I've never even SEEN that movie!

So now that my self-imposed week-long blogging ban is lifted, you are all privy to the following nugget:

When my alarm went off at 7 this morning, I felt the need to prove to my friend Kevin, who was on my mind because I'm giving him a ride to the airport today, that even though it was raining outside, my "Thelma and Louise" impersonation was still valid. (I have NO IDEA what a "Thelma and Louise" impersonation would be like - see the title of this post.) And the logical way to prove that seemed to be to hit snooze. Every 9 minutes for no-I-am-not-going-to-tell-you-how-long.

That'll show 'im.

So, it's been more than a week...

All I have to say about last Monday is this: It's April, people, we should not have HAIL.

And moving on...

My sis and bro-in-law bought a house 40 minutes from where I live. They'll move here the first week of June. And I couldn't be happier. :) :)

Lessons learned this week of no (read: very limited) blogging and gchatting:

• I CAN set limits for myself. Even if it just to set my gchat status with the red dot instead of the green dot.
• As people have been telling me for, uh, quite some time now, it WORKS to reward yourself for getting a certain amount of work done. Like Thursday night when I stayed in my office on campus until almost 9:30pm because I knew I was going to get to go to a movie with a good friend at 10. I DID IT! I sucked it up and stayed in my office, which I had already been in much of the day, and worked on the thesis. And made progress, caloo callay. I do think, however, that my rewards need to be attached to specific things with people. Much of what I LEAVE the thesis work for is to spend time with friends, so to use something specific like that as a reward was really good.
• Since I had already stated that I was not going to be blogging all week, I didn't feel pressure to make sure I was staying up on other peoples' blogs (all 6 that I read regularly :) ), and, obviously, didn't feel any pressure to post. It was an interesting freedom, and made me think about why it is that _I_ blog. I think I'll write more about that later.
• I need to exercise. I have been trying to eliminate peripheral things from my life so as to focus on my thesis, but if those peripheral eliminations, if NOT eliminated, could actually CONTRIBUTE to my peace of mind, and hence to my ability to get stuff ( i.e., thesis) done, then they should perhaps not be eliminated. What I am trying to say is, I went running again this week, and it was nice (afterwards), and I need to do that more often.
• Relationships are really important to me. People are really important to me. And it's cool to me to see my friends becoming good friends with each other. I feel like, "Hey! See how those guys are all friends with each other now? I helped do that!" :) I have just been reminded lately that forming connections between people is one of the purposes of this life, and one of the main things that, to me, makes this whole thing worthwhile. And that's a good lesson, I think. A distracting one, at times, but a good lesson. :)

Other big news from this week:

1. Justin, blessed friend that he is, mowed our lawn. The grass / weeds / mini-crop of grain was about a foot and a half high, and one wheel broke off the lawnmower part way through. And he finished anyway. WHAT A GUY!
2. Justin changed the oil in my car.
3. Justin changed the blinker bulb on my car.
4. Apparently it's all about Justin this week.

I MADE PROGRESS ON MY THESIS! *happy sigh* Not a ton, and not "enough," but "some." And that feels good. And this week will be better! :)

I have begun to write down the names of the people who casually mention that they'd be willing to help me move next weekend. Don't make offers on which you are not willing to follow through, people. :)

I am reading the Old Testament, and am about to cross the Red Sea with Moses and the children of Israel. It's fun to read straight through all these stories. It's been a while since I've done that.

And I think that's it for today, folks. Blog out.

wow i'm stressed

My sis and her husband and their three darling kids are here, and I love Love LOVE to be with them, but it hit me again last night on the way home from my parents' house, where all the visitors are staying, that

I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO.

And so little mental capacity to get it all done. At 9:10 this morning I ran out the door to my office, which I had just run into to get my milk from the fridge so that I'd have something to pour over my cereal that I planned to eat while the Tahitian teacher filled out the 20-minute survey that was the main purpose of our 9am meeting, which you'll notice, I was late to, and I just realized just now that I left the rest of my milk in the fridge in the other office when I ran back out of there to get back to this office to get things together to go to my parents' house and play with the kids for the day so that my mom doesn't go nuts with all those active kids. :)

And I said to my coworker, as I ran out at 9:10, "I feel like my life is in a downward spiral of unproductivity and disorganization."

