The Salty Blog

Our President-Elect and Vice President-Elect launched a new website last week, Change.gov.

I don’t know if you ever checked out WhiteHouse.gov… but, um, this one’s kinda different.

Change.gov continues the unprecedented social outreach of the Obama/Biden campaign. It includes a blog, a cell or e-mail sign-up, video discussions and even a “Share Your Vision” section…

They’ve coined it “Open Government”:

It’s your America. Share your ideas. The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. Share your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country.

Now really, after all that…. does Obama really have to give up his BlackBerry??

It’s November and we’re hosting Thanksgiving. As Hedman tradition goes, we’ve put off the home improvements for a year and now we’re on a home-improvement binge before the big day!

What that looks like this year:

1) Putting the upstairs bathroom back together again, new walls, new plumbing, new tile, new tub/sink/toilet, new colors! Very exciting, and photos will come soon.

2) Painting the last of the walls that never got painted. That includes the fireplace room, which is now a cream almost-hay color, and one long stretch of dark green down our hallway (see Flickr photos to the right).

3) Starting to tear out the ugly green carpet. The previous homeowners threw in some stairway carpet in an attempt to make the house more sell-able. After trying to make $200 worth of paint colors look right, we concluded that the carpet is just bad. The upstairs hallway will be done in wood before Turkey, and the full set of stairs will follow.

3) Sewing. Huh? Did I say sewing? Yep, that’s right folks… 8th grade patchwork pillow-making served me well. I made two table-runners, six placemats with the leftover material, and finished pillows that had been started long ago. You’ll see from the photo that my table-runners are ready for Thanksgiving on one side and Christmas on the other!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

The Obama campaign paid about $4 million for 30 minutes of television fame last night. I’m not entirely sure it was used correctly, but I’m a person who has been paying attention. I was a little bored right from the start. I would have liked something crazy and new, something indicative of this exciting moment in our American lives. I suppose it was good for the average viewer who needed a summary of anything they may have missed in the last few months.

The name-dropping was impressive. You’ve got your big politicians, your CEO of Google, and your pity-stories that just happen to come out of swing states.

I almost wish the Obama campaign hadn’t done the whole infomercial thing because he would have won on equal ground anyway.

What would you do if you had the nation’s attention for 30 whole minutes? I thought about this for a while and decided I would dedicate the time to pet adoption and shelter/rescue/rehab operations.

Sitting in Heathrow International Airport on a Sunday morning, looking around at the melting pot of cultures and languages. Since the age of 15 when I left for a year in Austria, this is exactly where I wanted to be in life.

Following a week and a half of hectic work and minimal sleep, I boarded a plane to Toronto on Wednesday morning. After a day of meetings with our client, my colleague and I then hopped a plane for two days of brainstorm sessions with our London office. Thankfully we were able to get out and explore the city on Saturday, because I’d never been to London outside of Heathrow. What a great city!

I hope this job and career continue to send me around the world, exposing me to new ways of doing things, new languages and new human connections!

The DOWN SIDE is that I’m missing Gary’s first-ever marathon today! I feel horrible. I didn’t help make him a pasta dinner, I didn’t hand him bottles of water for the last few days, and I won’t be there today to ease the driving stress or cheer him on. In fact, I’ll arrive just after he completes the run. So please join me in cheering him on from all parts of the globe this morning! His biggest fan will be sitting on BA Flight 213.

If you had five minutes to chat with your pet, what would you say or ask?

Please head on over to ColdNosePhoto.com and share your thoughts!

The little things make my new work life a happier one. Real honest-to-goodness Green Mountain Coffee at my fingertips is one of them. Being able to get whatever damn smartphone plan I want is another. But what really makes me happy is that sarcasm and bluntness are both encouraged and rewarded.

I’m a confident and opinionated person. I say what I feel, for better or for worse, and thanks to my last job, I finally caught on to that “worse” part. For a “creative agency”, I certainly felt dulled, quieted, squashed.

