Since news and social media is so obsessed with the presidential election, if you don't know who's running on your local ballot, you can look them up here.

The League of Woman Voters also sends every candidate in every state and federal race a questionnaire to get a summary of their opinions.

It looks like for our ballot it's not as useful, because the race was either decided in the Democratic party primary or they never answered. But it allows you to do a little research and at least not be the person who votes based on someone's last name.

After spending all yesterday morning cleaning up even more of the Halloween party (this time taking down and untangling the lights) (e:terry) and I went for a bike ride. We came across the Campus Wheelworks "Dominator" cyclocross race in Delaware park, by Rumsey woods.

For some reason I always thought they were tiny events but there were at least 100 people there for a giant party. Beer chugging on bikes, two riders running up the stairs with a tandem etc. The course was about a mile long and the whole race was over 4 miles.

I'll have to check it out earlier next year.

(e:mike) and (e:libertad) had us over for a delicious vegetarian dinner of pasta fagoii and black bean burgers (thanks guys), and to watch some dumb TV movies.

I got to take home this foxy mask.

I had a Couchsurfing.org profile from a long time ago but I only just recently filled it out. I did a few weeks ago, and got a request last week for a couchsurfing on Thursday and Friday night.

So the first night we hosted a girl named Tina from Bavaria. She had sold all of her possesions, quit her job, and was traveling around North America as long as her money lasted.

It was kind of awkward at first, mostly because my German was somewhat rusty and her English was as well. We walked around Allentown, she wasn't really impressed by Allen Street. She did like Ethiopian.

We ran out of things to talk about quickly. As soon as (e:paul) and (e:terry) got back it was much easier, especially with (e:paul)'s German.

(e:paul) wanted to go out so we took her to the pink. I think it was a suitably weird experience for her.

At one point a random blond girl came up to us, telling us how sad that nobody at the bar wanted to get with her. She came up again later to ask Paul and the conversation went something like this:

Girl: Do you speak Estonian?
Paul: No, we're speaking German.
[girl speaks Estonian to them]
Girl: Can you translate something and tell her for me? I work for my father in St. Catherine's and he had me look up other companies. I read about something about the Schaefer company, it's very interesting. Tell her that.
[paul tells her that]
[girl turns to her and tells Tina in english]
Girl: Our children, are going to grow up as best friends.

As seen on a walk to Niagara Falls Boulevard.