Kyle Whelliston, the originator of the game, apparently will not be publicly participating via Twitter this year, but some others will be. I’ve created a liveblog window to track all tweets (give or take a few that CoverItLive drops; its Twitter search engine can be a bit wonky) using the hashtags #lastman, #findthelastman, or #theknowledge.

Good luck, Knowledge Runners! And to everyone else, enjoy the game! Go Giants!

Lest you think this is odd, recall that I went to an Obama rally and a Palin rally in the last three days before the 2008 election. Heh.

Anyway, after the jump, via Storify, my archived live-tweeting of both rallies (including selected replies), with lots of photos and some videos. (Just keep scrolling, and the embedded Storify window will keep expanding as you scroll down.)

P.S. Romney’s still gonna win the nomination, y’know. Still about a 90% chance of that, I’d say, Intrade’s crazy numbers be damned. And the idea that Gingrich will win it… that’s still so implausible, I staked a dinner bet on the fact that it won’t happen.

There are a few staples that I love to buy at Costco that I save a pretty penny on. For example, I nabbed 10lbs of sugar, 50lbs of flour, 6lbs of tortilla chips, 3 lbs of coffee, 4lbs of shredded cheese and 2.5lbs of peanuts, among other things. The tab for food stuffs? $191.51. We’ll see how that jives with our grocery budget over the next few weeks.

This week, our meal plan looks like this:

Thursday: grilled cheese, tomato soup and apples
Friday: pizza and pears
Saturday: sausage, mashed potatoes and oranges
Sunday: Ethiopian lentil stew, rice, green beans and cantaloupe
Monday: chicken and broccoli casserole, rice and cantaloupe
Tuesday: black bean and quinoa burritos with guacamole, oranges
Wednesday: leftovers

The tab at my grocery store? $47.05.

So, for those of you keeping score, I’ve spent $378.51 out of the $400 we have budgeted for groceries this month. Clearly, we’re going to spend a bit more than $400 since I plan to go to the grocery store one more time this month. But, I’ve set myself up beautifully to be under budget in February because I have the house completely stocked after my Costco trip. That’s where a little bit of long term vision is an asset.

You may also notice that we don’t eat a ton of meat. That’s true. We go meatless about half the time. Ever since I had massive tofu cravings during my third pregnancy (yes, I know that’s strange), I’ve had less of a taste for meat so I tend to cook and eat less of it.

Anyway, my savings tips this week?

If you have a club membership, exploit it for bulk savings. I save a ton of money buying things like artichokes and peanuts in bulk.

Use coupons. I subscribe to my Sunday paper for the coupons. When online coupons become more digitized and less piss-away-your-printer-ink-for-$.35-off-your-yogurt, I’ll make the switch. Anyway, for $54, I get the Sunday paper year round. I save an average of $3/week off my groceries by using coupons, occasionally much more. That’s about $160/year. Minus the cost of the paper, call it $100. Does it take a little effort? Yup. But I’m not the type to see $100 on the ground and walk by it because I’m too lazy to bend over.

You can check out websites like coupon mom that match the coupons in your Sunday paper with sales at your local grocery store to get the best savings. I get a lot of free toothpaste that way.

Happy eating!

Dr. King’s actual birthday was yesterday; he would have been 83 years old.

Huntsman was the best potential president in the GOP field, but his incompetent campaign and personal douchiness (to use the technical political-science term) eliminated any chance he had of overcoming the RINO-ish parts of his biography and platform to seriously challenge for the nomination. My lyrical Twitter farewell:

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that Mormon used to make me smile
And I knew that if he had his chance, he’d see his poll numbers advance
And maybe he’d lead Romney for a while
But losing to Ron Paul made me shiver
His potential he could not deliver
Bad news on the Twitter
Before long he’d be a quitter
I can’t remember if I cried
When I heard that soon he’d step aside
But something touched me deep inside
The day #HUNTSMENTUM died

So bye-bye, RINO governor guy
Playing the centrist in the primaries was not gonna fly
The Grand Ol’ boys that you so love to decry
Are sayin’ this will be the day that you die
This will be the day that you die

I decided that we needed a new strategy for organizing dress up clothes since the toss-everything-in-the-box concept was a failure. I spotted this project on Pinterest and in my sleep-deprived mother-of-three-kids-four-and-under kind of way, I decided, “Hey, I could do that.”