Something needs to change. So I think I'll take a week of from blogging and gChatting. Will anyone notice? :) We'll see how that goes, but I am just crazily desperate to get things done that need to get done, and it is not happening.

When things make you gasp outloud and then belly laugh for 10 minutes they just really should be shared

For all those who are having a bad day, things can always get worse.

Thanks, Ron. :)

Family's a-comin'!!

My sister and her husband and their three more-than-adorable children are coming TOMORROW! They just made / finalized the plans this morning, and I AM SO EXCITED!! They will be here for a couple of days, house-hunting for their MOVE here sometime this summer. !!!!! This is all VERY recent developments, and EXTREMELY exciting to me!!!! (In case you couldn't tell by excessive use of caps, bold, and exclamation points.)

In fact, I am trying to think what would make me more excited...

...

Uh, nothing comes to mind. :)

But it has been a good day, so far, for other reasons as well:

1. I got a good night's sleep last night. Still not enough, but more than in the last week and a half, and it felt niiiiice.
2. I went to the dentist, and
   
1. It was not painful.
2. It was not super-uber expensive.
3. I only have ONE cavity! And it's really just a broken filling. And it will be MUCH cheaper to fix than I was anticipating.
   
3. Katie is playing French rap music in our lab right now.
   

HEY WORLD! I'LL BE WITH MY NIECES AND NEPHEWS TOMORROW!!!!!!

And that is all.

I am the GoogleChat poster child.

(Note: This is a repost from last week. Uh, apparently I broke Blogger the first time I posted this, but now it seems to be working ok. And, no, I am NOT capable of just letting this post RIP - I really did have to repost it. Stubborn? Just a tad. ;) )

It is snowing. And it is April. And since not all of us have facial hair and a PhotoShopping spouse, we have to rely on other things to convey how we are feeling about life. And when I say "other things" I mean, of course, my thesis-thwarting nemesis: GoogleChat, Gmail's more-addictive-than-nicotine-or-Dr-Pepper instant messaging system. Or, as we call it in the business, gChat. (And, really, if you haven't tried it yet, you should! Unless, of course, you have ANYTHING that you want to accomplish in your life, in which case you should avoid it at all costs, by which I mean disconnect yourself from the internet, sell your computer, quit your job, and go live in the mountains, where you won't have a cell phone signal, much less wifi. Or indoor plumbing. But the whole indoor plumbing thing is a small price to pay for productivity, which is why you'll want to escape the gChat habit. But I digress.)

And so I know, from my gChat habit, that I am not the only one who is a little bitter about snow in April, as evidenced by yesterday's gChat with Lauren...

Lauren: it's snowing
Lauren: which is part of my malaise
me: ah!
me: and you've been so happy about it being spring-y lately!
Lauren: I know! it totally has ruined my entire life.
Lauren: I am not melodramatic at ALL

... and by Janell, who's gChat status this morning read: "i'd like to petition a formal complaint with the weather gods."

And as further evidence that I am hooked on this gChat thing to a really rather frightening extent, and apparently feel the need to use it constantly, since it's there, here are a bunch of the recent gChat statuses (statii?) that I have seen recently, which I apparently copied and saved just to prove that my friends are really funny...?

flee, snakes, flee! - Janell
Fry sauce should be only eaten by democrats - Josh
it's 1:38. I'm violently tired and can't sleep and have to be up in 6 hours. Hooray! - Lauren
me want sleepy - Josh
International Day for Landmine Awareness and Assistance - Janell
tomorrow is TUESDAY. let's get fired up. - Lauren
The camel is a horse designed by a committee. - Janell
economagic time! - Chris
endorphins, please. to go. - Lauren
H8TING APA - Jeremy
It's the end of the semester and we know it! - Chris
Is it 7pm yet? - Danielle
sleep chatting - John
...even if you are my least favorite vegetable! - Janell
another year without Armageddon. few! - Janell

And today's favorite, from Josh:
Sometimes I'm right but when I'm not Margaret lets me know

Right-o, kids, right-o.

