I know you’re not supposed to tell people who you voted for. I get that. But I am so excited to have voted for the first time in a presidential election that I can’t contain the news. As if you weren’t sure who I voted for:

I hope you voted, no matter who you voted for.
One student from Mullen, who I never actually spoke with but is a Facebook friend of mine, noticed that my status was GO OBAMA!! and then proceeded to comment that: Barack Hussein Obama is a terrorist. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I will say that I wasn’t very happy with that at all. I responded politely, telling him that he shouldn’t question the beliefs of someone he doesn’t even know and that perhaps he might check his facts, please.
Ignorance is really annoying.
Some of my friends are for McCain. I appreciate that. I accept their decisions, so as long as they don’t sit there and lecture me and spit incorrect facts at me. I don’t sit there and tell them untruths about their choice.

Either way, there is a buzz around the city. Tonight, I’ll be leaving class and heading downtown to a packed and very excited city. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll get to sit with my friends and watch as history is decided (hopefully in our favor).
Wish me luck! I will tell you that if McCain wins, there will be riots in the streets here. Even if Obama wins, there will be wild celebrations. I don’t have my camera, but I might end up buying a disposable just to be able to record all of this. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and I get to be here!

GO OBAMA!!

EDIT:
You know I love any excuse to skip class, so when Emily asked me to go vote with her, I immediately passed up Logic for the chance. And so we went to St. Ignatius, the church that the boys use as a landmark to get to our place without getting lost, calling it the Ghostbuster’s building, and she voted. For the very first time. And we watched as they fed the ballot into the machine, and the number rolled over. Precinct 27, Ward 40, Chicago, Illinois had gotten its 233 vote.
And you know what 33 means….good news!

CNN was saying that Colorado was most likely going to go to Obama! Suck on that, Republicans! We haven’t been a blue state since the 1996 election!

I ended up going as Goldilocks after she got mauled by the three bears. That night, while Emily and I were doing our makeup and getting ready, the power went out in our apartment, so we ended up having to do all of the fake blood while sitting in the hall. It was excellent. I found that dress for $12 at a thrift store and couldn’t help but buy the wig even if it is absolutely atrocious. The dress, however, will be making appearances at holiday parties, so expect to see more of it soon. It is awesome. It’s an ’80s prom dress complete with puffy sleeves and a ruffled bodice thing (the dress is a size too small for my frame) and then a huge skirt that ends at the knee in front and ends at my calves in the back. It’s epic.
Ian and I went to the first party and hung out with some friends and then went back to pick up Emily to head to the Driver’s Ed Mutiny wrap party with Hunter and Kyle. That was fun. We all had a great night, for the most part. I ended up meeting a bunch of people I didn’t really know and talking to them for a long time. Hunter went dressed as the girl character from the movie, so he was wearing a teal A-shirt and tight girl jeans. Ian went as Shaun of the Dead (it’s a movie, you’ve most likely never heard of it). Kyle was Two-Face. Emily was a fifties woman/Stepford wife.
The next morning, I had to drive downtown to appear for the third time in the movie. This time, they needed a picture of girls changing so that they can use it as blackmail for the driver’s ed teacher. Don’t ask. I got into my workout gear and went down and hung out downtown for a little bit in the men’s locker room of Roosevelt University’s gym. And don’t worry, it’s just my back. They’ve already seen my face in the movie, so it couldn’t be shown again.
Then I went home and Hunter and I just spent a lazy Saturday watching football and bumming around the house. It was really nice. He made me dinner (macaroni and cheese, nice) and then we went back over to his house and watched Seinfeld.
Emily’s show opens this week, so I’ll be there for opening night.
I won’t be able to get pictures of tomorrow night, which is super lame, because I don’t have my camera at the moment. (I left it at one of the Halloween parties and should be getting it back sometime this week).

GO VOTE!!! Don’t forget. I’ll be in Grant Park tomorrow night as part of the giant overflow crowd expected to support Barack Obama. It should be a good time. Something tells me that ballet on Wednesday isn’t going to be fun.

Aunt Sally sent the most wonderful Halloween package full of plastic containers (which I never have enough of), cookies, candy, napkins and a super sweet little Halloween candle holder.
Mom sent a bike lock, some decorations, mints, and other stuff, which is always nice.