So I took a list of wood cuts I needed over to The Home Depot and stared blankly at cuts of pine until a store employee came over to help me. I often find there are two ways to get good service at Home Depot. #1. Be female and attractive. #2. Bring a herd of small children with you. I left the kids at home this time around. The best part about Home Depot is that they’ll cut the wood for you if you ask them to. It’s less I have to do and I’m pretty lazy.

Here I am with my wood and my drill:

I pre-drilled some holes for my screws and got down to it. Beginner’s tip here: Be sure that you measure where your holes are going because it’s a pain in the ass when they don’t line up well. This project is ideal for beginners because building a box is extremely easy and you get good results quickly. I went from slabs of wood to a wardrobe in an hour and 45 minutes, including a time out to breast feed #3 and put her down for a nap. Brendan also assisted by printing out an arch for me to trace onto the side cuts so I could jigsaw two relatively even arches.

Here it is:

Of course, I live in a world of little girls and we’re pretty fond of our pink over here.

So, a few beginner tips for painting. Paint from the top to the bottom because as Michaelangelo said, “That shit doth drip.” And use two coats. I picked up a quart of Behr semi gloss paint and primer combo in Disney’s Princess Power pink (DC2C-40-3).

Of course, no giant pink wardrobe would be complete without letters. I have the artistic skills of a two-year-old but I printed out some giant letters from my computer; that’s copperplate font. I cut those out and traced them with a Crayola washable marker and then painted them in Disney Enchanted Coach Ride pink (DC2C-40-4), which I bought in a sample size. If you didn’t paint over the marker lines, they’ll wash right off.

Done!

Cost: About $45. You could go cheaper on the paint, but I wouldn’t.

What’s the pain in the ass factor here? It really depends on how much you like to paint. Building the box is easy so long as you have the most rudimentary understanding of how to use a drill and a saw (and trust me, you can gain that understanding in about two minutes). The painting is easy but it does take a bit of time. It was 55 degrees here today so I put the wardrobe on an old shower curtain and painted it on the front porch. To me, it’s pretty relaxing but I could see how someone else could find it a bit tedious. The block lettering is irksome, but for minor irritation, you get a beautiful result so I think it’s worth it.

Fun, easy and utilitarian!

Thursday: pizza and apples
Friday: sausage, spinach and egg casserole and oranges
Saturday: black bean veggie burgers and pears
Sunday: Thai chicken with rice and broccoli
Monday: creamy cheese ravioli spinach bake and carrot sticks
Tuesday: spaghetti and meatballs, oranges
Wednesday: leftovers

Our grocery tab this week? $44.95

So where am I getting my awesome recipes? I’ve been copying some good ones out of a cookbook called The Six O’Clock Scramble that I checked out of the Denver Public Library. Everything I’ve tried so far I’ve liked and the recipes have been easy enough for me to cook them with my six-month-old strapped to my chest and two hungry preschoolers underfoot.

My secrets to a low grocery bill this week? First, use what you’ve got. I made potatoes and kielbasa last week. The leftover kielbasa is going into my egg casserole. Tada! I also stumbled on a BOGO sale for chicken last week, so I’m using chicken I stuck in the freezer for our Thai chicken dinner on Sunday. I bought 8lbs of oranges last week. We’re still eating them and will be for awhile. A little planning goes a long way toward keeping your grocery bill down. I also write on my weekly plan any food I still have in the freezer that I need to use in upcoming meal plans. I also found organic bananas on sale for $.35/lb so the girls will be eating some variation of banana bread for breakfast after they finish their pumpkin bread.

So confession time. My grocery bill is artificially low for one reason. I have utilitarian pets. Long story short, I sold a bit of gold because prices are so nice and I bought myself a small chicken coop with the proceeds. We have a backyard flock of four little hens that produce about 15 eggs a week in the winter. Since the chickens are pets, I don’t count the cost of their feed toward the grocery budget, particularly because they eat so many kitchen scraps. It’s a pretty sweet deal. Those uneaten crusts left behind by the kids get fed to the chickens who squirt out eggs a couple times a week. Nice, eh?