And, since you asked (didn't you? oh, you couldn't care less? really?! then why are you reading my blog, huh? huh? huh? HUH??), my gChat statii have recently been the following:

blogging for a minute
the email, the email, woho the email
in Kiche class
thesisizing the day long day
lunch break
in Samoan class

And let's not forget the motto / love theme / repeating refrain of my entire life:

thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis thesis

...and right now, since I KNOW you care, it is:

feeling sick right now and likely to be hyper later from eating too many peanut M&M's

...in response to which Danielle just gChatted the following to me, which I really feel sums up the joy that can come into your life as you let people know how you are feeling moment-to-moment, using the gChat status bar:

"At least you didn't just scarf down a pound of potato salad. "Hi, I'm Danielle - the Michelin Man's Wife. Lovely to meet you. Want some potato salad from HoneyBaked Ham?"

End of public service announcement.

And blog out.

On running, umbrellas, and bongo drums

So I went running last night, inspired by my friend Lauren and all her talk about endorphins. And I inadvertantly ran for a full 30 minutes. Yeah, that was NOT on purpose. I wanted to do about 20 minutes, but once you get that far from home, you, uh, have to get back home. So I ran. And this being the first time I have run in...a while...I thought I was going to die. Those last 6 blocks were KILLER.

And then I got home (without dying, but thanks for your concern) and decided to walk for a few minutes to cool down. And that's when I saw him. This guy was running along the street that intersects my street, and he paused in his run to hold onto the fence and...retch. And then he ran a few more steps and retched some more. And then he continued his run and I continued my cool down walk and a minute later I saw him stop further down the street and lean over, put his hands on his knees, and retch again.

Poor guy! I hoped, for his sake, that he was training for a marathon and this was the 17th mile of his 18-mile run for that day. That's pretty tough of him. What a guy.

BUT! The point is - I was NOT that guy! I ran, and I felt awful while running, and I didn't yack. Celebrating the small victories here, people.

And another small victory / blessing in disguise - Since I didn't leave my house today until after the torrential rain started, I did the whole umbrella thing successfully. And by "the whole umbrella thing," I mean that I used it to avoid getting wet. Go me!

And in related news, last night Matt and Josh came over to practice their musical extravaganza for my birthday party on Friday night, and Matt brought the bongo drums that they want me to play in accompaniment to their guitars. And, uh, I'll need to work on that. But you should know:

For a good time - recite silly poems, like this one by Judith Viorst, with bongo accompaniment.

I wanted small pierced earrings, gold.
You gave me slippers, grey.
My mother said that she would scold unless I wrote to say how much I like them.

Not much.

Just TRY to imagine how A-M-A-Z-I-N-G that was with bongos in the background.

Blog out.

P.S. I killed it. Last night. In my roommate's bedroom. With the toilet plunger.

Eww, gross! Wanna see??

Check out what we found in our bathroom the other day! No, seriously, check it out.

Warning: It's a bug. And if you click on the picture, it gets bigger. And grosser.

The Cost of Living

Curling iron: $13

Time to curl my hair this morning: 10 minutes

Leaving my umbrella in the car and getting rained on so the curl didn't even last the time it took to walk from my car to my office: Priceless

and while we're on the subject of celebrating the small victories...

I bawled my eyes out to my dear friend and former roommate Jamie last night, and she shared with me a little tip that has helped her in her efforts to stick to a schedule and get the things on "the list" done.

She makes the lists - the "to do" list, but breaks it up into "MUST do today" and "would be nice if it got done today," etc. And makes a schedule so she can stick to the list. I feel like I've worked on that.

BUT! The kicker is this - at the end of the day, she goes over the list and records her SUCCESSES from that day - the things she DID accomplish. And even if they weren't on any of the lists, she still wrote them down. The day can't be a total failure if you have a whole list of things you succeeded at!

And I am SO going to do this! I was thinking this weekend about how I need to stop focusing on what I am NOT getting done and pay more attention to what I AM getting done, just so I don't make myself mental. Accentuate the positive, baby! :)

So here's my "check me out with my productive self" list from yesterday:

• caught up with two of the dear friends I needed to catch up with
• gchatted with my sister in China!!
• read my scriptures
• made a key purchase that I needed to make
• printed out my masters project materials so I can hand them out to my evaluators
• contacted one evaluator
• exercised! :)
• made some progress on BOTH church assignments that I have
• did some advertising for my upcoming birthday party :)
• gchatted with Lauren :) :)
  
• wrote in my journal
• emailed a possible thesis completion schedule to my chair and got feedback on it
• went through my chair's feedback on my chapter 2 (erg)

Ok, so I DID accomplish some things yesterday. Today will be better!

