RBOC

• A lot of books will have interludes behind the scenes with the villains discussing their plans or watching them do dirty deeds that the heroes find out about later.  I find that these books seem to be more enjoyable when I just skip those parts completely.  Nothing is missing without them.
• DC2 lost hir first tooth.  Very exciting.
• I have some new pants for work and they are comfortable and look nice.  But somehow they weirdly feel like I’m not wearing any pants at all.  I keep having to look and check that I’m dressed!  They are magic pants.
• I have been craving rhubarb pie for a little over a year now.  Unfortunately, rhubarb doesn’t grow in our area and we haven’t been able to find it anywhere (not even the freezer section at whole foods!).  And we’re always in the midwest during not rhubarb season.  But this week, DH came home with 5 big stalks from our regular grocery store, which was enough to make a strawberry rhubarb pie with (heavy on the strawberries).  I don’t know what it is, but I really like tart red edible vegetation like rhubarb and hibiscus (and sweeter more purpley things like beets and dragonfruit).
• DC2 got a boil on hir arm that wouldn’t stop growing, so we took hir to urgent care after school.  DH made it very clear to the doctor and the pharmacist that zie gets hives from red food dye.  The antibiotic they gave us was pink.  We called up the pharmacy and they said, “it doesn’t say red food dye on the bottle”… but http://www.akorn.com/prod_detail.php?ndc=50383-823-16 it does have red food dye in it.  So DH went back to the pharmacy and they looked at their online info and yes, it has red food dye in it.  And there was nothing the pharmacist could do about it because all sulfamethoxazole suspensions in the US have red food dye and he would need a different prescription to let us get the white pills instead of the pink suspension.  So after a lot of discussion and consultation with DH’s nurse mom (and DC2’s boil growing even more), we dosed hir with 24 hour Zyrtec and gave hir a dose of the pink medicine.  And zie had to skip school the next day to see hir regular pediatrician.  If we lived in Australia, the name brand would not have red food dye in it (and it would taste like banana instead of cherry… yuck.)  [Update:  the pediatrician prescribed a different antibiotic and drained the boil and after several days it is much smaller and happier, which is good because if it weren’t, DC2 would have had to go to the doctor again.]
• In the past week I have had to deal with two white dudes thinking they’d been accused of racism and reacting very strongly to it.  One of them the reaction was so outsized that I kinda think he was racist (ya think?).  The other guy we ended up having a very nice conversation about how when you’re a privileged white guy sometimes you have to be really careful about not using economics jargon when the colloquial meanings of the words mean something much different than the jargon term (ex. discrimination, ghetto, etc.).  And really maybe we shouldn’t be using the jargon anyway since the colloquial definition has become so negative.  (Though in defense of “discrimination” we have a subset that matches the colloquial definition, “animus” or “taste-based”, but the jargon word “discrimination” is shorthand for “differential treatment by group characteristic” which is a mouthful.  “Ethnic enclave” is only 2 more syllables than “ghetto” so we should just say ethnic enclave.)
• How I know I’m middle-aged:  My good hip is bothering me.

ACADEMICS in the US:  Have you encouraged random students to vote?  I’ve found them to be extremely grateful for information about early voting (when/where), what is needed (picture ID? what if you don’t have one in-state), etc.  League of women voters has a lot of amazing resources including vote411. 

Non-Academics (and academics too):  What can you do to get the vote out?  Post-cards?  Canvassing?  Letters?  Conversations with friends and family?  Making sure your polling places have campaign signs for Democrats in state and local elections?  (We may be driving into the city to get some for our local dems from their HQ…)