I did my friend Kyle’s makeup today for his Halloween costume. He is going as Two-Face, a character from Batman who has had half of his face burnt off/destroyed. So we used Hunter’s stage latex and created a textured face and then I threw some old sort of dried liquid foundation on, topped that with lipstick and then used Hunter’s stage makeup to create a burned face. It looked so sweet. The final look was a little darker than the one in the picture, with more black and spots. He works at Borders and he texted me tonight and told me that I am awesome (obviously) and that people thought he was an actual burn victim
I wont be able to punctuate the rest of this entry as Emilys computer has something wrong with it and I just hit the wrong button but I am going as Goldilocks who got mauled by the three bears tonight
I have a black dress that i got for twelve dollars and a nasty blonde wig
excellent
pictures soon
better blog entry with punctuation soon

COLUMBUS, Ohio (CNN) — Sometimes you stumble on stories. Thursday was one of those times.

We were outside Veterans’ Memorial in Columbus reporting on early voting. I approached a man with an “ I just voted” sticker on his lapel to ask him whether he’d encountered any lines. The “lines weren’t bad” he said, with a broad smile. Lines were the last thing on Aaron Wheeler’s mind as he explained why he drove 600 miles back to his old hometown from Virginia, where he moved this month, to vote in what he called “one of the proudest days” of his life.

“My family has been Republican for three generations,” he said, but “I knew I had to change and vote Democrat in the first time almost ever.”

Wheeler said he was one of about 16 black Republican delegates at the 2004 GOP convention, and was proud to support George W. Bush.

This time, he said, he did not attend the Republican convention –and decided he would go one step further and vote for Democrat Barack Obama.

What’s influencing his vote? The economy was one factor, he said. But said he he made his decision “when I saw Barack Obama beaten down for no reason by negative things by Palin.”

Wheeler reminisced about marching with Martin Luther King as a boy, and referred to the slain civil rights leader when he told me he voted for Barack Obama… “not just because of his color….but in the words of Dr. King, the content of his character.”

“Tears come out of my eyes as I cast my ballot,” he said. “I voted for Barack Obama today.”

I’m filling out my ballot tonight!!!

I went alone this morning, overcast and gray. I was feeling the hectic rush and wanted to steal away. There is only one place I know of that will make you feel alive and fill you with a sense of peace at the same time. I walked through the gates of St. Boniface to be met with the pleasant feeling of the sleeping. The noises of the city are somehow blocked out for me and I felt myself meandering slowly down the narrow asphalt path. One of them caught my eye, literally. I swear, had it not been stone, she would have blinked. I looked at her, and she me, for a minute until the call of the crows distracted me and I moved on.
Quiet.
Names carved in stone, faceless statues worn by years of harsh climate, the slow erosion that time brings, the eventual death of even our death-markers, gravestones that once stood proud crumbling in the gray light.
How can death be this simple, this quiet? I see a few other people scattered about, paying their respects to the dead, but other than that I am alone. I keep walking, and soon I find myself utterly alone and surrounded by nothing but bones buried, held safe by stone and chains.

The buildings rise out of the ground and make me wonder who inhabits them. Who planned them out and decided what they would become. I’m sure that some of you have started to think about your own demise. What will your stone look like? Flat in the ground? I will prefer a stunning statue, rising out of the ground, graceful, eerie, peaceful, energetic, immense. I want the viewers of that statue to wonder who I was and what possessed me to create such a piece. I want an angel, spread wings, perched ready for attack, or flight. I want a serene smile on her face and an open book clutched in her hand. I want tousled hair and a flowing toga. She will be barefoot, obviously. More details to come as my life fills up.
Some of the graves are stunning in their simplicity. The names become the focus, the forefront. Others chose a sarcophagus, rising out of the ground. Simple stone statues, the obvious religious figures, angels, Jesus, on and on. This is a Catholic cemetary.
It was beautiful. Green, covered with the orange leaves of fall, gray sky, gray stone, they rise to meet each other and blend together.

There are couples buried together, families. Even in death, they find peace at their side. The idea of this is a romantic notion to me. To want to spend so much time with someone that you are willing to lie for eternity with them. It’s beautiful. Of course, the soul has long passed and there is nothing left but the fragments of your earthly vehicle, yet think about the lingering of yourself. To say that you wholly disappear is not a correct assumption. Your soul may take flight but your presence stays on. That’s for me why the graveyard calms me, keeps me at peace. I am safe there. They are safe there. There is a mutual understanding between the residents, a sharing of space and of time.
Try it. Some morning. Go alone. Let them guide your thoughts as you wander, look at names, imagine faces. They were once just as much a person as you are now, with hopes and dreams and inside jokes. They loved and lost, just as you have and will. Be at peace, knowing that they are as well.