Blog out.

This weekend...

...I did my dishes. And at this point, people, we are DEFINITELY celebrating the small victories.

On to the thesis!

feeling the need to communicate

My gChat status right now reads: "failing miserably in my attempts to focus my brain on that #%*@ thesis stuff" but the little box that shows your status is so small that all you can see without mousing over it is "failing miserably." Pretty much.

And I am editing a lesson plan from a workshop that I teach, and stopped typing mid-word to fix something else in the lesson plan, and when I came back to the word I had stopped mid- of, the word was "demonstration," and my sentence read, "This was a demon"

And I feel like that should mean that it's time to stop for the day.

This was a demon.

Blog out.

Ok, except for this: What if I do? Fail miserably, I mean. What if what I have developed for this Master's project really isn't good enough, or even just enough, to allow me to graduate? What do I do then? Erg.

Blog out, take 2.

early morning

So I have this great goal to go to bed before 11 and get up before 7. And last night I went to bed at 11:30, which I feel like is really practically almost success. And it is certainly progress.

So when my alarm went off at 6, I didn't get up, but I also didn't really sleep anymore after that. I dozed for 9 minutes at a time, between hitting the snooze button, and got up at 7. But it was actually kind of a nice hour. I have a window in my room that faces south, and when I am lying in bed I am facing that window, so I got to watch the sky turn colors as the sun rose - from the darkish that it was at 6 to the sunlight leaking over the mountains (ahh! now you know I live in a state with mountains! ;) ) to the almost white light of the actual dayish part of the morning. It was cool. And I discovered that if I pull the blind on that window almost all the way up, as I did last night before going to bed, I can actually see the moon from my bed in those early morning hours. THAT is really cool.

(And that reminds me of when my family went on vacation to France in 1996(?), and we bragged to our friends when we got back that we could see the Eiffel Tower from our Paris hotel. And it was true! If you went up into the loft, where my parents' bed was, and stood on a table, and leeaanneed out the skylight, you could TOTALLY see the Eiffel Tower. Well, ok, the very tip of the Eiffel Tower. But still!)

But seeing the moon was cool, and I think I want to go to bed that early, or earlier, and continue to wake up that early because the early morning light was refreshing, and seeing the moon was peaceful, and not feeling like I wanted to DIE of fatigue when I woke up was a bonus. :)

But that almost-awake state is weird sometimes. This time I "dreamt" that two of my guy friends (one at a time) were in my room, sitting on my bed, talking to me. Uh, yeah, that's never happened in real life, so that was weird. And then this poem that my mom and I made up about my junior high band teacher kept running through my head. (I didn't practice my trumpet, so I felt like he was "mean.") Where did THAT come from?!

But my feet were cozy because of my (beloved) (dearly beloved) electric blanket, the sun was rising, the moon was shining in my window, and I LIKED it.

A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.S.

So I'm at work, and I just wrote myself the following reminder:

"Fix LP outline from CLS PP."

And then laughed and shared it with my coworker because it was funny to me that half the words in that note (3 out of 6, yes, that is half, and yes, I did just stop to recount) were acronyms.

And my coworker laughed, too, and said, "Aren't acronyms amazing?"

And then a minute later he said: "Triple A!"

Me: confused look

Him: Aren't Acronyms Amazing.

Me: Aaa...

Both of us: bwahahahahaha

(Do ya get it, do ya get it?! When I reacted to his triple A acronym it was with a realization noise that was all A's, just like his acronym, do ya get it? Do ya? do ya? Isn't that funny?!... OK, Marge, back to work.)

I don't have time for this

For any of it. For my life.

I owe good, long phone calls to three really close friends, and visits to a couple more.

I need to wash my sheets, and the kitchen towels.

I need to put in enough hours at work to earn next month's rent AND to get things ready so that when I leave this campus in May my replacement doesn't curse me for not preparing her and our office records well enough.

I need to Drain-o my shower and wash the bathmats. I need to do my dishes.

I need to call my mom back about my birthday dinner. I need to plan my party, make a flyer, send it out. I need to plan the menu and make sure I have enough help to make it all.

I need to find a job. And housing. In another state.

I need to be done with my thesis - written, defended, revised, published - in time to go to CA in May when my sister's 4th baby is born.

