Tenuous Tuesday

In terms of weather, today isn't bad at all. It's beautiful and sunny with a cool breeze. But it's not the weather that has feeling fragile today (even though it poured rain yesterday for no less than 8 hours), it's the election.

Yesterday, I tried to keep my mind busy with projects around the house. I played around with some fabric and rearranged the bathroom medicine cabinet. I also cut my hair. As you can see it's pretty darn short. Unfortunately, I'm sporting a terrific case of pillow hair -- I forgot to photograph it yesterday while it still looked combed. Also, I haven't seen that part of my neck in a while. Hello neck, welcome to winter. The highlight of my day, however, was dinner with our only friends in Portland, Brian and Anna. We went to this Thai restaurant not far from their house and had a pumpkin curry dish that was out of this world. Then, we went back to their place and sat by the fire with hot cups of tea and watched SNL's Presidential Bash.

Which brings me back to the election. I voted last week, but since last Wednesday I have been on the edge of my seat waiting and waiting for today. And now it's here. This is my first time voting in Oregon (and on the West Coast for that matter), so I get to experience the first polls closing over happy hour. Brilliant! Jesse and I are going to head to a local brewery and hang out for a few hours as the East Coast scrambles to count their votes. We'll probably hang out until about 7pm and then head home and stream the election results on our computer.

We printed out a map of the United States and plan on devising a point system so we can hedge bets on which states will turn blue or red. I'm not sure what the prize will be, but it will make things a little more exciting this evening at the bar. I pulled out the crayons and will color code our decisions this afternoon. Since we both read the same literature, our guesses will probably be pretty similar. To offset this fact, I think we'll have a coin toss and alternate picks.

I don't really care who wins our betting game, it's merely another distraction from the bigger voting "game" this evening.

** UPDATE** 3PM PST

We compiled our predictions and have agreed on the rules. Our bets will revolve around three categories: Toss-up States, "Leaning" McCain, and "Leaning" Obama. Any of the "safe" states will not be considered, except for the Wild Card Bonus State (see photo for the detailed rules). For us, the "leaning Obama" category is effectively a wash because we predicted the same outcome across the board. However, the toss-up states could be interesting (and are clear indicators of Jesse's optimism vs. my skeptical nature). The status of the states' standings were based on a CNN Electoral Map Calculator.