Fridays, Lobbying, Crazies...

No matter how hard I try, I can't leave work early on Fridays. Any other day of the week I can slip out 20 minutes, 40 minutes and hour early to compensate staying late for meetings on other days. But not Fridays - there's always a message that needs to go out, something that needs to be written, the leftovers pile up and suddenly need to be done. And I never get out early. Today was no exception though I was absolutely exhausted and wanted to get out early, it didn't happen.

After deciding to stay in tonight (see "being exhausted" above), I cleaned up the apartment for Megan and Jarrett's visit tomorrow, ran up to Target to get some things and then Lara and I decided to look for Friday. She has put up another round of posters though the calls have tapered off and the cat trap hasn't resulted in a single cat - even with tuna and other delicious food out for him. So we took various blocks, calling his name and the "here kitty kitty." I'm super bummed over the siting of the injured cat and I can only hope that Friday is safely with someone. Though I wish they would turn him in so that he can come home. I miss him.

Yesterday was our Lobby Day at the Law Center. We piled into the car at 7:30 a.m. and headed down to Olympia. Our schedule was pretty full - we were going to hear the Domestic Partnership bill in committee in both the House and the Senate. It was pure luck that we were there when one of the three bills we're working on and supporting this session was dropping that day. Of course, we should have expected it, but the Senate hearing chamber was filled with crazy antis. They were trying to give us stickers that were anti-domestic partnership, anti everything. There were like 200 hundred people there. And their testimony was crazy and irrational. We had firefighters wanting to insure benefits for their partners should they be killed in the line of duty and these people were talking about judgement day.

We left the hearings and a senator stopped by who was super supportive of all of our bills. She's always been super supportive of domestic partnerships because she married a Filipino man and she said, "I heard all the same stories. If God wanted people from different ethnic backgrounds to get married he wouldn't have made them different colors.... bi racial marriage will destroy the fabric of society... blah blah blah." I went with a volunteer to visit our reps and senators in our district. One of them needs to go (and I've thought that all the times I've been down to lobby), one was in committee meetings and the last one we saw was new, full of energy and obviously hasn't been beaten down by the system.

All and all it was a great experience and I was glad to be there - even with all the crazies. They reminded me that I'm on the side of the issues where I belong.