I don't have time to breathe.

Apparently I have nothing to say today

So singing in the bathroom has been a recurring theme in my life lately.

• I sang in my little teeny-tiny bathroom the other day.
• I heard a girl singing in one of the hugely cavernous bathrooms in our campus library.
• I sang in the shower this morning while I blasted "Wicked" from the stereo in the dining room.

And yes, three occurrences totally qualifies it as a recurring theme. Just like when I cook something that requires more than three ingredients it qualifies as "complicated" and I get a medal. Apparently three is the magic number in my life. And 9. And 27. Like when I'm exaggerating I'll usually say "9 million" or "27 million." As in, "There were 27 million people in line for Divine Comedy tickets yesterday morning." Or "Why is it that when I know 9 million people in this town who play volleyball I could only get FIVE together to play last night?"

But I digress.

Why do we sing in the bathroom?

Here are the reasons I came up with:

1. We think we are alone.
2. The acoustics make it sound cool.

I hereby officially propose that we all burst into song in public as well as in private.

Ya know, like in musicals. Or Bollywood movies. (Yes, I wrote this in Hindi class.) If you feel a song coming on, just signal to the maestro or DJ or dude-walking-by-with-the-stereo-built-into -his-backpack (no, really, I've seen him more than once on campus. But not lately.) and BRING IT ON! Musicals and Bollywood movies would be...weird...if the characters waited until they were alone in the bathroom to sing. Especially if they waited until they were alone in my bathroom. It's so small that you can't be anything but alone in it, but then, see, the film crew wouldn't fit, and a musical number behind a closed or partially open (it only ever opens partially--the toilet is in the way) door would be...awkward. Physically and emotionally. And weird. And wouldn't sell movies. Plus, the tap dancing along to your song would be hard in my bathroom. Limited space and all.

I hereby officially state that not all bathrooms are conducive to singing in the bathroom.

Whew. Now it's official. I feel so much better.

One of these things is not like the others - thank goodness!

I just spent about an hour and a half, while also observing a second-semester Tahitian class, attempting to compose a post about fear and adulthood and my current attempts to enter one while leaving the other behind. (I'll leave it to you to decide what I want to do with what.)

I struggled with word choice, paragraph order, and the "main idea" that I wanted to convey. I rewrote the title, rambled in search of a "main idea," lost it, came back to it, changed it, deleted the whole first section...and then it hit me - I wasn't enjoying it! So I gave up.

Now lest you think that I am just a big, selfish, self-serving, instant pleasure-seeking, whining quitter, let me 'splain.

Right now in my life, writing is not relaxing for me. I am, in case you haven't noticed, trying to write my thesis. Nay, let us be positive and confident, even in our complaining. (Let us speak in the third person.) (Let us also use the word "nay" more often.) As our good friend Yoda would say, "Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'"

I AM writing my thesis.

So, like the woman said, I am, in case you haven't noticed, in the process of writing my thesis. And that means doing all of this...

"I struggled with word choice, paragraph order, and the "main idea" that I wanted to convey. I rewrote the title, rambled in search of a "main idea," lost it, came back to it, changed it, deleted the whole first section..."

...all day every day. Or at least, that's what I'm supposed to be doing all day every day. And today, it was kind of frustrating. So then what do I do to relax? I write.

NO! I WRONG!

Don't do, to relax, the same thing that you're supposed to do all day that makes you stressed out! DO. SOMETHING. DIFFERENT. I really thought I learned this lesson a while ago, but apparently I still gots me some larnin' to do, folks.

So the firm unswerving policy of today is that this blog will not be used to post about anything that requires any amount of thought to write about. I will not edit blog posts (except for spelling, because I am just that OCD and 'perfectionalistic,' as Heather said), I will not meditate deeply for hours on end about an appropriate topic about which to post, which will allow me to sound clever and intelligent and deep and inspire lots of people to both change the world and be my new best friend. I will just post. I will just vent. I will just express whatever is in there that I can't write in academic-ese but that NEEDS TO BE SAID.

But right now, I will just go eat some food and then I will just go play some volleyball, which, you may notice, is nothing like writing a thesis. In fact, I can't think of one similar thing between writing a thesis and playing volleyball. Phew!

Ode to my one grey hair

Why are you there?

