Caribou Barbie or "Drill, baby, drill!" (updated)

The women recently referred to as "Moose Milf" in a Seattle newspaper cartoon made it on stage! The Vice Presidential debate is over just now, but unfortunately it was not as entertaining as Obama and McCain last week.

Part of the reason is, that Joe Biden doesn't have the rhetoric ability Obama has to talk about senate related issues without sounding boring. Another huge part is, that Sarah Palin got about 10 hours of training before the debate and as a consequence did not answer the questions. Instead she chose to emphasise (in almost every single answer), how well she has done in ALASKA. No offense barbie - but Alaska is not all of America quite yet.

I won't dwell on the issue further, but will release you with a collection of my favorite Palin quotes from the debate:

“Hey, can I call you Joe?”

“How long have I been in this? Like five weeks?”
“I have a very diverse family”
“we need flexibility in 'no child left behind'”
“you third-graders out there get extra credit for watching this debate”

For a nice "summary" of the debate, see below. Everyone who has seen the debate will LOVE this!

SSA and SAM

As of tomorrow, I will finally be a SOMEBODY, after being a NOBODY for more than a month now.

how come my position changes? I applied for a Social Security Number today. This one number is your legitimizaiton for everything in this country. You may, as of the date of issueing, be only a number in the system, BUT... this number makes you part of the system. This number enables you to take a job, to deal with banks and other officials and businesses on a decent basis.

After completing another trail through American bureaucracy, it was time for some Art.

Every first Thursday of the month, Seattle has the "First Thursday Art Walk". Galleries on Pioneer Squeer open up, there is a little art market AND, the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) has free admission. So I went! ("and if I had a hammer...")

The hammering man of the Seattle Art Museum

Although their European/Asian collection is neglegible, their African and Native American collections are pretty interesting. The Contemporary American art is also very inspiring.

It is no comparison to either the large art Museums in London or New York, but it is a really nice art museum. I will have to come back with more time to get into the Native American collection.

Mt. Baker, home of the Grizzly

On Sunday I had another chance to witness Washington's beautiful landscape. After almost three hours of driving, we arrived at Mount Baker to hike the Lake Ann trail that features a beautiful reflection lake at the end.

But first we had to cross bear country!

We managed to keep our legs from shaking and marched steadily through the beautiful hidden valley of lingering death through bear claws.

At the lake we hasted to kill all our food so it wouldn't attract the bears and jumped and screamed, as we had heard this would scare of the furry creatures.

By the time we got back, close to the car, we heard a deep growling through the forest only to discover that it had been quite a while since we had food and that our stomaches were grumbling.

We had successfully managed not to be killed by any bears. In fact, we had not seen any wildlife at all. Too bad!