It's Friday night, and we're happy over at http://www.lingr.com/room/TPM-aholics .

Come and join us for an hour or more?

My office has been going green since the economy went to shit.  I only wish we'd started earlier.

But what we did start earlier, this year, was a beautiful movement for our community:  We started volunteering at the county Food Bank.  One Wednesday each month, we allowed up to 12 volunteers to go to the Food Bank and work their asses off for half a day, while getting paid on company time.

Every time they asked for volunteers, I stayed at the office instead.  I am terrible when it comes to driving to new places, because I always get lost.  So I brought food in, each month, instead, and donated it to the cause.

Well, today, I had no choice but to go up there to the County Food Bank.  Today was the day that my office would usually have a very cushy party at a local swanky Yacht Club where there'd be an open bar, a DJ, a dance floor, and a three-course dinner, if not a buffet consisting of everything from rack of lamb to lobster tail.

But instead, today, we had a pizza luncheon with canned sodas, and the entire office was sent in two shifts to do volunteer work at the County Food Bank.

I got lucky...I had the morning shift.  The morning shift consisted of taking all the donated goods, checking their condition (expiration dates, suitability, pack-ability, etc.) while the afternoon shift had to open unmarked cans and guess what was inside.  I'd like to share that most everyone in the office volunteered for the afternoon shift because they figured they could make an early and easy day of it and then go home.  Ha!

Anyway, here's what it was like:  The warehouse was so cold that most of us wore our winter coats as we worked.  And we did indeed work.  Our CEO himself dragged pallets around and stacked cans and boxes.  Senior VP's rolled their sleeves up and packed and lifted boxes.  We took every donated good available and weighed it's safety, worthiness, and nutritional value and then sorted same by yelling out, "Soup!, "Pasta!", "Protein!" (tuna fish, canned meat, beans, other legumes), "Veggies!", all the while making room on a very small table for the sorting and packing of said goods.

Some of the office guys got busy tearing down the boxes that the donated goods had arrived in, and others got busy labeling and taping up the new boxes that the sorted and examined goods went into.

I jumped around making myself useful as much as I could, telling clueless employees where the soups were supposed to go, telling them they had to open each jar of peanut butter to ensure an unbroken seal, and explaining that glass goods couldn't be boxed up because of breakage/spillage.  When I wasn't busy telling people what to do, I was busy.

After two hours of hard work, we were all given a tour of the entire warehouse, where we walked into a refrigerator the size of my apartment and saw shelves upon shelves of donated eggs and milk and produce and God knows what else, then walked through two rows of warehouse space that held donations from companies like McCormick (the spices smelled so good!!  --  but, alas, they mostly consisted of ground peppercorn and steak rub).  Many local prisons donate their farmed goods, and many local companies donate their damaged cans (forklifts tear boxes and therefore local supermarkets won't accept them, so they go to the Food Bank). 

And then, just as I was feeling good and happy about doing this work for two hours near the holiday, the woman who runs the facility starts to share with us the realities about the people who actually benefit from her services:  Homeless vets who work for her one day a week in order to get their share of two days' worth of food and try to make it last four days.  Disabled people who also volunteer for her and yet can't read the labels of the food they're taking off the shelves when they leave at the end of the day, to go back to their shelter.  Two-income family members who lost both incomes at the same time and have children to feed.

I started crying, finally, when she told us of all the homeless people who are allowed to come to the warehouse 24/7 to pick soup cans off the shelves versus sorting through a dumpster for their dinner.  They all tell her how they like the soup cans that have pop-off lids.  Why?  Because they can take these soup cans to a local fast food place like MacDonald's, go into the bathroom, run the hot water and stop up the sink and then place the soup cans in the steamy hot water in order to "cook" their soup.  Once it seems hot enough, they pop the lid off the soup and gulp it down as they let the hot water drain out of the sink.

I'm sorry, but no one should live that way.   No one.

I'm grateful to have my job this year.  I'm grateful to have a wonderful boss and a great company to work for.  I'm grateful to have a roof over my head, people to buy gifts for and send cards to, and I'm most especially grateful to have a paycheck.  Without my paycheck, I'm just one step away from being homeless myself.

Gives one pause, doesn't it, this season?

...and all hell breaks loose.  Over religion! 

And from there, it branches off to "He's too conservative!" or "He's not liberal enough" or "I want him to get a mutt versus a poodle".

Chill the fuck out, people!!!

The man hasn't even been sworn in yet, and you're going crazy.

YO!  DEMS!  LIBS!  Be freakin' grateful that we got this far.  And STFU.

