I picked a bad night to do my monthly blog post – I don’t really know what else to write about. Work is good. The neighborhood is good. Everything seems to be going well right now.

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I have loved our three years in Eugene more than I ever expected. When we moved here for Rachel to go to school I thought we’d be gone the day after she graduated. Since moving to Eugene, though, we made some great friends and lived in a very comfortable house and neighborhood. Eugene has been a fantastic place to live and we will miss it.

But, life’s next big adventure for us is out east. We’ve been the NYC twice in the last month or so and found a great apartment in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn. We’ll be near many great restaurants, a few minutes from a nice park for Crusher and I’ll have about a 25 minute commute into Manhattan for work.

While I won’t even try to guess how long we’ll be in New York I will say that I think it’s going to be a good place for us. It will be different from any place we’ve lived before and can’t wait to get out there and experience it all.

Anyways, I thought I’d give transferring a song a try tonight. I didn’t get too fancy, I just used GarageBand and my laptop speakers to sample. I’ll probably try out Audacity sometime soon and then start transferring some of my other gems that I only have on vinyl. Enjoy.

Sweet Black Magic – Ryan Adams – Gold

Billo the Clown tries to call the bear he’s holding a panda bear. It’s clearly not a panda. When Stewart tried to tell him it wasn’t a panda, O’Reilly then insisted it was in a tone that said, “I’m right, you’re wrong and stupid.” This is the way O’Reilly runs his show when discussing matters that actually matter, too. He’ll ramble on and make no sense and then when the guest states something contradictory to him, O’Reilly will belittle, mock and tell them they’re wrong. He’s hard to watch, but sure makes good comedy.

On a somewhat related note, my arch-nemesis was on the treadmills at the same time as me tonight. Hopefully Rachel will post about her nemesis someday in more detail, but hers is this old guy that kind of looks like Wolf Blitzer, smells really bad and uses her favorite machine for two hours at a time. Two hours is not a joke – in the time since he’s reached nemesis status, we’ve seen him lose about 20 pounds. I digress, my nemesis is also old and is usually on the treadmills and loves watching Fox News. Before getting on a treadmill he will always change the channel to Fox without even asking if anyone was watching what was previously on the TV. I know, the nerve of this guy. One time, before he had the chance to change the channel, I had to speak up and say I was watching a rerun of The Steve Harvey Show just so he wouldn’t change the channel. In actuality I wasn’t watching the program (although I’m sure I saw it the episode ten years ago, for some reason I was a big Steve Harvey fan), but it was worth lying just to keep Hannity, Scarbourogh or whatever off the TV. Well tonight, he was there before me and already had Fox on. I watched a little and it was awful. Long story for something that was already known.

Crusher really likes Mr. Obama and is very happy wearing his new gift.

With all that’s been going on between the current Wall Street bailout and the election I’ve been thinking a lot about where I stand on “the issues”. We need a major change in the direction this country is headed. We’re not in our current state of recession because of some bad luck, we got here because of the last eight years of poor decision making by the Republicans. They’ve proven that turning a blind eye to the financial sector doesn’t work. They’ve proven that without a solid plan (or any plan for that matter) we can’t fight a war we aren’t prepared for. And they’ve proven most of all that caring for the top 1% leaves the remaining 99% of us is awful shape.

We knocked on 26 doors today and by the end of our list Rachel and I were pretty depressed. We weren’t asked to talk to any Republicans – just Democrats, Independents, Greens and those not affiliated with any parties – and we only came across five people that had decided to vote for Senator Obama. We walked through the very neighborhood that would benefit from Obama’s tax cuts and saw kids playing that would have a chance thanks to Obama’s early childhood education and college tuition assistance credits. The school vouchers that President Bush has wanted and McCain continues to propose would do nothing positive for these kids.

I’m voting for Obama because I believe it is the government’s job to care for all its members, not just the President’s friends. Providing better education and assistance to those in need will make this place better for everyone. I see this as a very crucial election. Do we want four more years of what we got in the last eight or do we want real, honest change that will put this country back on track?