Instructions, originally uploaded by timbu.

Seen on the Megabus in the bathroom. On a related note, if you need a good laugh check out the Flickr Group “Stick Figures In Peril“.

Pumpkin Butter, originally uploaded by timbu.

I made pumpkin butter last week. It’s pretty good on toast. Pumpkins are a lot harder to crack open than I would have guessed. I was told today that you can heat them up a little to make cutting a little easier — now you tell me.

There are way too many accusations going on about the Coleman/Franken race. If you watch the vote counts they always fluctuate a little after an election. Saying that all these county officials are trying to defraud the public is politics at it’s worst. I served as an election judge and I can say the system isn’t perfect, but the public officials I met are focused on counting the votes legally and fairly. You aren’t gaining any friends by calling the election officials and the election judges criminals. If your goal is to disenfranchise citizens you have lost my vote permanently.

Which brings me to another item. The Star Tribune ran an op-ed piece last Sunday where a guy railed about the fact that is was easier to register to vote than it was to register his old canoe – all because he had to show id to register his canoe.

Minnesotans Unite!

We have to make it easier to register canoes and now!

Seriously, if my precint is any guide most people who vote were known by the people who found their name on the voting rolls. Serious fraud would require being willing to have a gang of voters disbursed over many, many polling places. People who are capable of that much planning could easily buy fake ids if they wanted to tamper with an election.

I hate the fact that our country is turning into a place where you have to “show your papers” more frequently.

I think the key is that the parties should endorse candidates who are capable of actually getting 51% of the citizens to vote for them.

Here is my guess. Franken voters probably don’t understand about coloring in the lines – that means the recount will favor Franken, but probably not by enough to matter.

Here is a funny website to jumpstart your writing, Write or Die. It is a writing exercise where you have a blank box to start writing in. If you stop for any reason there are consequences. One of the levels will start erasing what you have already wrote. Wow, is that motivation to keep going. Check it out if you have some writing that has been waiting on the back burner for all too long.

OK, it’s a little late for me to endorse a presidential candidate. Before I begin, I want to talk about Reagan Republicans.

know this post-election period is all about determining where the Republican’s went wrong – so why am I bringing up Reagan?

It’s because I remember enough about the late 70’s and early 80’s to remember why people voted for Reagan. The U.S. was in bad shape; we had endured energy shortages, the Iran hostage crisis, economic competition from abroad, rising inflation and high interest rates. This is not why people voted for a Republican. Most of the people who vote for Republicans do so because they are Republicans. They’ll vote for just about any reasonably qualified candidate. The same is largely true for people who vote for Democrats, btw. The interesting feature of the 1980 election was the independents and the people who lean Democratic who came over to Reagan.

The same is true in this election. There are many ways to look at the electorate and how they voted but you can find numerous examples of standard Republicans who voted for Obama then turned around and voted for Republican Senators and Congressman and women – I know they certainly did in my district. Why do people do this?

The answer is simple and it is rooted in hope.

Reagan like Obama communicated a certain kind of optimism in the strength of this nation. You can complain about Reagan’s policies and divisive approach to issues but Reagan made people feel differently about the country. That is more enough to win an election. McCain and Palin didn’t have anything approaching the hope Obama talked about throughout his campaign. Their campaign degenerated into pointless namecalling which is as far from hope as you can get. I won’t even want to get into a discussion of the primary that featured Hillary Clinton who shockingly chided Obama for giving people false hope.

More than any other factor, Obama raised the money and won the election because his campaign was about hope.

American’s want to believe that this country is special and we can do amazing things. Tap into that and you can get the nation to line up behind you, well at least 53% which is more than enough.

So what did I do in the voting booth? Against habit, I voted for hope.

As Hugh MacLeod said, “The market for something to believe in is infinite.”

Now I don’t think that an Obama presidency will feature each of us excreting well capitalized banks, unicorns and solar-powered cars. In fact, I think it’s likely that we will enter a malaise that makes 1982 look like a cake-walk. The holder of the office will be largely powerless to counter some threats we face – at least we won’t have Sarah Palin trying to understand what she should do next.

Next up, I’ll explain how George Bush has destroyed the Republican party.