Here’s the recipe for the black bean burgers:

1 can black beans
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2c minced red onion
1/2c bread crumbs
1/4tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 egg, lightly beaten
salt and pepper
1/4c cornmeal
3 tbsp oil

Mash beans with fork. Add all ingredients save for the cornmeal and oil. Stir. Make patties. Coat patties with cornmeal. Heat oil. Fry patties over medium heat for 3 minutes/side. Tada! Dinner.

This cookbook is designed for those of us with picky eaters so you may want to boost your spices if you like, I dunno, flavor. :) I like to top my veggie burgers with guacamole (avocado + lime + cilantro + salt = yum). Happy eating!

Ed Cowan 934 (1.59%)
Vermin Supreme 823 (1.40%)

Ed Cowan of Waterbury, Vermont gets his ticket to ride! On to South Carolina!

Meanwhile, the all-important battle for third place remains too close to call:

Randall Terry 444 (0.75%)
John Haywood 424 (0.72%)
Cornelius O’Connor 420 (0.71%)
Craig “Tax Freeze” Freis 397 (0.67%)

Who will get the momentum? Who will get a third-place bounce? OH THE SUSPENSE! Hold me, Wolf Blitzer!

I’m referring, of course, to “third place” in the battle to be the Democratic runner-up to President Obama in the New Hamsphire Democratic Presidential Primary — a battle won by the seemingly earnest Mr. Cowan, despite a late, Drudge-fueled charge by the inimitable and hilarious Mr. Supreme (who I met in L.A. at the DNC protests when I was in college; somewhere I still have “Vermin Supreme 2000″ bumpersticker).

President Obama, for his part, presently has 48,115 of the 58,923 ballots cast, or 81.7%. That’s slightly better than George W. Bush did as an incumbent in the 2004 New Hampshire GOP primary; he got 79.6%.

Incidentally, if it seems like these numbers don’t add up, that’s because another 5,889 votes, or 9.99%, went to assorted write-ins, likely including such esteemed candidates as — I’m just guessing here — Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Hillary Clinton, and Tim Tebow.

By the way, I was just kidding about “on to South Carolina.” Obama’s the only candidate on the ballot there.

P.S. Oh yeah, the Republicans had a primary in New Hampshire last night too. Instead of #HUNTSMENTUM, it was #HUNTSMAGEDDON, though Huntsman doesn’t seem to recognize that yet. Oh, well. At least his daughters are pretty.

Meanwhile, I, for one, welcome our new Flip-Flopping Robo-Mormon Overlord. #RomneyHaters4Romney unite!

Republican voters in the “First in the Nation” hamlet, which quadrennially opens its polls at midnight and closes them at ~12:01 AM after everyone in town has voted, gave two votes each to Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, for the first tie since 1980, when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush got 5 votes apiece. Nate Silver may say Huntsman has just a 0.4% chance to win tomorrow, but in Dixville Notch, it’s a 50/50 proposition!

Yes, it was high drama as America’s silliest democratic tradition took place. And CNN’s Steve Urkel was there:

If only Huntsman had worked harder to convert the town’s Paul voter, or perhaps its Gingrich voter, he could be seeing “HUNTSMAN WINS DIXVILLE NOTCH” headlines right now. That’d be some bankable #Huntsmentum!

Of course, in the other midnight-voting New Hampshire hamlet, it was a different story: Hart’s Location went Romney 5, Paul 4, Huntsman 2, Perry 1, Gingrich 1. But as Huntsman is no doubt saying, “They pick their noses in Hart’s Location. They actually pick presidents in Dixville Notch.” Or something like that. :)

(Top twitpic by @mzwrite.)

P.S. Here’s my previous Dixville Notch blog coverage…

2004 primary: here, here, here and here.

2004 general election: here and here.

2008 primary: here and here.

I suck at running.

It’s not just minor suckage. I hardcore suck at it. In my couch to 5k training program, the first week has workouts where you alternate 45 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking. After one workout, I waited 5 days for the soreness to fade. My shins, hips and legs *hurt*. And I found myself wondering if maybe I’d be better off at some other exercise, like lifting piles of dip into my mouth with a tortilla chip. But there’s the rub. Even though I was sore and hobbling around the house, I honestly couldn’t wait to get back out there and do it again.

