back from the swing state

I spent the weekend in Florida, organizing a friend's closet, and I didn't realize, until I got there, how different the advertising is in a swing state. NY is pretty much a foregone conclusion, so the ads that run here are of the "I am the candidate and I approved this message" variety. In Florida, however, they're those partisan interest group ones that really sling mud and hurl epithets. Kind of fascinating.

Also fascinating? Sharing dinner with a table full of Republicans over the age of 65. Very different set of values there. Luckily, we also shared several bottles of wine, so after a while, politics ceased to matter.

Less fascinating, but more odd:

1. I burned my belly on the coffee pot. (And I don't even drink caffeine, so I can't blame it on the I-wasn't-awake-yet phenomenon. I just somehow managed to do it.)

2. I've been suckered by the National Dairy Farmers into thinking that not only does eating dairy burn calories (like they say it does) but that somehow, dairy has NEGATIVE calories. I think this may explain how my belly had a run-in with the coffee pot...

Not remotely fascinating, but amusing:
I accidentally referred to Fort Lauderdale as "Fart Lauderdale."

And an interesting game I played with myself this weekend:
One of my Floridian friends is a button pusher. And he likes to make generalizations, claiming that they're not generalizations and I generally get pretty annoyed at what he's saying and, in the past, have gotten upset about it.This time, however, I played a game with myself. Every time I was triggered by something he said, I would note down the association I had that I felt he was attacking. To recap the weekend, apparently I identify myself with: women, democrats, leftists, women drivers, planners, amateur writers, "chicks," and, for good measure, blacks and guatemalans.

(But at least I didn't get pissed off!)