Ugh. Amazing how quickly I can forget to update this thing.

Life's going pretty good. I'm getting over my cold as are Rebecca and Melanie. Our tenants are moving in this week.

I had a Scholastic Bowl rules clinic yesterday and another one tomorrow. Questions are coming along nicely and I'll have half the regular season matches ready by tonight or tomorrow. The other half is a vendor I work with and that'll be ready later this week.

I got my SmartTag for riding the Dulles Toll Road, although it seems to take me an hour and 10 minutes either way to get from my wife's work to my worjk.

Only bad thing is our generator -- on Monday, we had a 30-second power blip -- the generator didn't come on. Apparently, the gas hose had a kink in it, and it was only repaired today. Hopefully it'll fire up next time there's a real power outage. The inspector's coming out for the final approval on Monday.

As for the election, I think McCain made a huge mistake in not letting Palin talk to the press or do anything other than give the standard stump speech. Davis' comment about 'respect and deference' didn't help either. That just got the Democratic base fired up. So she would've had a few gaffes. Compared to what's happening now, I'm going to say that would've been the lesser of two evils. (BTW, Obama naming H. Clinton the VP would've done the same thing to the GOP base that naming Palin's done.)

The media then decided to make the story about Palin as opposed to letting Palin make her own story. So we went from 'ZOMG hot hockey momma' to 'Bristol's knocked up LOL' to 'she lied about the Bridge to Nowhere' to 'Hey what about this Troopergate thing.' What'll be next?

Odds are, nothing terribly kind to Palin. Running against the media is one sure way to get the media unsympathetic to your cause. I suspect with McCain, reporters feel it personally, as Straight Talking McCain of 2000 was a chatty sort. Now it's been a month since McCain's had an off the cuff talk with reporters, and Palin may as well be in New Zealand as far as the media is concerned. The negative ads McCain ran were pretty bad, and that probably contributed to the narrative of betrayal many reporters must be feeling.

One thing that has me worried somewhat is MN and WI becoming tighter. Part of me is wondering if there's some movement among Scandinavian-Americans (of which there are many in MN and WI) moving to Palin -- that since Palin is a Swedish name (http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Palin-places-origin.ashx), there might be a few points of movement. I can't think of anything else to explain why McCain bounced so well in MN and WI.

Another thing to consider -- in the debates, Obama held his own against Clinton, but let's not forget that Clinton and Obama were essentially wanting the same things. In the general election debates, McCain will start down a couple rounds since he has to defend how things are well enough to convince voters that staying Republican is the way to go, but not so well that he is portrayed out of touch. Essentially, Obama's got reality on his side. Don't get me wrong, McCain may well win one or more of the debates. But projecting Obama's performance against Clinton to the upcoming general election debates is at best a shaky exercise.