Election Day.

I know, I know. Don’t even say it. I’d give you excuses, but I don’t have any really good ones.

Amanda Fucking Palmer was amazing. The pre-show loitering was good, the opening sets were good [Zoë Fucking Keating for the win!], her set was fantastic, the post-show loitering was good, and I got kissed on the cheek by Amanda Fucking Palmer. It was an amazing time. I’ve now got her autograph on her CD [not the Dolls’], I have Zoë Fucking Keating’s autograph on her [ZFK’s] CD [not to mention a copy of ZFK’s CD], and am still riding the high associated with all of those things. The music is good, the people are good, and there’s not a whole lot more that I can ask for.

There are thirtysomething more days left here. I’m not keeping exact count. I know that I will be excited when the day to go home comes around. As much as I enjoy being here in London, it has only reinforced my feeling that Austin is my home city. That idea used to be so foreign to me; I remember wondering why anyone would feel so strongly about a locality. I guess after I finally integrated into some “groups”, some facets of society, I felt I had more of a stake in sticking around. I will be excited to get home and see my friends and family at to be in familiar places and be able to wear short-sleeved shirts in the winter.

I am excited to get my copy of the third issue of Against the Flood, a wonderful mental-health zine created by my buddy Dumpster Mouse. I am excited to get my two back-issues of Genderbent, a gender zine made by my buddy Cherry Bombe. I am excited to exist again in my intellectual circles with people who share attitudes, beliefs, and goals with me. I guess I am just eager to have a place to belong, again. Studying abroad has definitely shown me that; the only time where I feel anything even close to what I feel hanging out with lots of my home-friends is when I’m hanging out with Kindra, one of the receptionists at the administrative building for the program I’m in. This is only problematic in that I think technically we are not supposed to hang out, but I value not-going-insane more than conforming.

Not that I think that I’m sane. If anything, studying abroad has allowed me to define my neuroses more clearly for myself. Clean-freakery abounds, especially during high-stress times. Compulsive skin-picking and such have taken on a very daily characteristic that they either did not have or that did not get noticed backin the States. I’ve realized how much I need the gym, which means that almost-first-thing when I get back will be a “specialist consultation” regarding my neck, so that I know what the consequences of me going back to the gym will be, or what precautions I need to take.

I’m starting to really get excited about my Capstone at this point. It looks like I am going to Appreciatively Inquire into instances of “effective collaboration” in non-profit organizations. I’m going to do this by interviewing people involved in non-profit organizations, and I hope to give complete parameter-defining agency to them; what constitutes “effective collabortion”, who is involved in it, what sort of timeframe it takes place in, et cetera. So if you know of anybody involved in the social/non-profit sector [of any country] who would be interested in sharing their views with me, hook us up!

Also, I know that today is Election Day. If I were in the States, I’d already be working at a polling place, cheerily directing voters towards the booths and making sure that everything ran as smoothly as possible. If I had stuck with it [I didn’t because I knew that I’d be over here for the election], I could’ve been an Elections Judge today. I guess that is for another time. I have already voted and gone through the whole ordeal of going to the Embassy and getting herded around like a sheep. [It was actually a not-ordeal, excpet that I forgot that penknives are ILLEGAL here [penknives!], so I had to go pay people a lot of money to hold onto it for me while I went into the Embassy. Whoops.] I just want this whole thing to be over. We have been watching the election cycle for two years now. Two. Years. That’s two years focusing on the innanities of the internal politcal workings of the two big American parties, rather than looking deeply at the fact that we’re still engaged in a two-front war against terrorism, or that we’ve been on the brink of opening another front through unilateral aggression, or that people are being slaughtered in any number of ethno-political conflicts, or that the basic assumptions on which rested our financial institutions were dead wrong [oh wait bubbles usually are- tulips, dotcom, housing, gold], or that some people are introducing segregation under the guise of “understanding” [which I will type more about at a later date]. I just want it all to be over. But we all know that as soon as the election is over, the focus will be on the first 100 days of the new presidency, or what GWB does with his last lame-duck term, or what-have-you. At least Election Day signals the beginning of a slow shift away from what-is.