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Guest bathroom

I won't bother with the excuses and stories about why I seem to only blog twice a year. As for today, I have the time and occasion to put something on this digital notebook of mine.

Since we moved back to AZ I have found much more joy in working on home projects. After all, they are being completed for us, not the next person to live in this house. The guest bathroom was really where we got started once we settled in. This is a picture from the beginning. Since then we had the floors redone and more recently built a new vanity with a talavera sink and new faucet.

Update

It has been a while since I've updated my blog. You might think that means that there is nothing new here in sunny, cloudy, rainy, cold, muggy (and that was just yesterday!) Minnesota. The truth is that I'm a lazy blogger. Since my last post Dana and I celebrated our 10yr anniversary, we went to Florida for the Ligonier Conference, Dana passed her first level Sommelier exam and I performed my constitutional duties as a delegate to the 1st Congressional District.

First off, our anniversary was awesome. Not so much because it was a milestone, but because I was reminded of how happy I am to have married Dana. We've done the thick, we've done the thin (I hope) and I feel like we've resisted the temptation to hit the cruise control button. We are an adventure, still.

Ligonier was better than I had expected, and I had high expectations. For the 9 years previous Dana had returned from Orlando raving about the conference and this year I found out why. I still haven't decided which talk was my favorite. Godfrey's exposition on intellectualism in church history, Lawson's biographical presentation of Spurgeon, RC's final talk on loving God with all your mind...yeah, probably RC. The richness of each lecture is humbling. These are truly the great theologians of our age.

Dana is legit! I knew she was certifiable about wine and now she has the documentation to prove it. It is fun to listen to her explain the regions, history and even the controversies within the wine world. She has learned so much in such a short period of time it proves that she is smarter than me (most of you knew that). It has also opened up a whole new world of tasting and experimenting with wines that we probably never would have tried. What a shame that would have been! Now she is taking time to enjoy her accomplishments...and our overstocked wine cellar.

This past weekend I attended my 3rd convention where I voted to send 3 delegates from our district to the national convention in Tampa, Fl. Amazingly 2 of the 3 were Ron Paul supporters as were 2 of the 3 alternates. There is a rumor that Paul got all 3 delegates from the 2nd Congressional District as well and his website is reporting 40-45% of the delegates overall. The experience was crazy...again. I was there for 12hrs and we voted on all sorts of things (MNGOP constitution, endorsement of a congressional Rep., etc.). I still feel worn out. The election results made the day worth it. Perhaps a surprise is brewing???

That's about it. Until next time...

Floored

Our most excellent handyman Tavo has finished the floors in our house, along with some other fixes, and the results are awesome....don't be jealous!

County Convention

Yesterday was the convention for the county of Olmsted County where the precinct delegates go to elect delegates for the State and Congressional District conventions. Those people will then send delegates to the national convention in Florida.

It was a very long day...10hrs. The convention uses Robert's Rules of Parliamentary Proceedings which can make things quite confusing and we had a Parliamentarian there to settle disputes. We were warned before hand that the establishment would try to bypass certain aspects of the convention in order to prevent others from participating. I was prepared for an entire day of corruption!

In the beginning we adopt the rules, which are rules that the convention must then abide by for the rest of the proceedings. This was the important part to watch as changing the rules could mean the rest of us (outsiders) were then just observers. The committee had selected a slate of names as delegates to elect for the next conventions prior to the meeting and put these forward as those that had "served the party" in the past. The rules stated that nominations from the floor would be allowed and someone tried to strike that rule and adopt the preprinted slate. Fortunately that got shot down. The next attempt was on trying to make all floor nominated folks declare their candidate. Also shady practice as it nullifies the secret ballot...and I though Democrats were the only ones for card check! hahaha

All the precincts and townships were grouped into House Districts of which there are 4. Each HD sends people to the next conventions and ours was the biggest sending 20 people. I had received a slate from the Paul people of those who they knew (as it turns out...thought) were supporters to try and get to the next round. My name was not on that list. It turned out that the list was put together haphazardly and some didn't show up and 1 supported another candidate. We broke for lunch before voting on my HD and I was sitting with one of the campaign people and said, "I think I'll just nominate myself in case the others don't show up and at worst I can dilute the vote a little." He thought that was a good idea.

When they took nominations from the floor I got in early (#4 I think) as I remember hearing that the first ones on the list have the best chance. Most people who nominated themselves didn't say anything but their names. Those that did say more usually gave a fairly extensive political resume. I don't have one of those so I gave a short speech about living in Europe, government takeover of healthcare, and the socialization of industry. I tried to keep it short and on track with the main complaints of the party faithful. I finished with a bit of emotion on watching the outcome of the 2008 election and hope for 2012. Much to my surprise, it worked. I am now a delegate for the State and CD conventions.

How people view my job

I'm not sure who put this together, but it's funny!

The Revolution continues...

Last night Dana and I participated in our first ever caucus. Had I not received a short video from the RP2012 campaign I would have been completely confused. We gathered with people from our precinct (basically our zip code) and all together there were about 50 people, which according to our precinct chair, was more than double the number of people since 1996 when he began caucusing. We went through a number of formalities such as electing precinct chair, co-chair, secretary, etc. to start the meeting and then took the presidential straw poll. Dr. Paul won our precinct with 19 votes to Santorum with 15 votes. The other 2 were in single digits. After still more formalities we finally got to the point of electing delegates which was the most important part of the evening for us. Dana nominated me and there were at least 3 other overt Ron Paul people who were also nominated. We were each given a few minutes to speak prior to the election. I was the only one who prepared a speech (which was a bit surprising) and there were only 10 people vying for 8 delegate positions. Fortunately all 4 Paul supporters were elected as delegates to move on to the county caucus in a couple of weeks. We will hopefully be successful there as well!

Here's my speech. I prepared it about an hour before the caucus...still pretty good I think!

In 1770 Alexander Tyler said this about the cycle of democracy:

We move from bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage

I ask you friends, in what phase are we? With welfare rolls exploding, foreign owned debt crushing our economy, the legislator knocking down our doors telling us what we are allowed to do under the law instead of how the law will offer us freedom, when patriotism means we can’t question our leaders and liberty is the choice between a body scanner and a pat down. I ask you again my friends, how have we come this far?

We are all here tonight because we believe that America can break free from the bondage of debt, class warfare and dependency offered to us by this administration. Our hope isn’t in the next bailout, but the free market. We believe social justice is about tearing down the walls that separate us, not lifting some over at the expense of others; that Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem!; and that the Constitution cannot be interpreted to mean just anything, for it would then have no meaning at all.

I am part of your community, your neighbor, and I’m asking you to allow me to be a part of the biggest turn around in our country’s great history.

My name is **********. Thank you.