I just checked the weather radar and it looks as though the latest shower has passed. I'm going to hook up the trailer this morning and take it with me to the Saturday morning run. After Larry's I'll unload it at the new apartment. I can't get the new hard drive CD to install the driver I need to run the thing. I need to spend time with customer support. Tomorrow is the race. I think that I am better prepared than last year. I'm still studying for the test Monday. I have to take these three tasks sort if in bites. I hope that the bite tomorrow is faster than 1:35:00.

Here is a belated Thanksgiving message and another about the day after.

Not quite like Santa, Shiva has been to my house.

Happy Thanksgiving. I used up the whole morning drinking coffee and going through the newspaper. I finally got a lot of sleep. That always helps. I think that tomorrow morning, extremely early, I'm going to brave the crowds at Fry's in order to buy an external hard drive for the computer. They are running a one day sale on a 160GB drive station. The rest of the week will include moving to Bellevue, studying for the test Monday and running the half marathon on Sunday. I found out Thursday that Bally's has a pool. I get to use a free 10 day trial membership for moving into the apartment complex. The lure of finally getting back into the water may outweigh my thrifty impulses. My Thanksgiving includes me finishing off the pumpkin pie I bought last night and later I'll have some cranberry sauce. I'm thankful that I have my school, recreation-and-more options open for me. I wish you all the best.

Go and read this (I know it sounds incongruous) comic strip about cancer.

Read this and tell me whether Colin Powell is smoking crack, or drinking heavily, or whatever.

I found out last night that the questions on the comprehensive final exam will come from the questions from the previous exams. Now I know how to study for it.

Not much news this morning other than about me fretting over the test tonight and how I was able to run on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I also got the bathroom and kitchen cleaned in preparation for my move in two weeks. I need a 3.0 in this course and I'm not exactly straight about what the midbrain, medulla and and the rest of the stuff in the brain stem does. And it looks as though today will be a wet one and I have a lot of properties to do. I hope that all of this works out some day.

This asshole thinks that he and his buddies can "restore morality to the population."

Today I signed the new lease and then went directly into the office here at Archstone and signed the notice to vacate, or whatever they call it. I could bring up all the bullshit about their defective carpet and their (in my opinion) less than honest manager but I think that I covered that ground well enough last year. I've just found out that we don't work the day after Thanksgiving and that is my get the key day, the apartment is ready day and now I have to move in day. I feel tired already. I have a little more time to move but I also need time to study for the test the coming week. I'll figure it all out.

To get to the new place I tried taking 405 from 520 to SE 8th to Lake Hills Connector but it took too long. 405 was backed up. They look like they are finishing up with their construction on 405 but I don't think the traffic will ever flow any better through Bellevue.

This will probably be one of my last words on this election. It appears that the vote might have been hacked. Not that I work on stuff like this, it is just that it doesn't need my attention like the time leading up to the election did. I have other things right now to pay attention to. If this is indeed true then there is a cancer out there that needs to be excised.

Paul Krugman:

"I don't hope for more and worse scandals and failures during Mr. Bush's second term, but I do expect them. The resurgence of Al Qaeda, the debacle in Iraq, the explosion of the budget deficit and the failure to create jobs weren't things that just happened to occur on Mr. Bush's watch. They were the consequences of bad policies made by people who let ideology trump reality."

Jane Smiley:

"The Republicans have sold their souls for power. Must everyone?"

Ellen Goodman:

"John F. Kerry was a Vietnam vet and the Swift-boat veterans wounded him anyway. John F. Kerry came out against gay marriage and got tarred with it anyway. He shot a goose and the NRA hated him anyway. He said life begins at conception and the Catholic Church came after him anyway. He could barely utter the L word and he got tagged as a "Massachusetts liberal." He won the debates and it didn't matter."

Ted Rall:

"A dictator had put himself up for 'reelection' and declared war on gays and pregnant teenagers. An Administration whose principals built concentration camps, lied us into two wars and fleeced the treasury to further enrich themselves and their campaign contributors is getting four more years rather than the forty to life they deserve. Florida 2000 became Ohio 2004, complete with its own Katherine Harris, discarded voter registrations and Jim Crow-style assaults on blacks. Most of all, the whole thing stunk."

The training run this morning from Seward Park took us on a twenty mile route, covering most of the Seattle marathon (minus the portion running through downtown). My previous furthest distance was fifteen miles. I held up all right but the last mile was hard on the soles of my feet. I should be ready for the half marathon at the end of the month.

After my application gets approved I'll be set to move into my new apartment in Bellevue at the end of the month. It will be a busy time because I think we have a test around that time and as I wrote above, that is the half marathon weekend. It isn't as nice as where I live now but I need a change and I need to be closer to school. There is no fitness center and I'll have to find another place for my trailer. Even though the apartment was under repair the agent showed it to me and right away I knew it would do. I look forward to settling in. No more long lines on 520 going into Redmond anymore. Woo hoo.

Wouldn't it be nice to be a writer, thus avoiding traffic, living anywhere and getting up in the morning only when your body wants to? That would be my version of the American dream. A house would be nice but to not have to get up at a vertain time for someone else would be absolute heaven.

A little bit of home. I can listen to streaming UMass radio on my computer. Saturday and Sunday mornings they play Polka. I know that Polka gets a bad rap but it is fun to listen to. Mom, when she remembered, liked to listen to the shows on the weekend mornings.

I have apartment news when I have more time to type. Right now I'm headed to Seward Park for a training run. Dzien dobry.

Tom Tomorrow's morning thoughts. Here is Boing Boing's concession thoughts. Good night.

Oh, and I almost forgot, that thing I wrote a few days ago about being good to each other, it still holds. I don't mean just nice. I mean good. Nice is polite. Good is what we really are.

What can I say? As Red Dirt Girl wrote, after everything and all the lies he still gets elected. I think that John Kerry would have made a good president, a real president, but the right wing in this country has many believing that liberals steal babies and knock over old women. Why don't we just open up the national treasury to his buddies now? The ballot didn't show that part.

Thank you Andrew Tanenbaum. You have done us a great service. And thanks for letting us in on the electoral-vote secret.

"The extent to which George Bush emerges the victor on Tuesday would be the extent to which his politics of fear has triumphed. Fear is a most powerful human motivator, far more powerful than reason, Kerry's chief weapon. But fear almost always trumps reason." Let's hope not.