A New Day

America spoke - we came together in numbers and voted for Barack Obama, our first African American President. I feel like a part of history.

I can't stop the tears and have to hold back the urge to randomly giggle. I do not feel cocky or boastful. I am thankful. I am hopeful. I am experiencing a huge gamut of emotion today.

We have some sour grapes in the office place today. I used to be like them voicing strong opinions about welfare and taxes - how people should "pick themselves up by their boot straps" and get a job. I was wrong. We are not all created equal and given the same opportunities. Many people living in poverty simply need to be shown the way.....we need more community organizers. We need to help the less fortunate. We need to stand up. We can make a difference. Yes we can!

As quoted below by President Obama, we need to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and serve. I know from experience that when I volunteer, I am rewarded. It's an amazing feeling. I need to do more. It humbles me.

I can't tell you how many times my foreign friends have made remarks about our politics and choice of President. "How did Bush get re-elected?" The world was certainly watching this election. I received this email from my French friend today:

Subject: Subject: thank you American citizens!!!
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 22:27:36 -0800
You did it!!!! Tonight is an amazing day for America and for the entire World… We have to say THANK YOU friends, to have massively voted for Obama and to open a new page of the History…
(I cannot believe it happened, wow!!!)
Thinking of you
Bye
Béa

I feel proud to be an American but that is not enough as stated by President Obama, "Because loving your country shouldn't just mean watching fireworks on the 4th of July; loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it. And if you do stand up, I promise you that your life will be richer, and our country will be stronger.We need your service, right now, in this moment - our moment - in history. I'm not going to tell you what your role should be; that's for you to discover. But I am going to ask you to play your part; ask you to stand up; ask you to put your foot firmly into the current of history. I am asking you to change history's course."

San Diego Volunteering:
Guide to Finding Volunteer Opportunities contains tips on exploring Volunteer San Diego's database of volunteer opportunities and how to find the program that best fits your needs and interests.
Guide to Youth Volunteer Opportunities - Volunteer San Diego has developed a comprehensive listing of volunteer and Service-Learning opportunities that have been carefully screened for youth volunteers to volunteer on their own, with their friends, or with family members.

Statewide and National Volunteer Organizations:
Hands On Network is a national organization working to build community through service and civic engagement by supporting an innovative alliance of volunteer management organizations across the United States, U.K. and other countries.
The Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network advocates community service through a partnership with the Volunteer Center National Network. Together, they reach millions of people in thousands of communities to help mobilize people and resources, which deliver solutions that address community problems.
Volunteer Centers of California is an Association that works with a statewide network of 28 Volunteer Centers, such as Volunteer San Diego and their numerous branch sites to help coordinate statewide services in strengthening volunteerism throughout California. As a central point of contact, the Volunteer Centers of California provides a site through which nonprofit organizations, governmental departments, businesses and Volunteer Centers can collaborate on state, regional and local community service initiatives.
AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs that engage more than 50,000 Americans each year in intensive service to meet critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. Since 1994, more than 250,000 men and women have served in AmeriCorps, providing needed assistance to millions of Americans. AmeriCorps provides trained, dedicated people to help nonprofits accomplish more and make more effective use of volunteers.

Send me your volunteering experience and you'll be "featured" in my blog!

Love to you all!

Nancy

Ignore Exit Polls

Like so many of you, I've waited 8 years for this day. It's hard not to be anxious and not keep your eyes glued to the exit polls. I found this great article on fivethirtyeight.com.

Why should we ignore the exit polls? Almost all of this, by the way, is lifted from Mark Bluemthnal's outstanding Exit Poll FAQ. For the long version, see over there.

1. Exit polls have a much larger intrinsic margin for error than regular polls. This is because of what are known as cluster sampling techniques. Exit polls are not conducted at all precincts, but only at some fraction thereof. Although these precincts are selected at random and are supposed to be reflective of their states as a whole, this introduces another opportunity for error to occur (say, for instance, that a particular precinct has been canvassed especially heavily by one of the campaigns). This makes the margins for error somewhere between 50-90% higher than they would be for comparable telephone surveys.

