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And I'm back!
And I'm sick :(
I think I caught something on the plane ride home, which was a whole ordeal in and of itself which I'll explain momentarily as soon as I get done explaining being ill. Anyways, I felt sorta sick on the plane, but I chalked it up to being a very long day of traveling, and when I woke up Tuesday feeling much better I figured that was the case. However I started feeling bad again on my way to bed that night, and then when I woke up this morning it hit me full force.
The sure fire way that I know I'm sick is when my hair starts hurting. Sure I was basically hacking up a lung, my entire body was sore, and I needed to pop some cold/flu pills to function even halfway this morning at work before leaving early in surrender. But once my hair started hurting I knew it was game over. So I went to HEB (which I found out actually does not stand for Here Everything's Better, but is actually named after the founder. Marketing has fooled me again!), but the hair is the definative indicator which says I can't live in denial anymore.
I felt bad for the checkout girl, as when you show up with a basket of flu medicine and two cans of chicken noodle soup, it's kinda obvious that you probably don't want to get too close to the customer.
This is the first time I've gotten sick since I moved to Austin, in fact probably in the last 2 years or so now that I think about it. I got sick all the freaking time as a kid, but I suppose that ended up strengthening my immune system in the end. Eating all that playground sand pays off!
So I wasn't sure whether to write about the election stuff or my last day in Italy and the trip home first, but I think it makes more sense to talk about Italy first, although I don't have all the pictures ready yet.
So our train back to Rome ended up being an hour late, and then it was an uneventful 5 hour train ride back. I love being able to take trains places though, it's cheap, fast, easy, and so much better than driving. After an eventful night which included some awesome hot chocolate and dinner, and a cab driver who was apparently bitter at getting rejected from F1 driving school and took it out by going 90 kph down the tiny streets of Rome and darting in and out of traffic, we left back to the States. Immigration and Customs went smoothly, though it was quite interesting to see the huge difference in how easy it was to get into Italy versus the much more detailed and complicated procedure of getting into the US.
Our flight then from Chicago to Dallas was delayed because apparently a passenger had gotten sick on the earlier flight. My seat looked pretty clean though. And then we sprinted through the terminal at DFW to try to catch the flight to Austin (I felt like I was on the Amazing Race, it was awesome (oh which apparently they lost my audition tape, because they never did call me back about getting on the show)) only to find out it was delayed an hour and a half. And then once we got on, it took almost 3 hours(!!!) of sitting on the tarmac before we took off because we had to wait for de-icing. So we finally got in at about 2:30 in the morning, and I had to take a cab home (and this after Candice had driven all the way to the airport to pick me up, only to have to turn back home as my flight got more and more delayed, I felt really bad having to put her through that). So 26 hours after I left the hotel in Italy, I finally collapsed into bed and called it a night, thankful I had already scheduled the next day off.
The main reasoning for that being of course that yesterday was the Texas primary and caucus! I ended up sleeping in until noon, and then grabbed some BBQ for lunch that I'd been craving. But then I headed out to the downtown headquarters to see how they could best use me in the last few hours. They directed me to the East Austin office, and from there I went with a guy from Idaho to go canvas a neighborhood in north central Austin. Canvassing was really fun, I like it more than phone banking and we met some really cool people. And a lot of No One Home's. I took some photos of the East Austin site, and then one of me next to one of the Obama signs we came across.
Then of course came the caucus, which was quite an ordeal. It is supposed to start at 7:15, but it really starts when the last person in line at 7pm for the primary finishes voting, which mean we didn't start the caucus until about 8:15. The lady running it said that she's been doing this since 1980, and the most she's ever gotten was 30 people. Yesterday 768 showed up. I then hung around to wait for the results so we could find out how many delegates we would get. My precinct ended up going for Obama 67% to 33%, which got us 69 of the 103 delegates up for grabs. And since I stuck around for the results (I finally left about 10:45), I was able to secure a spot as an official Obama delegate for the county convention held at the end of the month. It's doubtful I'll make it all the way to the national convention, but democracy in action is fun! There are all kinds of crazy caucus shennigans though, compounded by HUGE crowds and election officials unfamiliar with how the thing works. Anything from trying to take home caucus results to "correct them" to calling cops and even stories of taking up to 1 in the morning to finish all the paperwork.
And the end result? It looks like Obama is going to win the delegate count in Texas by 3 delegates, and at the end of the day, it's still pretty close to impossible for Hillary to win. She lost most of the lead she had just a few weeks ago in both Ohio and Texas, and the next two primaries (Wyoming and Mississippi) are both expected to go heavily Obama, so in the end it still looks like Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee.
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