Be at peace and feel alive. That is the most you can do.

EDIT: two of the pictures, the one with the hands and the one with the snow are from Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, Colorado. The other two are from St. Boniface Catholic Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.
I did not take any of the pictures, rather, I lifted them off of Google.com.

I finally did laundry. It’s strange to wear clean clothes, I’m not going to lie.

This picture is me and my friend Mike at the boys’ house for one of our friend’s birthday parties last week. Picture taken by Emily, Hunter’s ex-girlfriend.

I’m going to see ballet by myself tonight, which may or may not be excellent and or terrible. The tickets were ridiculously expensive, $30 for a show at Columbia, and I’m hoping that I at the very least enjoy it. Then I have to write a review of it for ballet class and get that turned in.
I’ll be taking the train downtown tonight, something I haven’t done in a very long time. We’ll see, though. I may actually end up just driving and leaving the car parked somewhere along the road. It’s on South Michigan Ave, so parking on a Thursday night isn’t going to be all that great, but at the same time, it’s going to be cold, so I won’t want to walk the five blocks that it is from the train.

Oh well.
Things are well, though. Last night was just a Katie and Emily night and we watched “Interview with a Vampire” and hung out. I was exhausted. It’s finally catching up with me. I’m impressed that it’s taken so long. Three months.
Tonight, there will be revelry; it is my last free Thursday night/Friday morning for the foreseeable future. I will have to wake up at 7 from now on to babysit by 8:30. Tonight, after watching the dance, there will be fun. And it won’t stop until it’s over, which will hopefully be never.
Ah, in my dreams.
Have a great Thursday, everyone.

Life is rad.
Tonight, we are having a sort of potluck dinner at our house, which has been in need of company for quite some time. We are making spaghetti, salad, garlic bread and smores. Then we are going to watch the Broncos beat the Patriots.
Last night I was informed by the boys that they like playing football with me and that I have a good arm.
But things are well. Halloween plans have been laid. I hope it will be a success. Fruitypants is going to be a priest, apparently.
I will post pictures of tonight, hopefully. It will be the first time in awhile that we’ve had people over and I’m excited.
I have to watch a movie for Cinema class, but I’m putting it off for the game.
Laundry, finally, will get done. It feels like it’s been years since we’ve done it. No quarters = no clean laundry.
Aunt Jan, the sheep sheets are a hit.
Grandma Mary sent us a waffle maker, which is awesome.

The picture is of the sunset last night.

Both ballet and mock trial are FAIL. I’m done with both of them after this semester.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10wx434IA4

Above is the link to a short movie that Hunter helped me make for my Women, Crime and Justice class. I did all of the filming and while he did the editing, I told him how I wanted it to be cut and we worked together on how to put all of it together.
It’s interviews that I did with people in downtown Chicago about their perceptions of poverty and also interviews with homeless and the less fortunate.
It’s about ten minutes long, but it’s very informative and I like it.

Also, I got my absentee ballot and I am stoked to vote.

On another note,
I get to keep him! I’m excited. It’s still sinking in.

“First Day Of My Life”

This is the first day of my life

I swear I was born right in the doorway

I went out in the rain suddenly everything changed

They’re spreading blankets on the beach

Yours is the first face that I saw

I think I was blind before I met you

Now I don’t know where I am

I don’t know where I’ve been

But I know where I want to go

And so I thought I’d let you know

That these things take forever

I especially am slow

But I realize that I need you

And I wondered if I could come home

Remember the time you drove all night

Just to meet me in the morning

And I thought it was strange you said everything changed

You felt as if you’d just woke up

And you said “this is the first day of my life

I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you

But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you

And I’d probably be happy”

So if you want to be with me

With these things there’s no telling

We just have to wait and see

But I’d rather be working for a paycheck

Than waiting to win the lottery

Besides maybe this time is different

I mean I really think you like me

-Bright Eyes

This is the condensed version of the conversation.
We’d been up editing my poverty video for four hours. He likes to edit, so it didn’t bother him, but we’d seen the same half an hour of footage over and over. We’d been cutting, erasing, rearranging for what seemed like forever. We had just called it a night; it was 3:30am.
“Hey, I want to talk to you about something.”
I was worried.
“Sure, what’s up?” I said. My heart started beating a little faster.
“I really like you,” he said.
Oh god, I thought, here it comes. He’s going to tell me that he doesn’t see me that way. My heart was pounding.
He paused.
“I’m not seeing anyone else,” he said. “We’ve had a great few weeks. I was wondering, would you like to make it official?”
I said yes, but my heart didn’t stop pounding for awhile after that and the smile still wasn’t gone when I woke up this morning.