And more specifically, why are you there? Right in front, and right on my part? And why do you insist on being short enough not to be pulled back into my ponytail?

And CURLY?? Where did that come from? Why are you curly? None of the rest of my hairs feel the need to do that, even when I put the heat on. Literally. Why are you so curly that you won't even LAY FLAT AND HIDDEN? Oh, no, not you, you nasty grey hair you. You have to stick out and tweak away from my head and be REALLY OBVIOUS. And you're too short to pull out with my fingers - I can't get a good grip on you. And then when I'm around tweezers you hide.

Why all these efforts at self-preservation?

erg

What's with my guilt, anyway?!

Ok, so on my way into the library just now I passed many campaigners for the student gov't election. The primaries ended the other day, now we're in the final election. And one campaigner, sporting arm bands and lapel pins in the color of his chosen campaign, said to me, "Have you voted yet?"

To which I responded, firmly, as I continued on my way into the library, "No. And I don't plan to. Thanks, though. And good luck to you."

And he looked slightly abashed and said, "That's ok."

And I entered the library, feeling like a complete jerk.

WHY?! What's WITH that?!?

Was I too rude?? Did I say "no" too firmly?? Did I just diminish or destroy the entire purpose of his life??? I certainly hope not! I may have said no firmly, but I wanted that to be the end of his attempt to get me to vote. I didn't want to give him any excuse to attempt to continue the conversation. Oh wait - it wasn't a conversation! He just asked me a leading question as I went to work on my thesis. And I even resisted the temptation to stop and burden him with "my political statement on the (in)effectiveness of said student government" - I just said no and moved on. C'mon, give me some credit here, people!

...

Ok, fine, so...sorry, guy. Sorry if I hurt your feelings, even though the student gov't for which you are campaigning hasn't done anything that has significantly affected my life in all my years at this school. Sorry if I shattered your warm, fuzzy feeling that all students here care about the student gov't elections. Sorry that I am an apathetic leech who sucks everything she can out of this school but doesn't give anything back in the "voting for student gov't" category. I may seem like an uncaring leech, guy, but I give in lots of other ways...

no, really, I am a contributing member of this campus community...

really... I do...stuff...that, uh, matters...

OK, I'm sorry SORRY SORRY ALREADY!

It's just this guilt thing. *sigh* Say no and move on, Margaret, say no and move on.

P.S. Did you ever notice that "sorry" is one of those words that looks really weird when you write it a bunch of times in a row?

What will they think of next?!

I have been on this campus for several years, and so have witnessed several years worth of student government elections.

Disclaimer: This will not be a treatise on university student government. If you would like my political statement on the (in)effectiveness of said student government, feel free to email me. The thing I most remember is that one year they managed to shut down a really funny on-campus improv group. Go team! Oh, wait...

(Later that year another on-campus comedy troupe did a Lord of the Rings spoof in which the student gov't was compared to the Ents, the difference being that after they took a really long time to talk about things and not say much, the Ents actually ACCOMPLISHED THINGS.)

But I really want to talk about the campaigning this year. It was the most extreme that I have ever seen, and I feel like it was an interesting study in human nature.

And who started the craziness, I wonder? Which team decided first to host a little dance party outside one corner of the student center? (Did the types of music they chose to play send a message about their campaign goals?? I TOTALLY should have listened more carefully to those lyrics!) Did the other teams get together each night and say, "Oh my gosh, did you see what _____ did? We TOTALLY need to do something BIGGER AND BETTER or they'll get all the attention and all the votes!"

One team had a big huge banner, another had handheld signs to be held overhead, another had people walking around wearing spray-painted cardboard boxes. I saw students with armbands the color of the spray-painted boxes. One day all the people campaigning for a given team wore dress shirts and ties - even the girls. People wore shirts the colors of the various campaigns. And today - the last day of the voting, I felt like the campaign teams all went all out - shouting the names of their candidates more than on previous days, playing music and dancing, and to top it off - twin violin-playing boys dressed in suits, standing on a big make-shift stage, playing jigs and chanting election information.

WOW.

Did they feel like they had to each be really unique in their, in their what? advertizing? Oh, campaigning would be the word I want. Did that one team feel like they couldn't use handheld placards because the other team had used handheld placards? Well, I guess THAT worked - I now know the candidates not by their platforms, but by their campaigning techniques.

And I think they all HAD platforms...