Visit to Tennessee
Thursday afternoon we packed up the car and headed for Tennessee. We have good friends down there who used to live in Hillsdale, and they offered to pay out travel expenses. And they hadn't met Abbey yet so it was a good thing. We got to Louisville, KY about 10pm and stopped for the night, which was really the most exciting part of our trip because we first got off the Interstate in the wrong part of town. That is, when we reached the motel at which we were aiming, we found barbed wire around the parking lot. And barbed wire around all the parking lots as far as the eye could see. This was not particularly comforting, so we asked the GPS how to get back to the freeway, and it chose roads that were somewhat sketchy. Bars on the windows, etc. Anyway, so we drove another 20 minutes and found a nice place.
Got to Tennessee a little after noon on Friday and had a really nice visit. They live about an hour south of Nashville, which is central Tennessee. Not mountainous, but considerably hillier than the Hillsdale area, so we enjoyed the change in scenery. Also it was nice and warm down there, unlike the cold fall weather we were experiencing in Michigan. Abbey took to them really well; they were wise and did not try to precipitously play with her, but let her warm up to them. Which she did soon, and then they both made much of her and were a generally a great help to us. Sunday morning Diane got Abbey out of bed and let us sleep another hour or so. :-) Tennessee is beautiful and we think we might like to live there someday, though perhaps farther east (toward the mountains).
We had planned to vote absentee, but I left the ballots on the table (much to my chagrin!). However, we got back to Hillsdale yesterday about 4:30 and voted after dinner. Michigan went very blue this year: Obama won (no surprise), but our Republican Congressman lost, which is a surprise, given how conservative this district is. But the Michigan economy is quite depressed so I imagine that's a lot of it.
Obviously I'm not happy that Obama won, but a) I'm not at all surprised and b) McCain wasn't that inspiring of a conservative. As far as my principles are concerned, he'd have been not much different from Obama, except perhaps on foreign policy. And I don't have any reason to hate Obama, at least not yet. Clearly it's quite a good thing that the USA has elected a black man president, even if he's not "technically" an African-American. I'm quite willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and see how he does. And some time in the wilderness could be for the GOP: they haven't been particularly faithful to conservative principles for the last couple of elections. Really, they deserved to lose (though I'm not sure the Democrats deserved to win).
Got to Tennessee a little after noon on Friday and had a really nice visit. They live about an hour south of Nashville, which is central Tennessee. Not mountainous, but considerably hillier than the Hillsdale area, so we enjoyed the change in scenery. Also it was nice and warm down there, unlike the cold fall weather we were experiencing in Michigan. Abbey took to them really well; they were wise and did not try to precipitously play with her, but let her warm up to them. Which she did soon, and then they both made much of her and were a generally a great help to us. Sunday morning Diane got Abbey out of bed and let us sleep another hour or so. :-) Tennessee is beautiful and we think we might like to live there someday, though perhaps farther east (toward the mountains).
We had planned to vote absentee, but I left the ballots on the table (much to my chagrin!). However, we got back to Hillsdale yesterday about 4:30 and voted after dinner. Michigan went very blue this year: Obama won (no surprise), but our Republican Congressman lost, which is a surprise, given how conservative this district is. But the Michigan economy is quite depressed so I imagine that's a lot of it.
Obviously I'm not happy that Obama won, but a) I'm not at all surprised and b) McCain wasn't that inspiring of a conservative. As far as my principles are concerned, he'd have been not much different from Obama, except perhaps on foreign policy. And I don't have any reason to hate Obama, at least not yet. Clearly it's quite a good thing that the USA has elected a black man president, even if he's not "technically" an African-American. I'm quite willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and see how he does. And some time in the wilderness could be for the GOP: they haven't been particularly faithful to conservative principles for the last couple of elections. Really, they deserved to lose (though I'm not sure the Democrats deserved to win).
Labels: 2008 election, Vacation
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