On a political note, look at this video about voting. It’s satirizing the talks that parents always give their teenagers about drugs and drinking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxvHkFLmqRk&eurl=http://www.wwtdd.com/

And look at this one too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn55ZdmBPJ4&feature=user

Also, I made great strides in ballet today. We have to do journals every now and then, and I had like five minutes before I went to class so I just hurriedly typed out a page in stream of consciousness about what goes through my mind during a ballet routine. She LOVED it. She said it was creative and insightful.
All right!

We said goodbye to the warmth last night, heading to the beach for one last night of swimsuit-clad freedom before the cold and ice move in to steal our paradise.
The four of us sat in the sand, shorts and sweatshirts, stretched out on towels, curled up on someone’s feet. Flashlights appeared behind us, four police officers stood before us, circling slowly.
“Having a nice night?” they asked.
“Nice enough,” I said.
We talked to them for about ten minutes, shooting the breeze. They had just wanted to come harass some college kids and, finding no beer on us, had found us amicable conversation. We talked about their nights, their jobs, our experiences with the police (I left a few instances out, obviously), why we loved the beach, etc. until they spotted some kids on the rocks nearby and decided to go sneak up on them.
Laughing, we bid them farewell.
The “gang-bangers” they had warned us about came up to us and we chatted for a second, exchanging pleasantries.
They went and stood by the water, the four of them, standing out against the gray-blue sky. Eventually, they found other excitement and left us to the lonely beach.
I went out into the water then. It was much colder than it had been even a week previous. I shivered, but there, under the dark sky, pooling clouds and almost full moon, I felt powerful, connected. The water around me was clear, not too deep, and little ripples had been made in the sand that makes up the bottom of the lake. I stood there, letting the waves hit my legs, and I just felt an utter sense of calm come around me and hold me.
Soon enough, my calm was broken by Ian, coming in to join me.
“We won, you know,” he said to me.
We have had this on-going competition, me and the boys. It involves going swimming in the lake at ridiculous times of the year. We have not yet gone in October, and us getting our feet wet seems to have counted. I later ruined the surprise and got objections from Hunter, who had not touched the lake, preferring to sit on the shore with Emily.
Our little group stayed there, laughing and talking for two hours, until 2am hit us harder than we had anticipated.
We were approached by another group, boys from Loyola, who told us jokes and generally amused us with their strange tales. Not joking, all of us were laughing at them instead of with them, but it was a good time.
They left and we were alone and then we left, too.

Tonight in film class I watched a movie called “La Haine” or “Hate.” It’s French and tells the story of opposition between the police and three youths living in the projects. It’s a beautiful story with a very sudden, shocking ending and it left me in love with the city I live in. “The world is yours,” a billboard reads. One of the young men changes it to read: “The world is ours.”
If the world was really mine I would drop out of Loyola and go to film school, but alas, that is not the case.
Instead, I have now. I have these experiences and this apartment and these friends. I won’t remember the logic test I have on Thursday. I won’t remember the fade of Dr. Pollock’s voice that makes me unable to concentrate in social justice. I’ll remember the beach, the games, the laughter.
Steve and I were talking today. It’s his senior year. He’s going to take the GRE in a couple of weeks. He has to go to grad school. One of his friends just told him today that they dropped that off of their life plan and have been experiencing utter bliss since. I told him it was all a precious balance, but that I’d take experience over extra-innings in education any day.
So today, remember something that filled you with an emotion. Any emotion, preferably a beautiful one. Remember feeling powerful, clear, invincible, loved, cherished, wild, or young.
I watched the train rumble by, headed north, as I left the campus today. The beautiful green haven meets the street, filled with cigarette butts and McDonald’s cups. All of those things are heaven to me. I’m in love with this city, with its strange noises and even stranger people. I’m in love with the sounds at night, the darkness, the shadows. I’m in love with the lake, the lights, the magic.

Love life.