things i have done recently

*voted via absentee ballot.

president: of course, for barack obama.
senator: mark warner, i dont even remember who else was running.
congress: i didnt hear anything from my congressman (frank wolf) trying to convince me to vote for him, so i voted for his opponent. there was an indian guy running so i thought i should vote for him - but then i looked at his website and voted for the democrat. maybe next time.

referendum: there was a referendum about whether fairfax county should take out a 77 million dollar loan in order to improve parks. credit didn't seeml ike such a great idea in this economy, but i voted yes anyway. sprawling suburbia should at least have nice parks.

it should reach within a week, i.e. plenty of time to spare before the election. i'm excited.

*visited the east german city of görlitz. pictures to follow.

*i've begun to hate social media, including facebook. especially twitter, which is, as gawker nicely put it, "the most retarded form of communication ever." maybei t's not that bad, but it's pretty boring. a) i couldn't hook i up to my cell phone, so i have to manually enter in my updates (lame?), b) users outside of the us and canada can't send sms's for free, so there's really no reason to use it, c) why would i pay the cost of an sms in order to update some random thought in my life?, and d), i just don't have a critical mass of friends on twitter, or any other social networking platform except for linked in and facebook to make it worth my time logging in.