Day 3-10 hours of data entry

Sunday morning I woke up early with Nat, Robert, and Fiona and we all had breakfast. It was nice to see people chipper in the morning compared to me and Erich, who are zombies that occasionally miss when we kiss each other goodbye.

Today I had expected canvassing all day in the cold, which I was not really looking forward to. I like to do more behind-the-scenes work, but I had come to help, so I was going to do what they told me. I skipped showering since I figured no one could smell through my coat and 3 layers of clothing and put my extra layers on in advance. I got to the office and didn't see anyone I recognized from friday night, so I headed upstairs to the room I'd waited in before. The people were polite but suggested I go wait downstairs, and I realized they'd brought me there on Friday because they didn't know else to do with me, but it was sort of their 'leader' space. I scooted back downstairs and after asking a few more people I ended up helping with data entry. Two hours later I remembered all my extra clothing (no wonder I'm so warm...) and changed, wondering if I *hadn't* dressed ahead of time, would I have ended up outside and freezing? I had called Johnny around 10, and still having not heard from him, I decided to officially defect to the office people, and kept working on data entry, pleased that I was doing something I was actually good at, rather than suffering minor anxiety attacks every time I knocked on someone's door. (Not that it takes a genius, but I'm pretty fast on a keyboard).

Around 2pm someone asked me to run an errand, which involved bringing a folder to location #1, picking up another folder, and then bringing them both to location #2. I say sure, mapquest it, and head out the door. I glanced down at the folder I'd been given, realized that it was a collection of walklists, or organized listings of doors to knock on. Fairly important since the whole point was to focus on getting people who we knew were for our candidate out to their caucus locations. This guy didn't even ask me my name and he was trusting me with this? Why? Well, that was actually pretty obvious, it was because I had a car, but still! Silently vowing not to get in an accident or at least not bleed all over the lists I made my way over to location #1. (I had to turn around a few times because mapquest had not done a very good job, but I got there intact.)

I picked up the papers and fielded a bunch of questions with 'I don't know' because I really didn't know, I was just the gal with a car. If I were them I would have been hesitant to give anything to me, but they did after verifying the person who sent me (short guy, thick glasses, poofy hair-that seemed to suffice). I tucked the papers in my bag and headed off to location #2.

This trip was not as easy; I had an alarming experience with a one-way that involved me driving onto the sidewalk for half a block, but I met my goal of not crashing and not bleeding, so score 1 for KT. Finally, on the way back, I got into an old fashioned traffic jam ( commonly known as rush hour in minneapolis) so I had a bit of time to relax, eat my apple, and shake my fist at whatever moron had parked his car in a driving lane.

Safely back at my desk I did more data entry until some guy from Illinois needed a ride home, so I gave him one and then did more data entry until about 9 pm. Apparently it all needed to be done that night, so of course my competitive streak came out and I had to try and do the most. Of course. I felt good about having actually done something useful, but my wrists were starting to ache. By the way, Johnny finally called me back around 5 pm that day. By then, of course, I had defected so I didn't really care.

So, back to Natalie and Robert's, where we chatted some more and then off to bed. The next morning I woke up and decided it was time to go home. It was readily apparent that Obama was going to win MN; Hillary had an event at a tiny college the day after Obama's that didn't even compare. It didn't really seem like she was campaigning much there, and focusing on other places. There were tons of people volunteering, which probably explained why I had to search for things to do. In fact at one point they stopped asking people to come in and just told those who called to spend an hour on their phones from home calling everyone they knew. Which is good- obviously they were feeling secure.

Anyways, I felt good about my small contribution, so I spent the morning with Natalie and Robert, made a trip to my favorite co-op and bought a nice grass-fed steak and a butt-roast to bring back for Erich, along with some other goodies like whole tumeric (it looks like orange ginger) and some hempseed bread (delicious!) for me. Also some little meat pies (sfeha) from my favorite little deli, Abu Nader Middle Eastern deli; he was unfortunately out of his homemade cheese, but he was pleased a gal from the cheese state was asking about his own.

The drive back sucked. It was slippery and one of my head lights was out, and generally stressful but I made it safely. The end!