We dropped the conference attendees at their meeting this morning and drove to nearby San Pedro, California, to have something to eat in a little place called MacDonald's. It isn't like we intended to go to either San Pedro or McD's, but that's how it worked out.
There was a very earnest Obama 2008 worker holding court in the restaurant. She was enthusiastically explaining the virtues of Senator Obama to a fellow that she had trapped in the line. She was making a comparison beween Obama and Abraham Lincoln, explaining that Obama is a true conservative, like Lincoln. She actually told the poor man that if he liked Lincoln, he will really like Obama. I'm not kidding.
I was tempted to ask her to expand on the similarities between Lincoln and Obama, but that would have been a cheap shot, because I know that she was just repeating the campaign spiel that she had been fed.
She was trying to get a commitment out of this fellow to attend some campaign event and he was desperately trying to get away. He finally told her that his only day off work was on Saturday, so he couldn't attend any meetings.
Her next candidate was an Hispanic woman who told her that she never votes. The worker politely told her that non-voters are the ones most hurt by the current policies. I'm not sure how it is worse for them, but it sounds like something and most people don't really think about it. I'm pretty sure that we all are stuck with our representatives, whether or not we vote.
The worker's criteria for selecting victims seemed to be based upon language. If you spoke English, you were her target. It was sort of a fool's errand because in this part of San Pedro, crammed up against the Port of Long Beach, English-speakers are in a minority. I didn't make eye contact and I told Peterson to tell her that we were Canadians if she accosted him. When we went to pay, a guy in line said loudly, "Don't try to pay with your Canadian money." When I turned around, he said that he overheard me telling Peterson and congratulated me on my quick thinking.
I saw this sticker plastered on several surfaces around the Queen Mary. It is for an LA based musical group of the same name. They have a new CD out called Early Prayers, on a record label called Urbantone Records. I listened to a couple of their tracks and they aren't bad, even in the opinion of an old guy.
What cracked me up was the promo information from the record company flacks on their website. It read, "While mainstream music continues to become more commercialized and less visionary, this group of musicians aim to create music containing the substance that radio airwaves seem to lack." A musical group that claims that they are keeping it real, as the youngsters say. Never heard that before.
Speaking of keeping it real. I was doing some underwater photography, laying at the bottom of the harbor, when this guy passed right over my head. It was a close one but I was able to fight him off.
The truth is that we went to the Long Beach aquarium this afternoon and I was standing under a giant tank looking up. It is a fascinating place, if you are interested in sea life.
Lastly, the Long Beach Marathon is being run tomorrow, so our hotel is crawling with runners. The check in for the race is across the street and there are lots of skinny people going across the road carrying their registration packets in these little yellow bags that the organizers are handing out. Some are wearing tee shirts from marathons they have run in previously. I saw a woman wearing a Boston Marathon shirt.
My personal best marathon time was didn't do it. I was a 15K runner years ago, but I had to give up racing in the prime of my life to become fat and old. The heartbreak of defeat.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky
I still do not have a personal best marathon time.
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