Y'all are like those annoying movie-goers who start whining 5 minutes into a new James Bond film.  "It's not fast enough", "It's not sexy enough", "It doesn't have enough action", "He's a weak Bond compared to Connery."

Cop a clue:  You're still watching the previews.

Oh boy.  I just had one hell of a difficult time with MoveOn.org.  They sent me a personalized online ballot today via email, wherein I was asked to pick my top three topics (from a total of 10) that I want them to concentrate on in the days ahead.   I shrugged and said to myself, "This should be easy".  But then, as I perused the choices, I found it harder and harder to choose only three items, and even harder to prioritize them from 1 to 3.  The choices:

- Universal health care
- Economic recovery & job creation
- Build a green economy, Stop climate change
- End the war in Iraq
- Improve public schools
- Reform campaigns & elections
- Hold the Bush Administration accountable
- Gay rights/LGBT equality
- Increase access to higher education
- Restore civil liberties

Universal health care is indeed an important topic.  Obama's campaign made it one of their central themes, as did Hillary's.  My heart aches for those who are uninsured and either unable to seek medical care, or unable to pay for the care they received.

Economic recovery and job creation are urgently needed.  No doubt about that whatsoever. 

But building a green economy and stopping climate change are also urgent needs.  Bush just this past week quietly passed a bill that allows chemicals to run into fresh waterways, damn him.  Creating green jobs will help with the bullet point above, too, so it's very hard for me to choose between the two.

End the war in Iraq, well, that was easy.  It's the reason I joined Moveon.org to begin with.  But then again, it seems that Obama is already intending to do just that, so maybe it's not as urgent as the three items above.

Improving public schools is, of course, a must.  That's just as critical as everything else.

Reforming campaigns and elections is definitely important.  Can you say "Diebold"?

Holding the Bush Admin accountable, well, gee, if only someone had made this a top priority every year for the past eight years, we wouldn't even need to discuss this option, would we?

Gay rights/LBGT equality is very important to me.  I'm not gay (although several jokes have been made about my username), but I care about people who love one another and yet can't marry because other people don't think it's "right".  Amazing to think Loving v. Virginia was won only 41 years ago.

Increasing access to higher education is a dire need, especially now when so many parents have lost so much of the money they were investing towards their children's college funds.  

Restoring civil liberties is a must as well.  I don't know about you, but I find it very hard to talk dirty over the phone now, knowing that some FBI or CIA operative might be listening in with the permission of our government and the cooperation of AT&T.  Then again, it sometimes actually makes it a more titillating experience.  But, I digress.

Anyway, you can see my dilemma, here, I'm sure.  This was no easy task for me.  But, I finally completed my online ballot and I hope all you Moveon.org members will do the same. 

After reading an excellent post by Andy Worthington at HuffPo's political blog, I went and added my name to the petition at http://www.zerodb.org and encourage all of you who care to do the same.

I am, of course, against the use of torture and want to see Gitmo closed ASAP, but not until I read Andy Worthington's post today did I realize how much damage "musical torture" can do.  Link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/a-history-of-music-tortur_b_151109.html

Hey, anyone who knows me knows that I love to blast music on my PC while hanging out on the internet, but even I have to turn down the sound sometimes in order to fully concentrate on an important news story or blog post.  I cannot imagine what my brain would go through were I forced to listen to loud heavy metal or annoying bubblegum pop for more than two hours straight, let alone 24/7 or longer.

Hats off to Tom Morello and Trent Reznor for speaking out against music torture.  May many others do the same.

HuffPo has this annoying habit of providing slideshows, lately.  "Obama PDA", where we get to see all those adorable pictures of Barack and Michelle hugging, kissing, giving each other terrorist fist jabs, and hugging their gorgeous kids.

Yesterday, it was Biden and his new puppy.

Damn, you, Arianna, for making my heart melt when I should be blogging angrily about politics.

So, as if the cutesy DC invasion wasn't enough, I am now falling in love with other bloggers, too.

Dickday.  Marquis.  Thera P.  StillIdealistic.  Bwak the chicken (who is no chicken).  Genghis who's lost his head.  Quinn the Mighty Eskimo.  Hrebendorf the cat hare.  So many of you.  I have fallen in love with you. 

It's like the super-hyper-hormone-driven crushes I had back in junior high school.

One of you blogs, and I come running.  I read through your post and I wanna comment smartly and have to sit there pondering for over an hour which comment to make that will show you not only how I feel but how smart and hip I am.

God, if it's like this for me here at a political website, just imagine what I'd go through at e-harmony?

Seriously, though:  I love all of you.  Even the people I haven't yet read and started following yet.  The fact that you're here, talking politics and pain and principle, it speaks to my heart in ways you just can't imagine.

Xoxo,
Lis