And when I’m running for 45 seconds, I daydream about finishing longer races, about giving my family sweaty hugs at the end, about running in different seasons, in different weather, through different challenges that will inevitably arise in my life. Because I’m like that. When I’m at the bottom of a mountain, I inevitably look at the top of it and imagine the view. I don’t fantasize about the hours of training and sore shins that accompany that view and maybe that’s because I know that if I can just get my butt out the door, I’m halfway there.

In workouts as in life, 90% of it is just showing up. So, even though I’m tired, I haven’t slept through the night in seven months, I’d rather be sleeping and I suck at running, I’m gonna try showing up for awhile and see where the road takes me.

Here’s the blog post. It’s well worth a read if you care about this issue. Money quote:

At the very least, a colorable argument can be made that the mere existence of pro-forma sessions held for the specific purpose of disallowing recess appointments, during a time when the Senate is unable to meet to discharge its advice and consent functions, is itself an unconstitutional usurpation of the president’s Constitutional powers. There is nothing in the Constitution to indicate the president’s recess appointment power is any less important than the Senate’s advice and consent power.

“So it is far from clear,” Franks adds, “that it was the President, rather than the Senate, who was acting in a manner that violated the Constitutional separation of powers.”

Anticipating the obvious objection (“but Senator Obama participated in pro-forma sessions to block Bush appointments!”), Franks also notes:

Whatever the actual practice has been in terms of when presidents made recess appointments, or whether presidents in the past have accepted the practice of pro forma sessions, or even whether someone argued a different view about such appointments in the past, is entirely irrelevant. It might be instructive to know these things in order to make personal judgments about the character of the respective parties, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the constitutional issues at hand.

I’m not sure if “nothing whatsoever” is quite right, but he’s got a point in that informal precedent and practice with respect to constitutional (or perhaps I should say “Constitution-related”) norms isn’t the same thing as a Supreme Court decision definitively interpreting the Constitution. Not by a long shot.

Anyway, read the whole thing. I don’t know if I’m totally convinced, but Franks does a better job defending Obama’s action than I’ve seen the president himself, or Jay Carney, or Nancy Pelosi, or anyone else on the Left do. Of course, whereas Franks is focusing with laser-like precision on the constitutional issues, those folks have to worry about “personal judgments about the character of the respective parties” — i.e., themselves — so they’re less likely to call attention to the details, and more likely to make broad-brush populist arguments that conceal the underlying point.

But if all that can be said about Obama here is that he’s being a hypocrite, and that he’s engaging in rhetorical sleight of hand to distract from that hypocrisy…well, that’s on par with noting that the Sun rose in the East this morning, and Grant is buried in Grant’s Tomb, and the SEC is a WAR!!! Obama’s a politician. Of course he’s a hypocrite, especially when it comes to matters of procedure. Virtually all politicians are. There is no moral high ground between the two sides when it comes to procedural matters. Everyone advances whatever argument suits their short-term interests at the moment. As someone who cares about procedure, I think that’s a damn shame, but it’s the reality.

I spent $95 this week on food. Here’s what we’re eating for dinner:

Thursday: saag paneer with brown rice and strawberries
Friday: baked artichoke pasta and oranges
Saturday: spinach burritos and apples
Sunday: chicken and olives, whole wheat french bread, broccoflour and pears
Monday: potatoes and kielbasa and apples
Tuesday: taco chili and oranges
Wednesday: leftovers

For breakfast, I tend to eat cereal and berries, Brendan likes bagels and the girls typically eat some kind of vegetable bread (this week, it’s whole wheat pumpkin flax) and bananas.

For lunches, we eat leftovers and the girls tend to eat some variation on sandwiches, quesadillas or pasta. I pack Brendan’s lunch for work and brown bagging saves us a TON of money.

Tips this week:
1. Always check your receipt! I saved $12 because of store error. My artichoke hearts and broccoflour were free. Know your store’s policies. Mine gives you your produce for free if the price is wrong in the register. I find mistakes every week. I check my receipt while I let my older girls ride a penny horse near the customer service desk.
2. Buy things on sale! I nabbed 8lbs of naval oranges for $3.99. My organic pears were $.99/lb.
3. Make things yourself. Baby food is the biggest rip off in the history of the universe. I pureed a can of pears myself. $.99 makes an entire ice cube tray full and the baby eats about a cube at a sitting. Compare that to the two servings of Gerber food you pay $1 for and the math is easy.