Yaaaaayyyyy!!!

I was on the verge of giving up. I was just watching TV when I thought I heard nibbling going on in the kitchen. I quietly walked in that direction and saw my little orange kitty rounding the corner very tentatively and then running away. I was very surprised. Once he ran toward the front of the house to hide, I quickly went to shut the exterior back door. He was very freaked out and scared and running away from me to hide, but responding to me with meows. I brought out 2 days worth of food and he rushed out to eat it.

I’m glad I did the weird back door setup so it was locked but he could get in. It’s nice having two “exterior quality” doors in succession.

So, Kipper is home. He’s calmed down to. I think he’s realizing he’s safe after 45 hours in the wild. That does make me really wonder where he was all that time. But he’s home, so I guess it doesn’t matter any more.

He’s cleaning himself on my lap while I type this now.

ETA: He’s doing something very similar to this right now:

Still no Kippers :-(

I tried everything I could. I barely slept last night, trying to hear him re-appear on the door step. I assumed if nothing else he’d show up at the door around 5 or 6 looking for food. Looks like he never visited the front door though because the chew treat I left is still there untouched. I kept hearing random noises, some of which were exactly the sounds I’d expect him to make, but then I’d get up and nothing.

When I woke up at 7 with no sounds I knew something was wrong. I just threw some clothes on and walked around the block. Nothing. I’m left a little unsure of what to do now. I’m thinking I’ll go drive slowly in a wider area.

I really didn’t expect this to happen.

We have an escapee again

Kipper got out again. This time it hasn’t been a five minute thing like before. He’s been gone for about two hours now. I got a little hasty in my attempt to round him up and get him back inside. He left me with a pretty strong impression of how he felt about that.

Think happy thoughts that he’ll come home again. It’s looking more and more like he’s going to be spending the night outside.

Rally

My pics are up of my non-attendance at the Obama rally.

Caucusing

Today was a first for me, like many other people. I attended my first caucus. In past years, I was really leery of this weird process I’d only vaguely heard about. This year was different though. I wanted to try it out.

As the day approached, I got increasingly excited about it. I wanted to see how it really worked. I also knew that it would be phenomenal turnout compared to past years. A little over eager, I left my house a little early to walk down to the location. As I walked down the sidewalks, they began to fill up. All of us were walking with a common purpose. It was a pretty decent crowd by the time we got there. It was already getting pretty full. I was glad I remembered my precinct number so I was able to go straight to my table. I signed in and wrote my preference.

I then spent awhile looking around the circle, trying to stereotype the people around me to guess their preferences. Obviously this was easier for those with giant stickers on their chests. I also started to recognize some of my other neighbors from the street joining the group. I peaked in on the sign in sheets in front of me and noticed there were a lot more Clinton votes than I’d expected.

The building was extremely crowded. It became SRO eventually. They announced that we were at 2.5 times the fire code capacity of the room. This also made it difficult to hear what was going on in our individual precinct. Everyone had to yell. Despite those problems, it was actually very well organized. They tallied the votes based on the sign-in sheets and announced the preliminary delegate totals. Our 9 delegates would be 7 Obama and 2 Clinton. We also had one uncommitted voter and one Kucinich voter who asked people to sway her. Quite a few people got up to give impassioned speeches, primarily for Obama. A few people did change their votes. At least one had planned to do that originally, so that they could say that in their speech. The vote changes didn’t alter the delegate totals.

I stayed to the very end. We ‘elected’ the delegates. (We had exactly that many volunteer.) Then, we ‘elected’ the alternates. I volunteered, so I was in. So, I’m an alternate delegate. They suggested that even the alternates go to the next convention, just in case. So, apparently I’ll get to see the next part of the process as well.

So far, based on the precincts I’ve heard from, the total is 17 Obama, 5 Clinton.

Updated: 38 Obama, 11 Clinton, 1 Uncommitted.