Debate night and the calm before the storm

Tonight was the big debate between all the candidates. There will be others, but this was the first. Jeremiah did a debate prep last week where he was videotaped and then given feedback on his performance. I got to watch the videotape and my feedback mostly agreed with what he got from the panel. Jeremiah has intelligent answers that are well articulated and succinct. But he had moments where he seemed too nice or too smiley to be taken seriously. As Jeremiah keeps finding, he has to be sure not to act like himself when politicking. Let's hope that this time nice guys don't come in last.

The signs are still being stolen. Big P.I.T.A. I have a few spots that I'm monitoring and I keep replacing the signs when they're taken down. I know it's not the doing of the landowner so therefore it's just rampant thievery! I can't concentrate on everywhere though. When the sign is gone, it's gone. I don't have time to deal with everything so I just keep an eye on a few spots.

We had some funny campaign moments lately. We went to an antique car show and the girls and I made a scene as the only ones dancing in the middle of the parking lot (and I think the old crooner appreciated having someone as an audience). Jeremiah almost went to triple church- a tour of three local churches, but the lady who offered to take him around called out sick at the last minute. And I had a reluctant conversation with a nice lady giving my broken toe a pedicure who was drilling me for more and more personal details and when she finally got me to say my husband's name (after hearing all the other personal details about him), she says "I think I know that guy." and I said "yeah, probably from a sign. His name's all over them around here." and she agreed that that's where she'd heard of him before. First official random recognition.

We hit a sore spot in the campaign this past week too. There is a local paper that has shafted Jeremiah over and over again, leaving him out of stories and not running his press releases. They hounded him to place an ad and he told them why he was hesitant. They promised to change but I doubted it. Second wife agreed with him that he should place an ad and so they did. I think it was the right move for the campaign but I'm still sore at them for being such jerks and having such a politically manipulative publication. Jeremiah's ad ran and it looked good. Cost a pretty penny too! But it's a good thing that he did. Because the front page article about the election made Jeremiah look good and included quotes from everyone running for delegate except for Jeremiah's friend Justin (whom he's running against) who hates that publication as much as we do. He didn't give a quote and he seemed to have been left out of the article. And there's another local politician who we really like that was totally shut out of that paper too. In fact, the article for his race (county council) didn't mention him at all- it spoke of his opponent's win in the primary as if his opponent had won the entire election. If this was an unprofessional article I'd have assumed that they used poor semantics and were looking grossly biased by accident. But as it's supposed to be a real newspaper, I think it was super uncool. And that poor guy also paid to have his ad published in their paper- but instead of having good placement like Jeremiah had, his ad was relegated to the second section and buried inside the sports! I hear he was livid. Whew. Good thing we gave them money when we did.

Jeremiah has started waving to people on the side of the road on their way to and from work. He gets waves, peace signs, smiles, and middle fingers. You can imagine how much fun it is for him to get up early and do that. And his getting up always wakes the entire house so we love it too.

The nicest thing about the election is that it's almost over. November 3rd it's complete and total history. It feels like the day before an exam: you've pretty much done all you can do. Best to just get lots of sleep and then plan to cram again for the final hour before the test. (that will be the Early Voting days and then the final day of the general election) It was a rainy weekend so Jeremiah couldn't do the door knocking and sign waiving that he had planned. Instead he did a bit of stuff and then stayed with the girls while I went to work. On Sunday his triple church campaign was cancelled and it was lightly raining so he was able to take the day off and we picked up and went to the Renaissance Festival for the day (until the late afternoon soccer game). It was nice to have a day together again.