working the phone banks

last night i was rudely wrenched from the relative security of phoning fellow union members, and thrown to the wilds of phoning random peeps in ward 17. a very interesting exercise in human psychology. you get the whole panoply of tics and foibles. you have the yellers, the people who scream at you, insisting that asking who they might be thinking of voting for is tantamount to asking if they just jerked off, you get the people who decide that YOU are the representative of the government, and try to find out if you can arrange school bus transportation for their kid, because the ministry in its infinite wisdom has decided that a kid who lives four blocks from the school, should by all rights be able to walk there. you get the downer crew, who mumble and bemoan the "crooks" and "broken promises" and give that reason for not voting (even though i suspect those people have NEVER voted, ever!), and every once in a while, you get the gems of the bunch - polite, well-spoken people who have good social skills.

i still really like doing it though. i think everyone should have to do a few hours of volunteer work at some kind of election campaign, regardless of party or level. it really makes you engaged...i don't live anywhere NEAR ward 17, but i'm totally committed and excited about the results.

*spoiler alert*

last's night's veronica mars episode was okay, although i had just been rejoicing in the fact that they hadn't been shoving piz down my throat lately, when he appeared and started making moonie eyes at ronnie again. maximum BOGUS. also, keith mars, engaged in some extra-marital business...which was problematic for me, because he's the moral barometer of the show...and i guess i wanted him to always be above reproach. then we watched another episode of battlestar. there are people (*cough* my sister *cough*) who made all kinds of claims that battlestar season 2 starts off weird and weak and it's going to be trying getting through it...but i completely disagree!!! sharon's character is so interesting, and i really love the ethical, moral, psychological dimensions of the show. it makes me remember what makes good speculative/science fiction so good.

i've been starting off my days with a big ol' bowl of steel cut oats lately. i LOVE steel cut oats, mainly because they're the whole oat groat, just minced up, but they're really nutty and retain some texture when they're cooked down...they still have a certain earthy chewiness, as opposed to the regular oatmeal pablum you get, which tastes like it's already been digested once. tonight for dinner we're having a cauliflower soup, cooked with leeks and garlic and celery and water, and then pureed and thinned with milk. this soup is the essence of cauliflower, the distillation of what a cauliflower can be. we're eating it with panini consisting of: chorizo, monterrey jack, avocado, and tomato.

fin.