• As of November 14, Evil Dad and I have lived in Colorado for 10 years. This is the place we’ve lived in the longest since we were first married. Double digits. Damn, it’s been a long time. The people are like everywhere else – some are good, some are epis and some are just plain mean and evil – but the land is magical. Living here has given us the second place we’d like to retire (besides Asheville, NC); northern New Mexico. It’s also given us the second big event that happened this week…
• School Girl’s finalization hearing happened 7 years ago Sunday. That day was one of the longest days we had up to that point; first a big luncheon celebrating “National Adoption Month” (oddly, we were only one of two families who finalized that day), then a death-defying trip back to the house to change School Girl into her “fancy Judge-meeting clothes” and back to the courthouse for our hearing. School Girl even tried to say something to the judge. That even made the judge laugh. It was a weird day, and not nearly as big a deal for us as our placement day (both for good and for bad), but we were finally a family in the eyes of our state and (more importantly) our agency. That was also the turning point for one of my latest rounds with depression, but you don’t want to hear about that.

We don’t really celebrate either “anniversary”. Certainly not our finalization day, for reasons that are obvious if you know our family. But to have just slipped my mind completely…

Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. But I feel as though it should mean something.

And today, none other than Ari Armstrong says that Sen. Renfroe should resign for the good of the Republican Party:

In a just world, State Senator Scott Renfroe’s constituents would rise up and throw the bum out of office. If he had a lick of sense, he would resign. Of course, if he had a lick of sense, he wouldn’t have called homosexuality an abomination and a sin comparable to murder on the Senate floor in a blatant attack on church-state boundaries.

I can’t believe I actually agree with him on something, but he’s right. Absolutely right, even if it’s not for the same reasons that I think he should resign.

As usual, the Colorado GOP have been publicly silent over Sen. Renfroe’s performance. The Human Resource Council, on the other hand, has not.

In slightly happier LGBT news, the city of Aurora, CO has voted to extend insurance coverage to same-sex partners of city employees this past Monday evening, by a vote of 7-3. That is just unimaginably huge.

Last night, the US elected Senator Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. Despite what feels like a wicked cold kicking my arse, I stayed up to hear both his acceptance speech and McCain’s concession speech. Rather than stooping to certain people’s levels, let me just say the contrast couldn’t have been starker. It had nothing to do with who won and/or who lost. It absolutely reflected what sort of person each man has shown himself to be. One was graceful, elegant, dignified and truly (IMO) tried to reach across every barrier in our country. The other was the single most passive-aggressive speech I’ve ever personally witnessed. I’ll let you decide which is which.

And here in Colorado, the news was…mixed. US Congressional District CO-02 now has the first openly gay Representative in our state’s history. Jared Polis ran a clean campaign from beginning to end. Most impressively, neither side mentioned Polis’ sexual orientation; the attack ads focused on 1) the fact that he’s a successful businessman who is a millionaire and 2) his support for charter-public school partnerships. Best of all, during his acceptance speech he introduced his partner by name and brought him up on stage. I cried like a baby.

There were a number of ballot initiatives and amendments this year; we had the longest ballot in the US, with 18 different issues on which to vote. The one I’ve been following the closest, Amendment 48 (the one that would have defined a zygote as a fully functional human being in a court of law), went down in an incredibly spectacular manner. Not just in flames, but with a rocket burying it in the damn ground. The other ones I’ve been watching, sad to say, were also defeated; Amendment 58, which would have ended state subsidies to Big Oil/Gas companies for the privilege of taking Colorado oil from our lands, and Amendment 51, which would have provided money for services for the developmentally disabled.

I also hear that in CA, Proposition 8 passed. Just shows how far we have to go in this country. This won’t be the end of the marriage debate, nor should it be.

We all have a lot of work to do in the years ahead. The Worst President Ever has left our country in a gigantic fscking hole. The hole is most likely bigger than any one person can fill. But, at least we have a start. A President-elect with a functional cerebral cortex, a wee glimmer of hope.

And for those of us who check off “other” when they fill in their race, we can tell our children that yes, they too can be President someday.

UPDATE: I cannot believe I didn’t mention this before. D’oh! Our newest US Senator from Colorado is…Mark Udall. Oh, Senator Udall has such a nice ring to it. His acceptance speech last night was pretty great as well – it was incredible to see how excited and happy his family was, especially his wife. Very cool.

outnumber Republicans in Colorado. For the first time in many, many years.

As of Saturday, Colorado voter registration rolls showed 876,498 active Democrats, 870,435 active Republicans and 789,200 active unaffiliated voters, according to the secretary of state’s office. Despite the lead among active voters, Republicans still maintain a slight advantage over Democrats in registration numbers when inactive voters are included into the tally. When both inactive and active voters are combined, Republicans have nearly 13,000 more voters, with 1,062,773 people registered, compared to the 1,049,912 registered as Democrat. The total number of active and inactive unaffiliated voters is 1,069,634.

Now, at least in our area and the Springs (the places in CO I know best), “Republican” might be a bit of a misnomer. I think the correct designation for many Republicans here would be Libertarian at best. There is also some question as to whether “inactive” voters will be allowed to vote this year at all (thank YOU, Mike Coffman). Plus the independent/unaffiliated voters are the biggest group of all, if you count both active and inactive registered voters.

This does not in any way change my mood this morning. Especially when I saw this piece of news – McCain is saying buh-bye to the idea of winning Colorado. Ah, if only he had given up last week, before the dozen robo-calls we received in two days. Including one which, amusingly, thanked us for being “loyal Republican voters” and invited us to Sarah Palin’s rally in Das Springs yesterday morning.

UPDATE: Holy shit! Even the Guardian is writing about this. Amazing.

As I said yesterday, School Girl was way too excited about taking pictures. She was immediately attracted to the “coup-in” style of gravesite, as they were adorned with flowers, pinwheels and various other odd-and-assorted lovelies:

There are, in fact, 7 more pictures just like this one; which I thought came out pretty well, considering. My favorite, save for the Giant Ball of Sun on its shoulder, is this one:

Not long after that, we headed over to the older section of the cemetery. The first one we came to was the one I had set out to see:

Meet Augusta Tabor. The long-suffering, ever frugal wife of Horace Tabor, she went through some unimaginable hardships (with an infant in tow, no less) to get to the mining fields of Denver, and later, Leadville. Most people are familiar with the story and what happened next, so I’ll leave it at that. Except to say that I’ve got a bit of a soft spot in my heart for Augusta, for personal reasons…

There were a lot of other stones we took pictures of, too:

These were kind of interesting. I had heard and seen pictures of the Woodmen of the World markers, but had never actually seen any myself. In fact, it took me a while to realize what it was. There are, conservatively speaking, at least a couple dozen of these stones at various places in the cemetery; most of them are in the older sections, but not all.

There was the Baker Horse;

another building, possibly either a crematory (the original was closed up in the mid-1970s) or mausoleum (I see what looks to be a stack in the back, so I’m not sure) apparently a second office/records building and holding tomb;

and a couple that I took…just because.

By this time, School Girl was playing out, so we had to go. Honestly, it’s easier for me just to go when she’s off at school (which I won’t be able to do for much longer), but it’s more fun with her. She seems to enjoy it, so we’ll go for as long as she does.