Archive for the 'Seattle' Category

I spoke to quite a few friends this weekend who are registered Democrats in Washington state and who would like to cast votes for the Democratic presidential nomination. A few of them had already received their absentee ballots for the primary and were planning to send them in. They were shocked when I told them that the Washington State Democratic primary does not count.

Given the mixed messages that abound, how were they to know? I scoured my absentee ballot and it contained no mention of the fact that the primary is simply a beauty contest and its results will not be used for anything. Sam Reed, Washington’s Secretary of State, has an FAQ (PDF) that contains quite a bit of commentary on why political participation is important, Washington is the second-largest state in the west, the caucus system disenfranchises many voters, having a primary helps us get attention from the various campaigns that would otherwise pass us over, etc. Finally, the FAQ gets to the most important question (emphasis mine):

Q: How will the political parties use the results of the Presidential Primary?

Political parties retain the authority to decide if they will use the Presidential Primary to allocate delegates to the national nominating conventions. The political parties may also use caucus results, or a combination of primary results and caucus results.

The Republican Party used the results of the primary to allocate all of the Washington delegates in 1992, half of its delegates in 1996, and one third of its delegates in 2000. The State Republican Party has decided that it will use the 2008 Presidential Primary to allocate 51% of its delegates. The remaining 49% of the delegates will be allocated based on caucus results.

The Democratic Party has never used the results of the primary to allocate delegates. The State Democratic Party will only use caucuses to allocate delegates in 2008.

You’d think that this note would merit a bit more attention, rather than two sentences buried in a FAQ on a website that I’d imagine gets very little traffic.

The Washington State Democratic Party makes this a bit clearer, by warning voters about it on the front page of their website and pointing to the relevant part of their own FAQ:

Why is Washington State having Caucuses and a Primary? The Washington State Legislature was the body who voted to hold a primary. The means that the Washington State Democratic Party, which chooses how delegates are decided, had no participation in the decision to hold the primary, which will cost $9 to $10 million. The Washington State Democratic Party decided to choose their delegates through the Caucuses, as it always has. As a result, your vote for a Democratic candidate in the State Primary will not count toward delegate selection.

But again, I assume that an infinitesimal number of voters who want to place a vote in the primary even know that this site exists.

I’m not sure how I feel about the caucus system (February 9 will be my first caucus experience), and my gut feeling is that a primary with an absentee option would make it vastly easier for voters to participate.

But for now, this is what we have; so please help spread the word that:

• The Democratic primary does not count.
• Only results from the February 9 caucuses will be used to allocate delegates for the Democratic nomination.
• You can find out your caucus location here.

I’m in California for the weekend visiting my family. I just decided to check weather back in Seattle so that I’d know what to expect upon arriving early tomorrow morning. Gorgeous:

Interestingly, Kenny told me that snow was a pretty rare occurrence in Seattle during his first six winters there. This is my fifth winter in Seattle, and we’ve seen snow every year. El Nino/La Nina? Climate change? (Somebody get Al Gore on the phone)

And while it looks like this coming week will be complete crap, it bodes well for snowboarding next weekend! This will be my first chance this winter, since I’ve been out of town for six weekends out of the last seven. Crystal got six inches last night.

P.S. When trying to come up with a title for this post, I asked my mom to tell me “something funny about snow.” She said, “well, it can be funny when dogs pee on it.”

Kenny and I have been cooking with a lot of herbs lately (in large part because we love Jerry Traunfeld’s The Herbal Kitchen). This means we’ve been making quite a few trips across the street to QFC for herbs from the produce department, and it’s pretty frustrating to spend three bucks on a 1-ounce container of tarragon when you can get a whole plant for about the same amount.

So this weekend, instead of hitting up the QFC, we took a trip down to our local City People’s Garden Store and hooked ourselves up with a few little window sill-sized ceramic pots, and a couple of starter herb plants: tarragon and  Italian parsley. We’re going to see how we do with these and hopefully branch out to some other favorites, like rosemary, chives, cilantro, and maybe even lemon verbena. Unfortunately it was too late in the season to get mint, which we also love. We put the plants on the sill of one of our westward-facing windows. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that they’ll actually be able to grow now that the gloomy fall days are upon us, given that most herbs are supposed to be sun-lovers.

My dad is well-known for his green thumb. Hopefully it runs in the family… (if I fail, I will be sure to point out that my father has a huge advantage, living in Southern California and not Seattle).

Before Kenny and I moved in together, Vidya would describe our relationship by saying “it’s complicated, and it involves cars.” Which was pretty much true. We had two residences and two vehicles, but we carpooled to the office, and always seemed to have an extremely difficult time remembering whose car we had driven to work or where the heck we had left them. It wasn’t uncommon for us to wake up at my place and find out that we didn’t have any cars there – so then we’d walk to his condo to pick up a car to drive to work.

Things have gotten much simpler since we’ve shared a residence, and we’ve stopped using his car in favor of my hybrid, but we still screw up sometimes. Today Kenny needed to stay late at work for a customer event, so I dropped the car off at his office and took the bus home. And then upon arriving home I realized that when I dropped off my keys in his office, I had forgotten to grab his, so I was locked out of the house. And Vidya, my “keymate,” is in India, so I can’t call her to let me in. Fortunately I live around the corner from Remedy, so I’m chilling with a “Pesto Cream” sandwich and a pot of rooibos and playing Scrabble online with my brother.

On a related note, we’re thinking about donating Kenny’s car since we haven’t been using it. We figure this is probably the only time in our lives that it will be feasible for us to only have one (since we don’t have any little ones to cart around to soccer practice yet ;)). Any ideas on good organizations that will take used cars?

Living just off of 15th Avenue, Kenny and I find ourselves at Twenty-Two Doors quite often. Tonight, Kenny had a hankering for their burger (apparently snowboarding makes him crave beef), so we went there for dinner upon arriving home from Whistler. Their menu changes relatively often (more often than the website gets updated, it seems), and at certain times it seems to have more chickentarian* options than others. Tonight there were only two I hadn’t tried: a chicken dish and the veggie lasagne. I am generally loath to order chicken when I dine out, as it is often either dull or just as easily made at home. I asked our waiter, who seemed new, for some advice.

Me: How is the lasagne?
Waiter: The vegetarian lasagne? I haven’t tried it – I’m not a vegetarian. But I’ve seen it – it looks good.
Me: Okay, well, I’m not a vegetarian either, but I’ll try it.

I hadn’t realized that non-vegetarians couldn’t eat vegetables. I’ll have to file that one away.

Also, when Kenny and I were in Whistler this weekend, we saw a new restaurant/bar in the Village called 21 Steps. And I wondered: when one ascends 21 steps, does she find 22 doors at the top?

* Reminder to self: should write a blog entry defining this term at some point.