That's not fair produce...

behold the harvest of our garden.  These peas seemed to be the only thing that grew in our garden.  It wasn't ever sunny, and it seemed impossible to keep the weeds away (it's hard when the garden patch is in the middle of a weed lot).  The one benefit of the weather this year was that we didn't really ever have to water.  Big dinner tomorrow!

Alaska State Fair

Today instead of canvassing, we decided to go to the state fair with keri and jarred.  Many Alaskans hyped it up quite a bit, but I thought it seemed rather small.  Highlights of the fair were: 1.  seeing the reknowned giant cabage (apparently there are larger ones, but the farmers aren't going to pick them until the last day so that they have longer to grow); 2.  fair food (I had an All Alaskan quesadilla, which had salmon and reindeer sausage and guacamole; and Neil and I shared a chocolate mint cookie and milk and then a blueberry funnel cake) 3.  Target is opening in AK on Oct 13 and they've been doing publicity at major events such as fur rondy and the fair.  I got a gigantic target sucker for free 4.  The most exciting part of the fair was seeing Ted Saddler!  He's this goofy looking old man who owns the Mattress Ranch.  There are three in Alaska and we just saw one in Washington.  The commercials are quite hoaky.  Ted does this weird dance, and always wears a sponge bob tie.

Happy August 21st Birthday to Me

We have been negligent lately on our blogging duties.  But I have been yearning for a new bike, and Emily said she would get me one for my birthday.  She had been looking at Craig's list for a good one, and she found a Cannondale.  We emailed the guy a few times, and we went over to check it out tonight after dinner.  I gave it a ride for a little bit, and everything seemed in good order, so we got it!  We had Bannie with us, so we went to the dog park afterwards and Emily walked around while I rode and Banjo chased me.  It was pretty cool.  Emily and I are going to go on a little bike ride this weekend, maybe over to trace a route to my work.  I'll post a picture of the bike later.

Isn't Alaska great?

So in addition to the permanent dividend fund, which is 2,100 per person this year, all Alaskan residents also get a 1,200 bonus check this year for energy costs (even though you can spend it on whatever you want).  We won't be getting any of this even though by the time the checks come out I'll have lived here for over a year.  So, basically I have to suffer through the corruption and the crappy summer weather without any incentive.  It's been interesting with all of the election commercials.  I've never heard conservative used as a positive attribute of a candidate.  The republican's newest conspiracy theory is that Vic Vickers, who is running as a republican against Ted Stevens, is actually a ploy by the democrats to tarnish Steven's good name.  Ever since the indictment came out against Stevens, he's been ahead in the polls.  This place is scary.

Canvassing

We just got back from canvassing the neighborhood.  FIrst I went out with Margaret who lives one block over from us.  We did 65 doors, which took us about 3.5 hours.  Then I recruited Neil (he's been really sick these few days) and we did another 45 or so.  Most of these people were quite excited about Obama, but the funniest was this guy who invited us into his living room and he and this lady wanted to have a discussion about Obama.  At first when he answered the door I thought that he would have been a tried and true Republican, but they ended up being pretty cool.  The place reeked of cigarette smoke and they were both sitting in their lazy boys.  It really reminded me of something out of a documentary or something.  

Now it's off to Thai food to reward our hard work.  

House Party

Last night we had our Obama house party.  It was pretty successful.  We probably had about 20 people show up, although none of the people I invited came.  I made Ellen's mint brownies, and had some veggies, pot stickers and a few other snacks.  Then after everyone hung out for a while we watched an Obama speech, and then people discussed why they had come or why they were supporting Obama.  There were a few characters, and even a Republican for Obama.

Today we're having a big canvas event.  The goal is to visit 25,000 houses across the state.  Our field organizer said that if we can accomplish this goal it is quite likely that Obama may visit Alaska!  The last pole had Obama 5% points ahead of McCain in Alaska.  Hopefully all of our hard work will pay off.