2. Exit polls have consistently overstated the Democratic share of the vote. Many of you will recall this happening in 2004, when leaked exit polls suggested that John Kerry would have a much better day than he actually had. But this phenomenon was hardly unique to 2004. In 2000, for instance, exit polls had Al Gore winning states like Alabama and Georgia (!). If you go back and watch The War Room, you'll find George Stephanopolous and James Carville gloating over exit polls showing Bill Clinton winning states like Indiana and Texas, which of course he did not win.

3. Exit polls were particularly bad in this year's primaries. They overstated Barack Obama's performance by an average of about 7 points.

4. Exit polls challenge the definition of a random sample. Although the exit polls have theoretically established procedures to collect a random sample -- essentially, having the interviewer approach every nth person who leaves the polling place -- in practice this is hard to execute at a busy polling place, particularly when the pollster may be standing many yards away from the polling place itself because of electioneering laws.

5. Democrats may be more likely to participate in exit polls. Related to items #1 and #4 above, Scott Rasmussen has found that Democrats supporters are more likely to agree to participate in exit polls, probably because they are more enthusiastic about this election.

6. Exit polls may have problems calibrating results from early voting. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, exit polls will attempt account for people who voted before election day in most (although not all) states by means of a random telephone sample of such voters. However, this requires the polling firms to guess at the ratio of early voters to regular ones, and sometimes they do not guess correctly. In Florida in 2000, for instance, there was a significant underestimation of the absentee vote, which that year was a substantially Republican vote, leading to an overestimation of Al Gore's share of the vote, and contributing to the infamous miscall of the state.

7. Exit polls may also miss late voters. By "late" voters I mean persons who come to their polling place in the last couple of hours of the day, after the exit polls are out of the field. Although there is no clear consensus about which types of voters tend to vote later rather than earlier, this adds another way in which the sample may be nonrandom, particularly in precincts with long lines or extended voting hours.

8. "Leaked" exit poll results may not be the genuine article. Sometimes, sources like Matt Drudge and Jim Geraghty have gotten their hands on the actual exit polls collected by the network pools. At other times, they may be reporting data from "first-wave" exit polls, which contain extremely small sample sizes and are not calibrated for their demographics. And at other places on the Internet (though likely not from Gergahty and Drudge, who actually have reasonably good track records), you may see numbers that are completely fabricated.

9. A high-turnout election may make demographic weighting difficult. Just as regular, telephone polls are having difficulty this cycle estimating turnout demographics -- will younger voters and minorities show up in greater numbers? -- the same challenges await exit pollsters. Remember, an exit poll is not a definitive record of what happened at the polling place; it is at best a random sampling.

10. You'll know the actual results soon enough anyway. Have patience, my friends, and consider yourselves lucky: in France, it is illegal to conduct a poll of any kind within 48 hours of the election. But exit polls are really more trouble than they're worth, at least as a predictive tool. An independent panel created by CNN in the wake of the Florida disaster in 2000 recommended that the network completely ignore exit polls when calling particular states. I suggest that you do the same.

Thank you www.fivethirtyeight.com/

Breast Cancer Facts

I am sorry that I have not been posting recently. I am either training for the walk or studying for a class I am taking.

I have reached my fundraising minimum goal of $2,200 which I am grateful for. Thank you my friends and family.

Here are some breast cancer facts - share them with your loved ones.

-Nancy



Breast cancer is the leading cancer among American women and is second only to lung cancer in cancer deaths.


One woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every three minutes and one woman will die of breast cancer every 13 minutes in the United States.


An estimated 40,460 women and 450 men will die from breast cancer in 2008.


Only 5 to 10 percent of breast cancers are due to heredity. The majority of women with breast cancer have no known significant family history or other known risk factors.


African Americans have the highest death rate from breast cancer of any racial/ethnic group in the United States.


Without a cure, 1 in 8 women in the U.S. will continue to be diagnosed with breast cancer - a devastating disease with physical, emotional, psychological and financial pain that can last a lifetime.


Without a cure, an estimated 5 million Americans will be diagnosed with breast cancer - and more than 1 million could die over the next 25 years.

This walking isn't easy....

