Closely Knit or Completely Spaced Out?

First, I have to mention how thrilled I am that the election is over and that Obama will be the next President of the United States. I worked very hard...well actually, I canvassed and made phone calls and prayed a lot. I made up a visualization involving Barak surfing... starting from the Atlantic Ocean over the entire country from the East coast to the West Coast and into the sunset over the Pacific picking up electoral votes the whole way.

Mostly I just worried, not only during the last few months, but over the last eight years about every single egregious action of the Bush administration starting with reinstating the Global Gag order (his first order of business as president) not to even mention Guantanamo, torture, the Patriot Act, the Iraq fiasco, turning the whole world against us...

I see hope, choice, and relief coming in the next four years. Go Mr. Obama, lead us. Now I will stop being preachy.

After reading my first post, my son mentioned that my blog doesn't seem to have a focus. I think that not having any focus is what I am, what I do,in a macro sense. Micro-ly I have intense focus. When I read, I read. When I knit, I knit. When I write, I write. When I yearn for social justice, I yearn with focus. But my day overall has no focus at all.

This is what I did today. I had a doctor's appointment after which I stopped at a bookstore for no reason at all. In the vestibule I was distracted by the SALE books. A cookbook about SOUP attracted me. Last spring, I made vegetable broth for the Passover seder, but I wanted an easier recipe. I efficiently found the vegie broth recipe which looked good. Finding a comfy chair, I proceeded to giraffe the recipe into my Palm Pilot. (My husband commented later, "Now that's labor intensive!") I must have wasted a good hour and a half looking through the book for a soup recipe that didn't have any pig parts (not Kosher), didn't have cream (too fattening, can't serve with meat), didn't have more than 4 ingredients, (too much of a pain in the ass).
I finally found one and giraffed that one into PalmPilot too.

Is this pleasant distraction or completely spacing out? Will I ever make this soup?

When I got home I took a nap because all of this giraffing (plus the one hour drive to and from the doctor) was exhausting and then I read the NYTIMES. (I think am the only person in this small town in Missouri who takes the Times every day). I found the section about the election that graphed the results state by state. But now I have to explain something else.

By the way this is all trying to convince myself that one can be completely spaced out AND sort of sloppily focused. Kind of "closely knit". (my knitting sometimes being sloppy) I know I will get around to talking about knitting real soon!

During the election, if I got really nervous about the polls, I looked at a website my hair stylist recommended called fivethirtyeight.com. I decided to see how close they really were. So, with the NY Times and the website final projections I made a chart showing each state, the winner, the winning percentage (projected by 538) and the actual winning percentage. Except for Missouri and N. Carolina (which were undecided when the paper was printed), Sean Quinn and Nate Silver, 538's analysts, predicted who won which state perfectly and were damn close or exact on the percentages. Amazing.

But the point is WHY DID I DO THIS? I have no deep personal connection to this website or its creators. I have no interest in statistics or even in elections (as long as my candidate wins). I'm just playful and spacey in a weird intellectual goofy way.
Could be that I had to retire too young. See you another day.

Today for example