only 300 days left

But you'd think the U.S. presidential election was tomorrow, given the coverage. It will certainly be a year of surprises. My usually conservative mother's traded her mani-pedi money over to Obama; Gloria's slapping the sisterhood around. I sent in my enormous ballot envelope (and paid 4 Euro for the privilege through Deutsche Post) yesterday and got a brief buzz off it. Brief, mind you. My first serious buzz was as a doe-eyed freshperson plastered with NARAL posters and buttons at a Clinton (no, the first one) rally in San Diego, surrounded by conservative nasties, thrilled at the prospect of electing My First President. My second was driving circles in the Nevada desert for three consecutive days, pre-election 2004 -- me and quetzl knocked on doors and chatted with registered Dems about their Superfund site-cum-backyard and the possibility of kicking Bush out of office. We hoped. We and the larger team of volunteers (most of whom were holed up in the Reno Motel 6 for the extended weekend, all refugees from Cali) got 99 percent of the registered Democrats in our adopted Nevada county to the polls. Listening to the returns at 2 a.m. we almost drove into the desert.

I've spent a good amount of time kicking myself for my lack of "political participation" since then but short of kidnapping VP Vader and leaving him pants-less somewhere in Anbar Province, I haven't come up with any strategy that is very constructive. So, I voted, dammit. The clock's ticking.