If I've had email conversations with Rashid Khalidi and live in the same neighborhood as Bill Ayers, am I a terrorist?

Is this really the way to win an election? Didn't we learn in 2004 that running against your opponent is not nearly as effective as running as yourself. McCain's flaw (that I hope is enough to crush him) was to allow, and in fact encourage, the election to be about Obama. My father who is usually completely apathetic about politics, is so disgusted by the mail and robocalls trashing Obama without explaining what McCain would do that he is almost ready to start knocking on doors for Obama. If Bush beat not-Bush in 2004, I think it's a fairly safe bet that Obama can beat Nobama. Anyway, I hope so.

In other news, oh, who am I kidding, there is no other news. Any moment I'm not hard at work at my new job, I am obsessed with the election. I apologize to everyone I have been ignoring. If you would like to talk, feel free to call or email, but be warned that I will likely talk about nothing but politics. Just ask my mom (she's as bad as I am, though).

I just looked at the balance on my retirement account. I probably shouldn't have. It's now worth less than what I have put into it. And then I talked to my dad who just lost thirty times what I lost in the past few months. As he pointed out to me, neither one of us planned to touch our retirement account soon (although he may need his sooner than I will need mine), and we should just chill out and hope the market corrects itself. And so I shifted my allocations to put more into stocks (and pulled out of real estate altogether). The market will recover. And if not, I guess I'll just keep working until I die. If I'm anything like my parents, I'll keep working forever anyway, even if I do have the money to retire.

In other news, the new job is going very well. I really enjoy what I'm doing, which is a good thing, since there's no way I could sell my house, so I'm stuck in Chicago. :)

Sooooooooooo tired. I like my new big office, but I'm totally exhausted. Thank goodness I'm coming from within the division, though, because this would be an awful lot to learn otherwise. :)