airports, I feel like an idiot leaving messages at random airport answering machines. First you push one and two and whatever to get to the answering machine who tells you your call is important and I just know there is someone at the other end laughing so hard there belly is shaking like Santa Clause’s. Then suddenly, after an hour of driving and an hour of brooding - mom driving, me brooding… I get a call from Southwest – they have my wallet at baggage claim. All around me the angels start singing, little animated birds are flying around and the car, a rainbow magically appears, and I feel like I am being lifted away on a cloud. The guy on the other end of the phone tells me that since there is no money in the wallet it probably doesn’t need to be locked up. He sounds apologetic about the fact that there is no money in the wallet. I assure him that I know there was no money in there, no one took it, I didn’t have any.

The amazing thing about this is that I left my wallet in a taxi two weeks before and had to wait at the police station in the AM for the property manager. The cab driver had turned it in. That time I had two dollars in it and the Cab driver turned those in too. Either my karma is good, or not all of humanity is bad, considering my luck, I am going with the humanity having vestiges of virtue.

I won’t get the wallet back until we make it back to the airport to go home which just doesn’t matter. I have my girls, I am on the way to the most beautiful place on earth to visit people I absolutely adore. I have a stupendous cold and a mom and grandparents to take care of me. And, best of all, the lamb made it through security without a problem.

Almost Foiled Again In Iceland

Upon landing in Iceland I followed the crowd of people that I thought would be making transfers. At one point I looked up and there was a sign that said “baggage claim” I knew I didn’t have to go that way, so I followed a woman with a few kids going out an exit door. As soon as I stepped out of the exit I knew I was in trouble. I had not passed any immigration, or customs, no passport control at all, yet for some inexplicable reason I was standing in Iceland. I could see the rocky surface of the airport that I remembered so well from my trip there a year before. I looked around and realized that I needed to go back through the door I had just come, which, was of course listed as “no entrance” and locked. “Well” I thought, “I will get back on the security line and go back and find my connecting flight.” All the while I was getting worried about the time due to the fact that I don’t wear a watch. It was only after I had gotten in the line that I realized that I had no ticket. The kindly lady at the German airport had never been able to get me a boarding pass. At this point I was panicking, not thinking about having to call work to explain to them that I was stuck in Iceland but because I thought about what I would be reduced to eating. Iceland is the most expensive country I have been in and I had about enough money for a few bites of dried salted nastyfish (nastyfish being something I had encountered on my earlier trip the Icelandic name being unpronounceable for us Americans I gave it an easier to remember and apropos name). The logical thing to do I thought was to go to the Iceland Air counter and check-in like a normal passenger. Upon arriving at the counter I was confronted with a mile long line. I bravely stepped up to the first class line and began to tell my tale of woe “no boarding card, luggage already gone, must get back to Washington, not a terrorist.” After sometime they worked out how to get me back on the plane. Of course, it took seven people to figure it out, and every time a new one came over to add their expertise to the problem they glared at me suspiciously like I was making up the magic door that one takes straight from the plane into Iceland. If that country is having any trouble tracking their visitors I would suggest they lock the door from both sides.

Boarding card firmly in hand I raced to the security line, flung my jacket and bags on the x-ray belt and hoped to rush right though. That was not to be, little did I remember but I was carrying my two lovely (and totally overpriced) German beer-gifts, that were both far over the 3oz of liquid you can take on a plane. Now I was in trouble, not only had I escaped the airport through the magical door no one believed existed, but now my protestations of not being a terrorist were sure not to be believed due to the two large beer-bombs I was obviously trying to smuggle. After a talking to the really scary (note sarcasm) Icelandic police took my beer and sent me on my way. I made the plane, and while I didn’t have to eat nastyfish I was given something just slightly more tasty in way of nasty-sandwich.

Scott and I Wave Goodbye to Frankfurt

Scott and I separated at the airport, he onto Nuremberg to meet with Adias folks and I was off to Iceland to catch my flight home. I stood at the Icleand Air desk to check in, only to find out that my pre-assigned seats had been taken away and that the flight from Iceland to Washington had been closed so it would be impossible for me to get a boarding card. The kind lady at the desk tried valiantly, gave me the Germany to Iceland boarding card and told me to ask when I boarded the first plane. I realized that I had just a few pages left in Heat and then I would be without a book, but Scott was certain that there would be book vendors just past security. In all parts of the airport there would be vendors just not in the lonely Iceland Air section. There was a lone duty free shop. I bought a container of chocolate to bring back as gifts and two German beers one each for my two beer aficionado co-workers. Then Scott and I passed the time waiting for our separate flights racking up a huge phone bill talking to each other. He, of course, had huge bookstores around him, bookstores as large as the New York Public Library all trying to sell him fabulous books that I have always wanted to read. But, alas we were in different terminals. Devoid of literature I finally boarded the flight.

Wuzburg at Night

For our last evening meal we chose a little donor kebab place right across the street from our hotel. We were staying in quite the happening area. Cars drove up and down like it was the strip in some 1950’s movie, only now the music blearing was rap and rather than convertibles spoilers ruled the night. Let me digress here for a moment to discuss the insane fashion choices of German men. Earlier in the trip we had witnessed the leather suit craze and the neon shirt craze, now here in Wurzburg there was something else going on. Something more sinister and scarier than leather suits – the shorts, socks and sneakers craze, we will call this lamentable phenomena S3. While Scott and I happily munched our Kebab platters we noticed that this town had clearly taken the “back to the 80’s” fashion mandate quite literally. Paper thin women were walking the streets in skin tight jeans. The favored accessories being chains, leather studded belts and heeled boots with tassels. All of them had their standard issue S3 man trailing behind. At first Scott and I took the parade of unfortunate fashion in stride thinking that it was just men that couldn’t be bothered with looking good. Then we noticed that the outfits were chosen with careful attention to detail. One gentleman walked by with a red cap, black shirt, red short pants, black socks (rolled halfway up his calves) and red sneakers. All of this matching could not have happened naturally – they were choosing to look like this. The scene was so strange, with the 80’s women, the S3s and the cruising cars that while fascinated, I felt like a visitor to another planet. I was satisfied with the meal and evenings entertainment when we returned to our room, and threw open our windows to the rap music pumping its way in to threaten our sleep.