Ba-rockin' the Philadephia Vote

lediva and I woke up insanely early yesterday morning for a mini road trip to the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, to register voters for the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. We had a wonderful drive down, full of good conversation and Cinnabons, and after a brief training and rally ended up getting stationed in front of a small grocery store in the downtown area, with clipboards (provided by the campaign), and cat ear hats (provided by ourselves). Lots of foot traffic, with a very mixed demographic in terms of age and ethnicity, but a pretty uniform demographic in terms of politics -- huge numbers of Obama supporters giving us lots of support for being out there.

Lots of great interactions. Highlights included
*lediva reenfranchising somebody (PA law says that convicted felons can vote as long as they aren't currently serving their term and as long as the crime wasn't voter fraud, so this person could vote although he'd been told he couldn't)
*Hearing older people, women in their 70s, 80s and 90s, tell us that they'd been voting since longer than we'd been alive, and that they'd fought hard for their vote, and hell yeah they were already registered.
*Registering a young person who was just going to be old enough to vote in time for this election.
*Having a long conversation with a lifelong Republican and street activist organizer who had become extremely inspired by Barack Obama, and helping him fill out a change-of-party registration.
*Having people literally stop their cars in the middle of traffic while we were talking the long walk back to the campaign office, asking us if we could register them. (We made them find a stable place to pull over first.)

All in all, we got 23 completed voter registrations, and handed out at least another dozen forms to people who wanted to give them to relatives that they didn't think were registered. The main complaint we got from people is that the office hadn't provided us with enough good swag to hand out, or absentee ballots for people who wanted to vote but knew they couldn't get to the polls.

After we finished, we went to the magical Moroccan restaurant that became a special-visit treat for me and lediva when Anthrocon used to be in Philly, the one where you get to eat on big platters and sit on couches and eat with your hands, and although I didn't realize that the place had become (or maybe always was) cash-only, I had exactly the right amount of money in my wallet to cover it.

Then we drove home together, and talked about how much we loved each other, and then I fell asleep in the car (I drove down, she drove back to NY) and woke up to the sound of her singing harmony to an old Paul Simon song.

It was, to quote ubiquity, the Best Day Ever.

NYC area folks!

I really, really want to go to this. Anyone interested in joining me?

Fully Edible Easter Basket

In case you aren't aware of it, right now bacon is very popular in the food blogging world. There are several whole blogs devoted to bacon, and structural bacon projects, such as bacon mats and bacon bowls, have been making the rounds. Now, I've been reading Not Martha since well before they did this, but lediva became aware of this via one of the all-bacon blogs, and somehow in the process of a rambling conversation, a horrible idea was born: a fully edible Easter basket made of bacon, and filled with sprouts for grass, and nestling a pre-peeled boiled egg.

We had to do it.

Half a pound of bacon, made into a container. I'll spare you the discussion of the details, except to say that despite having used a pan of water underneath the rack holding the foil-covered bowl of woven bacon in the oven, the place got pretty smoky, enough to sting the eyes a bit if not to set off the smoke alarm. After a long time in the oven, the bowl held its shape, but was raw in the middle, and I ended up finishing it off by removing the foil layer and cooking it for a few minutes in the microwave.

But in the end, it was lovely enough to make lediva just a little weepy. And it was utterly bacon-licious.

	Bacon Basket, unfilled
	All-Edible Bacon Easter Basket, complete