Clinton romps in OH, wins in TX

So:

Astro-Girl and I go out to the caucus, and come home to a world on fire.

Okay, not really.

But the next few months, watching the Dems, are going to be fun.

But for now, some news:

We're Republican delegates. To the Senate county convention, anyway.

It happened like this.

Our precinct is allowed 21 delegates to our county convention. On the way to our caucus, I specfically cut north two blocks out of our way, to Westheimer Boulevard, in order to pass between two Democatic Cauci.

As I wrote below, Astro-Girl and I live near the seam of two Houston neighborhoods, with us in Upper Kirby, which is south of River Oaks, the home of our city's millionaires and billionaires: oil CEOs, old-monied barons and world-famous heart surgeons. (One burning-hot summer Sunday afternoon, while jogging up an otherwise abandoned River Oaks Boulevard, the half-mile strip of mansions between Lamar High School and the River Oaks Country Club, I happened upon a man out by himself for a solitary Sunday stroll, who smiled and said hello as our paths crossed. Ken Lay.) Running from Weslayan east to Kirby Boulevard, Westheimer Boulevard is the dividing line between the two neighborhoods--and, at opposite sides of Westheimer and River Oaks, facing across the street from one another, sat the two Dem caucus sites. The River Oaks precinct was St. John's Church, on the northwest side of the intersection; Upper Kirby was in Lamar High School, on the south side, and as we passed on Westheimer between the two precincts, I marveled at the traffic, at the spilling-over parking lots and the long, long lines to enter, as if for (on the one hand) Midnight Mass and (on the other) a high school basketball playoff game.

We drove down to the GOP Upper Kirby Caucus, which was held in a boardroom that served as a kind of storefront. This had been the same room in which Astro-Girl and I had voted five hours earlier; I had assumed that, come the evening, the voting machines would be carried out to make room for caucusing GOPers.

As it turned out, the space was unneeded. The voting machines stayed where they were, and circular folding tables were rolled into the waiting area.

At our table, in three concentric circles, there were 19 of us, many of whom had presumably decided that lungs were a measure of intelligence. Two guys kept going on and on about how the IRS needed to be abolished. Two others kept going on about how they hated McCain. The loudest was the large girl* who went on and on about how Huckabee could still pull off the nomination; she kept drawing designs on a pad of paper and explaining what she referred to as "The Scenario": a loss here, an endorsement there, and bang, a brokered convention.

The precinct captain counted us off, then announced that there were 21 slots for county delegates. He then said, "Umm, does anyone not want to be a delegate?"

Three hands went up, neither of which were Astro-Girl's or mine.

And that's how I became a delegate.

(*Changed from "fat chick")