As most of you have already heard, my laptop was stolen last weekend at our house party. I was really distraught at first, but I am coming to terms with the fact that my years of photos and documents are gone.

We had a CouchSurfing party at our house in Berkeley and somehow a man, who is not a CouchSurfer, was able to sneak past our vigilant security, which consisted of whoever  was out on the porch smoking at the moment, and he found my laptop which was hidden in my dresser drawer.

We called the police the next morning when we found out it was missing and Officer O’Donnell came out to our house to have a look around. He asked some questions and then left at which point I just assumed nothing would be done because it’s impossible to track a laptop with no lojak. We were surprised the next morning when he returned with a page of mugshots for us to look at. Jim and I weren’t able to identify any of the men from the photos, but our friend Kelly was able positively identify one of the men because her dog had been attacking him all night, which made her take special notice.

Officer O’Donnell told us that the man she had identified was seen on Saturday stealing a laptop from a window and a witness was able to write down the license plate number as he drove away. The man is a local criminal working in the area and had just been release from jail the month before.

This is the second time that we have had somebody attempt or successfully steal items from us at our house. The week before two people had tried to break into Jim’s truck and steal the GPS unit that I had forgotten to remove from the dash. Luckily our concerned neighbor called the police and, while the crooks were not apprehended, they were unsuccessful in breaking in.

These events have definitely put our house on edge. The police officer who responded to the attempted break in on Jim’s truck told us that our neighborhood has the highest rate of theft in the entire Bay area. It has a lot to do with the fact that we practically live on UC Berkeley campus and all the housing around us is college housing. It makes it easy for criminals to find victims from the college students.

We are taking extra precautions in protecting our property. We are installing motion detectors around the house and special heavy duty combination locks on the doors. Hopefully this will prevent any further attempts on stealing our things.

On a good note, my renters insurance is covering the cost to repolace my laptop! I’m excited that I am getting a Mac Book Pro for myself this Christmas. I have a friend who works at Apple and he is going to let me use his discount and I can’t wait!

Well, the majority of the polls are closed and Barack Obama has been named the President Elect. Wow! I am so excited to be apart of such an amazing chapter in our history! The United States of America has elected its first black president.

To say that Obama was elected just because of his race would be unfair and racist. I don’t care what people say, if you vote for a person just because of his or her gender/ race that is descrimination and it goes against every civil liberty that this country has fought for!

The truth is that Obama is an amazing orator. His ability to excite large crowds of people is a large contributor to his winning campaign. When his victory was announced on the news, our neighborhood went insane. Our house in Berkeley is located on a row of fraternity and sorority houses from UC Berkeley. There were students crowding into the streets cheering. We even had the good fortune of watching a group of female students running down the streets topless. I think the guys in our house were especially appreciative of that kind of celebrating.

Alaskans stuck to their guns Tuesday night and the state came out republican, as always. Surprisingly it looks like they have re-elected Senator Ted Stevens who, according to the Anchorage Daily News, was convicted on seven felony charges a week ago. As of this morning the ADN reported that there are still 40,000 absentee ballots out, but it looks as if Stevens is going to be the first senator re-elected after being found guilty of criminal charges.

Historically Ted Stevens has been a driving force in the development of Alaska. He has been able to use his position in the senate to ear mark millions of dollars for Alaskan projects, which most Alaskans are in favor for. Stevens’ re-election is a testament to the localism that is abundant in Alaska. Alaskans have a large distrust of the “Outside” and especially of national politicians who don’t understand the idiosyncrasies of Alaskan life. As a people who play hard in the summer during the 24 hour days and struggle to survive the winters during the 24 hour nights, we don’t appreciate being told what to do and would rather reinvent the wheel than use an idea from any of those “lower 48ers”. So I guess it’s not such a big surprise that Uncle Ted is back! It would have made a much larger impact on the election if he had been convicted in Alaska rather than by a jury in Washington DC. We just don’t trust those folks!

I am deeply saddened that Proposition 8 passed in California. It feels like a step backward in civil liberties everywhere. As the largest state in the union, California has the ability to influence the way the entire country defines equal rights.

Proposition 8 was the measure to change the California State Constitution to state that only a marriage between a man and a woman would be recognized by the state of California. First of all, I don’t understand that in a time of economic and education crisis politicians were so concerned about putting this on the ballot. Millions of dollars were spent on both sides and Prop 8 passed 52% to 48%.

Second of all, I don’t understand how a state that overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama with 61% of the vote could so openly disregard the constitutional right of an entire population! I would further argue that defining marriage in the state’s consitution is an obvious lack of seperation between church and state. Either marriage is a religious organization in which it would be up to each church to decide who it will marry. Or marriage is a government organization in which every citizen should have equal rights to participate and receive whatever benefits from that union. You can’t have it both ways!

I know that gay citizens will eventual have equal rights, it’s just a matter of fighting the good fight and breaking down these ridiculous barriers.

Today is the big day that we change the course of our country’s government. Somehow I managed to screw it up and not get my absentee ballot in time to vote in Alaska. Luckily, our current delegate system makes that okay because no matter which way I would have voted, the outcome for Alaska would be the same. It’s a notoriously conservative state.

It’s a bit disconcerting to see the popular vote not represented by the Electoral College. CNN is reporting that both candidates have over 21 million votes, yet Obama has 199 electoral votes versus McCain’s 78 electoral votes. So no matter who you want to win, it seems a bit odd that the majority of Americans are not represented by the Electoral College. Every election season people bitch about this inconsistency in our system, yet it never seems to get corrected.

It’s also a bit more socially acceptable at the CouchSurfing house since almost every person here is registered to vote in another state or comes from a foreign country. Ben and Triple are the only two CSers registered to vote in California and Laura is the only person I know who had herself together enough to get her absentee ballot in on time.

It makes me wonder what the statistics are for American CouchSurfers who vote regularly. Or CouchSurfers at all for that matter. I don’t feel that CouchSurfers are a particularly political crowd of people in general. I think of CouchSurfers as individuals who prefer action to rhetoric and probably have such a 40,000 foot level view of world politics that perhaps local, or even national, politics just don’t show up on their radar.

At the moment we are all hunkered down in the Berkeley house monitoring the election coverage while we wait for dinner. Once dinner is over we plan to head into San Francisco and show our patriotism the San Fran way, with a party! I’m sure the city is all abuzz tonight with the coverage and, of course, most of the venues include dancing and other activities. So no matter who wins tonight, at least we’ll have some fun!