A Trip Down Memory Lane: November 2004

I was looking back at these posts, and I just wanted to point out a few things that caught my eye:

November 1 I remember the Halloween party. We have one every year because the kid in us loves to dress up and eat junk food. Our normal strategy is to have an Evil Dead marathon because, well, it's a classic cult trilogy. (Sam Raimi has a great sense of humor that comes through in all of his work.) I wonder if we'll be able to keep doing our Halloween parties after the baby gets here.

November 2 Election day. I see that I griped about some of the problems that I saw. I'm still not too happy about them. The wait was short since we went first thing in the morning, but I did see some people turned away. I'm still not happy about the failure to keep the voters informed on the legislation that they are deciding on.

November 3 I think I had a fairly dramatic reaction to the election results. Then again, when I look back, I was probably one of those "anyone but Bush" voters. It's not that I was that supportive of John Kerry. I think that it had just gotten to the point where I realized that Dubbya's strategy was not going to change. My definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I remember seeing a poll that a large number of people wanted Bush's second term to be different than his first, but as we've seen, not much has changed. I haven't been totally surprised yet. I still can't understand why people would think that voting him into a second term would yield such results. I'm also still upset about the lack of voter turnout from my age group. (Low voter turnout always upsets me.)

November 4 I love that I made a reference to the now famous email that accused Teresa Heinz-Kerry of being in charge of the Heinz corporation. At the time, I knew that this was outright false, but I hadn't yet discovered Snopes. Not surprisingly, half the crap I get forwarded to me from my friends and family turns out to be completely bogus. I wonder to this day just how many people form their oh-so-informed opinions on this junk.

November 6 Ah, how the mighty have fallen... I was happy at the time to see that I was incorrect about the danger lurking around the corner regarding our economy. As of that particular moment in time, the economy appeared to be doing much better after the elections. I want to go back in time and slap myself, because...

November 9 Just look at how our economy has changed in less than two years!!! The price of gasoline and oil alone is enough to make me want to cry! Gas down the street was $1.90/gallon. Today, it is $2.23/gallon. Oil was $49.09/barrel. I haven't looked at the price today, but when I looked at Wednesday's paper, it was shooting dangerously close to the $70 mark again. Yikes!!!

November 11 I learned about the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for the newly available Attorney General position in Bush's cabinet. I was apprehensive at first, but since then, I've come to find that he's not as extreme as I thought he was. I mean, it's not like he would attempt to justify the president overreaching his power by doing something as far-fetched as surveillance on American citizens without a warrant. That stuff only happens in conspiracy novels, right? And those torture scandal thingies are a thing of the past, too.

November 15 I knew it was going to happen, but I guess I didn't want to admit it. I was sad to see Colin Powell go.

November 28 My first turkey. Turned out great! I won't eat anyone else's turkey, now. It's just too dry for my tastes. Unfortunately, the rest of my family doesn't seem to believe that a turkey is "done" unless it's dry, no matter what the thermometer says.

November 30 Ken Jennings passes the torch. I'll miss that guy.