Painting.

I know that nobody likes to watch paint dry, but paint drying really does change things and therefore it should happen periodically.

Take our guest bathroom, for instance. We decided on a grayish hue. “Silver Spoon”, was what the official name was. Of course once we paint it, (We means Torrie, in this instance. She did the project while I was at work one day. Fabulous woman.) it’s definitely purple.

I was understandably nervous, then, when we undertook the project of painting our great room. Since we moved in it has always been white, and we were definitely ready for some color in our lives. We settled on a color called “Shoreline Haze”, which we thought was a tan, but I was worried that after painting the entire wall it was going to end up be neon pink.

Cute picture of Pregnant Torrie painting

Well, eight hours later, we had the majority of the room finished. At first I thought there was a greenish hue in a certain light, but I don’t really notice that anymore. However, I do notice our crown molding and how well the color matches the hardwood floors and the kitchen.

We tackled the few remaining spots, the hall, and the baby’s room a couple weekends ago. We’ll probably end up painting the guest room the same color as well. (Five gallons of paint sure goes a long way.)

My job was to paint the parts of the wall that people don't really see.

Project: Successful!

Big difference.

Next up: Decorating those walls with tasteful art and photography.

Electoral College

Lawmakers in Massachusetts recently passed a law intended to get around the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote.

There are a few states with such laws – Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington. If enough states passed such laws, whoever wins the popular vote would win the presidency.

Okay first off…..isn’t that unconstitutional? Presidential selection is determined by the Constitution. If people want to change the process, don’t you need to amend the Constitution?

Secondly – one of the main arguments in favor of the law is that the current system is confusing and causes presidential candidates to focus just on a handful of battleground states. Entire portions of the country are ignored because they are too democratic or republican to waste a candidate’s time.

While that may be somewhat true (but not all the way true), changing the process to having the president picked by a popular vote, however, wouldn’t end any disparities. Instead, candidates would only focus on areas where there are lots of people. There’s no way a candidate would devote any attention to a place like Lexington, Kentucky when he/she could go to more populated cities. Smaller towns and rural areas would be shut out of the political process even more.

On a somewhat related note - often read articles in major newspapers (major meaning…from a big city, like New York or Los Angeles) how crazy and wrong it is that a senator from Montana, who represents 30K people, has just as much power as a senator from California who represents 30MM people. Well…that’s the compromise the framers of the Constitution had to make, otherwise people from Montana would matter even less then they already do.

I had a number of possible blog entries that just didn’t make it out into the web. I wanted to discuss BYU’s exclusion from the PAC-10 (Gotta love the hypocrisy of the liberal university presidents.) I had a number of thoughts on the World Cup, from the pre-tournament buzz, to America’s sneaking through the group stage, to how I think the U.S. soccer team has a unique chance to stake it’s claim on the American sports scene (how many sports/teams out there can really unify the country and make us all proud to be American?)

However, they didn’t make it on the blog. I didn’t have time to write, and so they disappeared into the fog of failed blog entries.

However, this topic made it.
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It’s happened again. My old addiction is back.

To my credit, it took longer this time. Normally, it’s after 9 months or so. It’s been two years this time. I think that’s some improvement. Maybe I’m growing up.

But deep inside me, the longings return. Pictures give visual reminders of experiences past and invoke the sounds and smells that have moved to just under the surface of my subconscious. Conversations open up the floodgates and memories crash through. The desire to relive past visitations and feel the dream-like emotion of “Wow, am I really here doing this right now?”

A bucketload of frequent flyer miles and free hotel stays makes it too both way too easy and inexpensive.

I want to go back to Europe. Now.

On the other hand, I do have this baby girl on the way that’s pretty important and might complicate things….