Chuck Robb Wins My Vote

Chuck Robb has won my vote

OK, I can vote for Chuck Robb for Senate now, although I'll still be sort of holding my nose. He did something so clever that I'm amazed anyone actually *let* him do it. On Rt. 66, the main E-W highway between Northern Virginia and Washington D.C., at Rte 123, one of the most popular exits[1], there is a flashing road sign. This is the kind of sign that warns you of upcoming construction. The sort of thing that says "construction on Nutley Street Ramp 10-27 6pm-9pm" and has a diesel generator next to it to light it up. His campaign people placed one there that says "George Allen was governor, expect delays". I love it! It's effective, and it has that little element of Jenny Holzer artiness because it fits completely into the highway vernacular. The only reason I'm voting for a Democrat is, of course, because the Libertarians don't have anyone on the senate ticket. It's a tight race, so it's probably for the best anyway. George Allen is the bad flavor of conservative. The kind that is fundamentally corrupt (this is what the sign is about. VDOT is kickback laden and beaurocratic) and yet wants to enforce his weird, misguided dunker[2] morality on all of us.

I'm still offended that the whole freaking election seems to be about "education". It's all they talk about. It's damn near all Bush and Gore talk about. The federal government shouldn't have ANYTHING to do with education anyway. The concept of national standards seems to result in teaching to a standardized test anyway, which defeats the whole purpose of trying to improve education.

I was awoken by two old coots and one coot-in-progress talking out on our back porch. It was 7am, so I was definitely asleep. I figured they were probably there to screen the porch (this turned out to be true). I could not understand a *word* they were saying.[3] They have the Appalachian Accent. Gus used to refer to the Shenandoah Valley accent quite often (but I can't find a funny description of it in his old journal), but we're talking about the same thing. It extends above that valley, all the way to Winchester and possibly into Maryland and Southern PA, but I'm not positive about that. It's not the same accent as folks from the Kentucky Hill Country have either, though it has some things in common with it.

Because of this accent, I still can't figure out what the builder's wife's name is. We think it's Darla, but we're really not sure. We are both too embarrassed to ask. One of these gents is said wife's father, actually. Do not confuse this with a southern Virginia-style accent[4] like you might hear in, say, Richmond. It's as inscrutable as a New Orleans accent.

I've realized something related to the dog-hair-itchiness-and-sneezing thing.

When I had two cats and a big dog, I used to wake up stuffed up every day. It usually cleared in the shower after a bout of sneezing, but really, I had a lot of mucous and phlegm going on. I blamed this on my daily pot smoking habit. I mean, who wouldn't blame it on the drugs?

Now that I've indulged in the absence of cat and dog hair and *didn't* wake up like that at all, I think I might have always been sensitive to the hair. I need to contact a load of it to get the effect. If i just pet a dog, I'm usually OK. If I sweep up dog hair...forget it. Cats, I can't even pet without getting itchy.

You just don't tend to notice the absence of a condition, you know?