by the way

St. Petersburg Times photojournalist Martha Rial was up here following some of us for a few days. Here's the slideshow...

fire!

I'd have to say that this was one of the most bizarre days (and birthdays) of my entire life. We were in the middle of a special class meeting with Professor Scala, an instructor from the University of New Hampshire (we read his book and wrote a paper on it), when the fire alarm went off at our hotel. We ignored it for about 10-20 minutes because the hotel staff said nothing serious was wrong and they were taking care of it. Well, lets just say that something very serious was wrong and we quickly learned we needed to get out of the hotel. Apparently a fire started in the boiler room of the hotel, and it took quite a while for the fire department to get it put out.

There was really nothing we could do, so we left to go work at our campaign offices with Dr. McLauchlan and her husband keeping their ears open for any word about the situation and what exactly was going to happen with our living arrangements. By the time we dropped off the Manchester people and got to Concord (about an hour's drive), we got the call from Dr. McLauchlan that we were going to all have to come back and get our stuff out of the hotel.




Many of us were staying in rooms right below where the fire occurred and couldn't get access to our rooms to get our things out until after the fire department had conducted its investigation. We were told that everything was wet and the windows had been busted open, so we really had no idea what kind of shape our things were in. Maggie and I especially were worried because both of our laptops were in our room. Once we finally got in, it was a disaster in the hallways. There was black/grey muck everywhere and it was hard to breathe with the heavy smoke and chemical smell.




Our rooms were okay, miraculously. The floors were wet, so anything on the floor was either soaked or ruined. I had a bunch of clean and dirty clothes on the floor, so all of those I had to re-wash and I also had a stack of books on the floor beside my bed, though only the bottom one was ruined. Other than that, all my stuff was fine (including my laptop), but smelled fiercely of smoke. My blanket that my aunt got me last week in Chicago was ruined as well. I guess the firefighters thought it would be a good doorstop.

(sorry Aunt Cindy!)

Once we packed all our stuff up, Maggie, Laura D., Laura T. and I formed a line to pass our luggage out one of the windows; it was better than going back through those awful halls!

The four of us were all waiting around outside for the van to pull around when the Associated Press walked up and starting filming and interviewing us. I haven't seen it air yet, but I'm sure it will appear in some form as it sure sounded like a media-friendly sob story about a bunch of homeless students. Luckily, the hotel found us 10 rooms at another hotel about twenty minutes down the road, so we're safe and warm tonight. Our new hotel is actually in Massachusetts...at least I can add another state to my map!

Andrew

Once we got settled here at our new hotel around a quarter to five tonight, we all decided to eat dinner together and watch the debates since there was really no point in even trying to get to our campaigns so late in the day. It was a nice, relaxing evening after the craziness this week has been and I'm sure the next few days will be. We're staying in a Radisson and it's very nice. After we finished eating we were all hanging out in the hotel restaurant watching the debates and I ran out for a few minutes to get a new toothbrush out of the gift shop (mine smelled awful from all the smoke). I got back and sat down with everyone, and soon after they all surprised me by singing happy birthday and the restaurant staff brought out a piece of cake for me. It was really fun and so sweet of everyone. My day ended well despite all the chaos.

(Someone also paid my dinner check too, so whoever that was, THANK YOU!)

That's it for today. I have some catch up today for Thursday and yesterday (mostly yesterday) to do, which I'll try to put up here in the morning.

Night!

P.S. - Here are some local articles about the fire. I'll let you know if I find the AP video I was talking about...

WBZTV (Matt & Mr. McLauchlan are quoted here)
Nashua Telegraph
WMUR New Hampshire

fire!

I'd have to say that this was one of the most bizarre days (and birthdays) of my entire life. We were in the middle of a special class meeting with Professor Scala, an instructor from the University of New Hampshire (we read his book and wrote a paper on it), when the fire alarm went off at our hotel. We ignored it for about 10-20 minutes because the hotel staff said nothing serious was wrong and they were taking care of it. Well, lets just say that something very serious was wrong and we quickly learned we needed to get out of the hotel. Apparently a fire started in the boiler room of the hotel, and it took quite a while for the fire department to get it put out.There was really nothing we could do, so we left to go work at our campaign offices with Dr. McLauchlan and her husband keeping their ears open for any word about the situation and what exactly was going to happen with our living arrangements. By the time we dropped off the Manchester people and got to Concord (about an hour's drive), we got the call from Dr. McLauchlan that we were going to all have to come back and get our stuff out of the hotel.

Many of us were staying in rooms right below where the fire occurred and couldn't get access to our rooms to get our things out until after the fire department had conducted its investigation. We were told that everything was wet and the windows had been busted open, so we really had no idea what kind of shape our things were in. Maggie and I especially were worried because both of our laptops were in our room. Once we finally got in, it was a disaster in the hallways. There was black/grey muck everywhere and it was hard to breathe with the heavy smoke and chemical smell.Our rooms were okay, miraculously. The floors were wet, so anything on the floor was either soaked or ruined. I had a bunch of clean and dirty clothes on the floor, so all of those I had to re-wash and I also had a stack of books on the floor beside my bed, though only the bottom one was ruined. Other than that, all my stuff was fine (including my laptop), but smelled fiercely of smoke.

Once we packed all our stuff up, Maggie, Laura D., Laura T. and I formed a line to pass our luggage out one of the windows; it was better than going back through those awful halls!The four of us were all waiting around outside for the van to pull around when the Associated Press walked up and starting filming and interviewing us. I haven't seen it air yet, but I'm sure it will appear in some form as it sure sounded like a media-friendly sob story about a bunch of homeless students. Luckily, the hotel found us 10 rooms at another hotel about twenty minutes down the road, so we're safe and warm tonight. Our new hotel is actually in Massachusetts...at least I can add another state to my map!