Happy to now be working with an energetic and creative team that has fun and speaks out. Of course no company is perfect, but I definitely belong here right now.

I’m guilty of being one of the hundreds of thousands of first-time politics fans, but the truth is… we’ve had a hell of an eight years to deal with here and I’m now eight years older. I’ve never been more into the speeches, the debates, NPR discussions and Saturday Night Live skits.

Okay, I hate Saturday Night Live.

But I donated $20 this week for an Obama t-shirt on MoveOn.org - it’s really only a $12 requirement. I don’t even care that it has a 4 to 6 week shipping time (I still wear my Team Aniston t-shirt with pride).

If McCain pulls this one off, I’ll be making millions off my blog about how I moved to Canada because of American politics.

As a Cape Codder, who’s parents worked for the electric company, I’ve always jumped with excitement for an oncoming hurricane. I’ve flown kites during Gloria, watched the trees on “Timber Lane” topple down like dominoes during Bob, and cozied up at home with my grandmother while my folks earned overtime pay.

I know this Hanna-Ike-Josephine lineup doesn’t look good to someone in New Orleans… and I recognize my naivite there… but I can’t help but think BRING IT ON, MOTHER NATURE :-)

It’s a good sign that my posting has drifted off, right? I’m busy and loving my new job, and I’m active living life on the weekends! There has been a lot to catch up on…

We spent a gorgeous weekend in Dorset, Vermont with the Hedmans, including some sidewalk sale shopping, a hike and a hilly bike ride. The next weekend was filled with a Patriots pre-season game (thanks Em!) and the excitement of seeing cousin Kate while she was home from vet school. We also managed to get out to Sandy Neck with Kim & Kim for a beautiful lagoon-like cruise in the shallow waters at low-tide.

In keeping with tradition, this past Labor Day weekend was our annual Sarah’s Birthday Alternative Triathalon! Eight of us hiked almost 12 miles across the Monroe Skyline in Vermont - over the summits of Mad River Glen, Sugarbush and more. We camped out in the Castlerock hut at Sugarbush. What a hysterical adventure watching Brewer on his first hike. He was so proud of his backpack, and completely overjoyed at the idea of his humans sleeping on the floor. We closed out the weekend with a bike ride - most of the group on mountain bikes, and Leslie and I off for a road ride through the cows and farmlands.

I’m truly ready for fall this year. We’ve had a full and wonderful summer.

Much more to come back to, but for now I just want to say Happy Birthday to Emily and Sarah… AND a super huge CONGRATS to Emily and Anthony on their engagement!!!!

I feel like my first post each month lately begins with “hard to believe it’s already [August]!”

We’re having a great few weeks of guests coming and going, and boating season really is just now upon us (when the dock is less crowded and the fish are more hungry). Leslie joined us this weekend as Dave rode the Pan Mass Challenge - congrats Dave! And newlyweds BG and Sam are arriving for the weekend ahead.

Eric, Jill and the kids were also here with friends for the last week - this time renting a house out in Eastham. Always fun to get some beach time with our favorite little ones!

Meanwhile, we’re happy cheering for Jason Bay and the Red Sox (my favorite sign was “Bay being Bay”, so kudos to that guy if he finds this blog), and I still don’t know who won the Tour de France because we have a few stages left on the DVR. Speaking of biking, we are running what is maybe my fifth sixth seventh? Falmouth Road Race this coming weekend. I think I’ll always register for it, despite the fact that it’s consistently the hottest, most humid day of the year, but I’ve definitely turned my sights more on biking for the future. I’m looking forward to doing a century (100 miles) and a multi-day tour in the near future, and thankfully our circle of biking friends keeps growing! My deepest thanks for introducing me to the sport will always go to Nathan, who passed away a year ago this month.

Lastly, I’d just like to send a shout-out to my Mom & Dad (and Rigley) after another hard-working week as head-honchos for the Barnstable County Fair! They’re already getting ready to head back out on the RV trail again, not to mention the fact that they’ve put a rush on me getting my “stuff” out of the house before rennovations, eek.