I walked 26 miles this weekend all over Encinitas, Carlsbad and Ocean Side. I have fallen in love with North County and have found some cool shops and restaurants I want to check out. The training is now getting really hard and I have a lot of respect for the ladies in pink. Some of them in this training group are survivors, some are a lot older than I but boy they are resilient. Blisters stopping them, no way; they just stop and wrap them up and keep going. Lots' of tears are shed talking to them over breast cancer stories.

I came in last every day with another girl but that is ok. The others walk really fast and I FEEL like I'm walking fast but I'm much slower. My "partner" is 5'10" and has legs up to my waist and she walks the same speed as I. We talk politics the whole time which makes the hours go by faster. I have to keep up with these training groups, even if I'm slower. I came home both days and took Epsom salt baths and it helped with the tightness. I then studied for hours and after sitting at the table or computer my legs would scream when I stood up. This is MUCH harder than I thought it would be.

Today is a rest day. I have school tonight which is MUCH harder than I thought it would be too. After talking to these other women, I've decided not to stay in the tents. Most of them stay in hotels. I will have JL pick me up on the first day after he's off work and go home. I will then take drive myself the 2nd and 3rd day. I think I'm going to need to soak in the tub and get some rest at night.

I hope I do not come off like a whiner - it's just that I really miss my wine ;)

15 Miles!

Today was a training walk of 15 miles. I joined my new training group at 6:00am in Carlsbad and we hit the road at 6:30. There were about 20 of us . We walked all over Carlsbad to Oceanside where a lovely beach-side breakfast was waiting for us. Wish I had my camera. I'm glad I've trained in North County; I want to take JL up there to some off-beat restaurants and to a small little hotel I found right on the beach ;)

We returned back to our cars at 12:30. There were stops along the way to stretch and use the bathrooms but the majority of the time we were moving. Some slower than others, I might add. Yes, I'm a slow walker. It feels like I'm really going fast but somehow all the others are ahead. I keep telling myself that it's ok; it's not a race. Thank God I found a new friend that is the same pace as I. She's 5'10 and her legs end at my waist but we walk the same speed. She is a great girl and I think we'll be friends after the training.

Tomorrow we will do 11 miles and and I think JL is going to join me. It's so touching how so many men are doing this with their wives. These men rock! One guy I met today was in his late 60's and this is his second time participating in the 30day. He got a little teary telling how amazing the 3-day experience is. I can't wait.

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO MY JOURNEY! I'VE RAISED THE REQUIRED AMOUNT OF $2,200. I am blessed to have people in my life that are so supportive.

VP Debate

VP Debate: McCain's Big Gamble Comes Up Snake Eyes

Arianna Huffington: www.huffingtonpost.com


I watched the vice presidential debate in a ballroom at the Four Seasons hotel in Aviara, just north of San Diego, along with a couple of hundred women attending Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit -- a receptive audience, you would think, for a debate featuring a woman who might become the most powerful in the land. It was an ideologically mixed crowd, including representatives of ExxonMobil, a major sponsor of the conference.

If the reaction of the Republican women in the room is any indication, it was not a very good night for Sarah Palin. The only noises heard during the debate were groans when Palin turned her folksiness meter up to 11 (which was often), and applause when Joe Biden delivered his best moments of the night: making personal his understanding of the plight of single parents sitting around their kitchen tables, looking for help; and his impassioned pushback on Palin's endless description of John McCain as "a maverick."

The loudest ovation of the night -- at least in that ballroom (granted, not the most representative-of-America crowd) -- came when Biden said that Dick Cheney was the most dangerous VP in history.

After watching this debate, I am convinced that if the country somehow has a collective mental meltdown and elects Sarah Palin, she will be even more dangerous than Cheney. Not only does she want more power for herself than the Constitution grants -- or than Cheney took for himself -- but she is so obviously not equipped to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, it takes your breath away that McCain picked her. He claims to be putting his country first, but the debate proved beyond any doubt that he has actually chosen to put his country on the betting line and roll the dice. And they've come up snake eyes.

Friday morning, Meg Whitman, the co-chair of McCain's campaign, will be on a panel with Penny Pritzker, Obama's national finance chair, discussing the campaign. After the debate, I asked Whitman what she thought of Palin's performance. "Good enough," she said.
But good enough for what, exactly? After Thursday night, the only thing Palin proved herself good enough for is starring in her own reality show.