Once we got settled here at our new hotel around a quarter to five tonight, we all decided to eat dinner together and watch the debates since there was really no point in even trying to get to our campaigns so late in the day. It was a nice, relaxing evening after the craziness this week has been and I'm sure the next few days will be. We're staying in a Radisson and it's very nice. After we finished eating we were all hanging out in the hotel restaurant watching the debates and I ran out for a few minutes to get a new toothbrush out of the gift shop (mine smelled awful from all the smoke). I got back and sat down with everyone, and soon after they all surprised me by singing happy birthday and the restaurant staff brought out a piece of cake for me. It was really fun and so sweet of everyone. My day ended well despite all the chaos.(That's it for today. I have some catch up today for Thursday and yesterday (mostly yesterday) to do, which I'll try to put up here in the morning.

Night!

P.S. - Here are some local articles about the fire. I'll let you know if I find the AP video I was talking about...
WBZTV (Matt & Mr. McLauchlan are quoted here)
Nashua Telegraph
WMUR New Hampshire

day 4

This morning we visited the state library and the New Hampshire Republican & Democratic party chairs. It was an informative trip, I especially enjoyed our meetings with Republican chairman Fergus Collins and Democratic chairman Raymond Buckley, and I took lots of pictures!

...outside the state library...

...the State Library...

...inside...

Upstairs in the State Library we walked through a great exhibit about past New Hampshire primaries.

Deb posing while Damaris shoots the photo...

Laura admired the Kennedy cutout. :)

...Democratic party offices...

...waiting to meet with Raymond Buckley...

Matt, Ray Buckley, Russell, and Dr. McLauchlan

...Republican party offices...

Emilio & Fergus Collins, party chair...

Emilio, Dr. McLauchlan, & Fergus Collins

Following our field trip to Concord, we all dispersed to our respective campaign offices. I did quite a bit of phone banking, but more and more people are coming to volunteer at the office and it's fun to see the office grow as we draw closer to Iowa. Governor Huckabee was on Leno tonight, and I thought he did really well. He does really well with a live audience and I really think he enjoys being challenged and questioned on his positions. He's very comfortable with himself.





That's it for tonight! More tomorrow...

day three

This is going to be a short blog because I'm tired and I have work to do, but I just wanted to give you all a rundown of my day.

It started out this morning with a class meeting listening to Professor David Redlawsk from the University of Iowa tell us all about the Iowa caucuses via speaker phone. It was interesting to hear all the ins and outs of the caucuses and the actual logistics behind them. At right are Dr. McLauchlan and Debbie listening in.

Following, we left immediately for our campaigns. I got dropped off in

Manchester today (instead of Concord) because we were going to be out of the office working on a huge mailer at a supporter's house a few towns away. I had some fun waiting in the Bridge Cafe (pictured at left) on Elm St., and thank goodness it was open because nothing else was at 10 a.m. on New Years Day.

It started snowing around 11 a.m., which you can see in the picture, and didn't stop until late afternoon. It was so cold!

I think what I really enjoyed about the campaign today, despite stuffing thirty envelopes a minute for eight hours, was getting to know EVERYONE on the campaign. With everyone sitting on the table doing the same task for so long, conversation is always flowing and it was a nice introduction. Today was much better than yesterday by far.

I got back to the hotel around 9:15 tonight, and now I really need to get some other homework done. Have a wonderful night!

...Elm St., Manchester, with snow falling...

...day two in photos...

Joel attempting to build a snowman.

The fruits of his effort.

Joel, Laura, and Adam tonight at our class dinner.

Andrew with the glow-in-the-dark glasses we all got from Dr. McLauchlan.

Dr. McLauchlan!

And, just for fun, here's a video that I took while we trying to take a group picture in the dark with our glowing glasses. We were all crammed in Paul and Brandon's hotel room, and though we certainly tried, the picture didn't turn out very well so we gave up on the dark shot.

...on the road...again.

the picturesque scene outside of the Nashua Obama headquarters

Today was an unusual day. After meeting briefly as a class over breakfast, we headed out around 9:00 a.m. to go to our campaigns. Because it was snowing and Dr. McLauchlan wanted everyone to see everyone else's campaign offices, it took a looooong time for me to get to my office headquarters. We're staying in Nashua and most everyone's campaign's are in town, but mine is about an hour away in Concord, along with Brandon and Shadi's. In between Nashua and Concord are the Manchester offices, so obviously we did Nashua people, Manchester, then Concord.

I was finally dropped off around 3:30 p.m., to a very quiet campaign office. Their were about 5 staffers -Cassidy, Abby, Chris, Perklis, and Rick (I think it was Rick...!)- in the office and no other volunteers, but at least I had things to do. I did phone banking for about 45 minutes and then helped some of the staffers out with two mailers. I only worked for about 2 and half hours because most people closed early due to New Year's Eve.

Tomorrow I'm going to be working in Milford with Cassidy and the rest of the gang on a 20,000 piece mailer. I'm looking forward to it because it's not phones! :P I don't mind doing phones at all, but it's definitely not at the top of my list of fun things to do around a campaign.

Hopefully my experience will get better as time goes on. I know a lot of my classmates had tons of fun meeting people and working on their campaigns, so helpful things will get more exciting over the next few days, especially after Iowa.

The tremendous amount of car riding that I participated in today did have some benefit. I had some great conversations with my classmates, which I really enjoyed, and I also got to know a bit more about some of them; I like hearing people's stories.

Anyway, that's it for tonight. I'll be posting another photo blog in a few minutes...

Until tomorrow then!