Newest favorite time waster: blip.fm

A couple weeks ago I started playing around with blip.fm, and I have been pretty hooked since. It is like twitter for sharing music - everyone is a dj and they can "blip" any song they choose.

I love being able to share some of my favorite songs while discovering new stuff on other people's stations. Soul "dj ill" has come out in full force as I have dedicated my station to my favorite soul tunes.

Check out my station and let me know what you think, my user name is dj_ill.

I will leave you with some sweet soul blips from my station.

Bob & Earl - Harlem Shuffle

The 8th Day - She's Not Just Another Woman

Gloria Jones - Tainted Love

Commodores - Easy

The Contours - First I Look at the Purse

Check out my Dad's station as well - he has awesome taste in music and pulls out some great stuff.

A book I liked

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
By Steve Martin

As a lifelong fan of Steve Martin, I really looked forward to reading this book. I loved Shopgirl and have laughed through The Pleasure of My Company a couple of times. I really enjoy his writing style.

In Born Standing Up, Steve Martin takes you through his early days in comedy. It starts with him as a young boy working at a magic shop in Disneyland and continues through his time in stand-up comedy all the way through the start of his movie career. As you follow along on his comedy path that lead him to his success today, you get to experience the ups and downs that allowed him to fine tune some of his funniest comedy bits.

It is amazing to me that he was able to combine three seemingly incompatible passions - magic, playing the banjo, and slapstick comedy - into a comedy show that sold out theaters that sat tens of thousands of people.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves comedy...or magic, or playing the banjo, or standing.

Here is one of my favorite Steve Martin moments from one of my favorite movies, The Jerk.

Blogging again

After taking over a year off, I am ready to start blogging again! This time around the blog will basically be a space for my ramblings about the things I find interesting. I will share my thoughts on politics, events in the news, books, movies, music, funny things I find on the internet - you name it.

I have no idea if anyone will find it interesting, but it will be fun to have a place to express all my random thoughts.

I will leave you with one of my favorite recent internet finds, just another day in the office:

YES WE CAN

The election is over and history has been made. America has a bright future ahead.

No more days until the presidential election and I couldn't be happier with the results.  

YES WE CAN

COLORADO!!! - day four

It is late, and tomorrow will be a LONG (and hopefully successful) day, so I will keep this post short.

Today Justin and I went door to door in a small town called Georgetown.  It was an incredibly cute area with some beautiful homes...and some not so beautiful homes.  Canvasing this time was a little easier because we only visited Obama supporter homes.  Also, it was a Monday, so many people were not at home.  We left flyers with information about their polling place and other election information.  It really is getting down to the wire, and people in Colorado are tired of being bothered.  They say that they get multiple calls each night and they are getting frustrated.  It makes it a little tough as a volunteer - but we have to stick with it.  For the number of people that complain, we find an equal or greater number of people who are thankful for the information and for our dedication to the campaign.

We went door to door from 10:00 until 5:00, it was tiring - but hopefully impactful.  After that we went back to the office in Idaho Springs (the upstairs of a pizza place) and entered data.  They told us to be ready for a long day of calls and data entry tomorrow.  We are getting there bright and early in the morning and staying until the polls close. 

Here are some fun pictures of Georgetown from today:

I am not sure if I will blog tomorrow since I will be working all day, and hopefully celebrating all night (after nail-bitting anticipation).

Only ONE day until the election...I can't believe it!

COLORADO!!! - day three

We couldn't have chosen a better time to come out to Colorado.  Not only is the "Get Out the Vote" weekend extremely important, but the weather has been absolutely wonderful.  Since we got here the temperature during the day has been between 70 and 80.

Anyway, on to our day.  Since we were going door to door in a new area we didn't have to get into the office until 11:00.  That, plus the extra hour we gained from the time change, gave us time in the morning to be tourists.  EB took us to a place in Golden called Dinosaur Ridge. Here there are actual fossilized dinosaur footprints on the side of a mountain.   It was pretty impressive.

  

After that we were off to Idaho Springs for our first door to door experience.  It is a very cute small town about 20 minutes outside of Golden.  We had some fun taking a couple of pictures before we got down to business.

At first we were a little frustrated with going door to door because the addresses in this area made no sense whatsoever.  They were all over the place and did not follow any logical order. After a little time we were able to find most of the places that were on our list.  Many of the people were not home (which is very typical) - but those who were home were almost all Obama supporters!  It was really uplifting to see after we had been told that this town was considered a conservative area.

Most of the Obama supporters had not yet voted and were happy to receive information about their polling place and the times that it would be open.  We spoke to one person who is a McCain supporter and his wife is an Obama supporter.  His wife's name was on our list, but he was extremely friendly and happy to talk to us.  He even said that he was bummed out that no McCain supporters had been coming door to door in that area.  It just goes to show that the Obama campaign is really well organized and there is no area of Colorado that is considered too small to send people out to.

Even though we didn't speak to a large amount of people, it still felt like we were being useful.  Giving people information about their polling place, answering any questions they may have, and stressing the importance of their vote gets them one step closer to actually showing up to the polls on election day.  I have confidence that at least a few of the Obama supporters that we spoke to today will actually make their way out to the polls now that they have the information they need.

Once were were done canvasing we came back to the Golden campaign office and put together some Obama/Biden lawn signs to give out.  This worked out well since most of the Obama signs in the neighborhood we are staying in were stolen the night before.  We made sure to take a bunch of the signs that we put together to replace the stolen ones.

One of my favorite things about the Golden office is that they have big posters on the walls of the bathroom where people can write why they are supporting Obama.  It is interesting and inspiring to look at.  There are so many different people who support Obama for so many different reasons.  Here is a shot of just part of one of the posters:

Tomorrow we will be going door to door in Georgetown, a town close to Idaho Springs that is even smaller.  It will be fun to check out the town and talk to people in another new area!

Only two more days until the election...

COLORADO!!! - day two

Colorado is absolutely beautiful.

Today was our first day of working with the campaign and we were sent out into the mountains.  We went to Black Hawk which is about 4o minutes away from where we are staying in Golden.  It was a gorgeous and windy drive up and through the mountains into a very rural section of Colorado.  We originally thought that we would be going door to door, but they had us make phone calls to locals instead.  We didn't really think that was the best use of our time here because we could just have easily made phone calls to Colorado from California, but hey, we are here to help in anyway they need us.  Plus, it is hard to be mad when you get to make phone calls with a bunch of incredibly friendly and interesting people.  It was definitely a fun day.  Plus, they had a killer view from the balcony:

Since Black Hawk is pretty remote, they don't really have the typical old store fronts or office spaces to put a campaign office - so instead, this incredibly nice couple have opened up their home as a calling station for volunteers.  I am so impressed by the kindness, openness, and passion that the Colorado volunteers and hosts have.   It is not a small thing to open your home up to strangers day after day, but they doing without even thinking because the cause is so important to them.

We returned in the evening to the Golden campaign office to help make some calls to potential volunteers.  Since it was a Saturday night most people weren't home, but I was able to sign someone up for a shift to make phone calls, and Justin signed someone up to go door to door - so that is 6 more hours of volunteer work that we got out of 45 minutes of calls.  I am going to go ahead and call that productive.  

We are told that we will get to go door to door tomorrow in small town called Idaho Springs.  We are excited to speak with people, but we have been forewarned that this area is pretty conservative.  It should be interesting...

Only 3 more days until the election...