Watching Biden and Palin on the same stage was like watching a tennis champion walk onto Centre Court at Wimbledon only to find himself facing an over-eager amateur from the local high school. Or as Pat Mitchell told me, "Biden was taking part in a vice presidential debate; Palin was taking part in a junior high debate."

Here's how Esther Dyson put it: "It's pretty clear that Biden spent decades getting ready for this debate, learning from experience; Palin spent a couple of weeks, learning from handlers and speech coaches."

The only subject on which Palin displayed superior knowledge was when she corrected Biden on the proper delivery of "Drill, baby, drill!" Christie Hefner thought Palin's sex-tinged twist on the chant should be appropriated for a commercial. Perhaps for Viagra.

Other than that, Palin's grasp fluctuated between wafer thin and skin deep. The moment that most drove me to want to send her a book on Greek gods and heroes was her head-scratching response to the question about her Achilles heel. She apparently didn't know what that meant since she spent her allotted time listing all of her attributes as opposed to her most glaring weakness.

Ann Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andme, told me: "I was dying to hear something -- anything! -- from Palin that wasn't pre-rehearsed."

Throughout the entire 90-minute debate, Palin came across as an over-wound windup doll, sporting a pasted-on-smile expression that never varied, except when she winked. Which she did repeatedly -- and pathetically. It was the folksiest appearance since Hee-Haw went off the air.

"The home-spun homilies have to go," Martha Stewart told me. "And, oh my god, words do have ending consonants."

In the greatest disconnect of the evening, Palin repeatedly went to the Reagan well, offering up such Gipper classics as "there you go again" and that "shining city on the hill." But, really, during a week in which John McCain hopped on board Bush's $700 billion bailout, did Palin not see how incongruous it was to insist that government isn't the solution, it's the problem? And declare that all we need to get this country back on track is for the government to get out of our way? Isn't that what got us where we are today? Or had she been so busy cramming for the debate she didn't have time to read one of the so-many-she-can't-name-one newspapers she reads?
Joe Biden's only insincere moment was when he told her: "Governor, it was a pleasure to meet you."

A better exit line would have been: "Governor, it's a pleasure to think that, God willing, in 33 days, you'll be back where you belong -- shootin' moose and takin' on those big oil companies in Alaska."

My patience with Palin is waving the white flag of surrender.

Weekend Training

I joined a training team last weekend in North County and we walked 14 miles all around Solana Beach. It was challenging as it was my first 14 mile walk. I met some great people as well. Below is an email I received today describing our traiing walks for next weekend. This will be my first "back-to-back" Yum burritos!
~~~~~
Hello everyone! It's back to back time again! This weekend, we'll walk 15 miles on Saturday and 11 miles on Sunday. As a special treat, we'll have breakfast at Buccaneer Park at our halfway point on Saturday. Chuck goes all out for us with burritos, fruit, juice, coffee, you name it. And all for $7 which includes tax and tip. So PLEASE let me know right away if you are coming. I have to get a head count to Chuck by Thursday night.

Saturday: Meet me at the Ralph's grocery store just off Poinsettia in Carlsbad. To get there from I-5, take the Poinsettia exit and go west. Turn left on Avenida Encinas and then an immediate left into the shopping center. Look for me in the lot near Ralph's (there's a Starbucks there, too!) Be there at 6:30 for sign in and stretching. We'll take off at 6:45. With the miles and breakfast stop, plan for at least 6 hours so give yourself plenty of time. Correct change of $7 would be great as well.

Sunday: We'll meet at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas. To get there, take I-5 to Encinitas Boulevard and go west. Cross Highway 101 (now you're on "B" street). Continue just a short distance and take a LEFT on 3rd. Go up the hill. At top of hill, turn RIGHT on "C" street and then RIGHT into the parking lot. No planned breakfast so bring a snack for our halfway point. Plan to arrive at 6:30 for a 6:45 start. We'll be on the road for about 4.5 hours.
For both days, please be sure to have plenty of hydration, sunscreen, hat,medical kit, extra socks in a zip bag, money to buy food or water, etc.

Please RSVP for both walks and for the Saturday breakfast. Need head count by Thursday evening!

See you soon! Welcome to our new walker, Nancy, and to some new names on our mailing list from the Expo!