FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Concerning Christmas

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The Miles Rausch fam­ily, of Sioux Falls, SD, would like to make the fol­low­ing announce­ment: don’t get us any­thing for Christ­mas™.  They do not request this out of hatred or ill-will of their Inter­net fan-base, friends, or fam­ily.  They would like to stress how much they love their Inter­net fan-base, friends, and fam­ily.  This comes, rather, as a fur­ther indi­ca­tor of the trou­bling finan­cial and eco­nomic times that we live in.  Christ­mas™, the cou­ple adds, isn’t about presents so put the wal­let down already.

They would also like to announce, at this time, that they will be dras­ti­cally scal­ing back their own gift-giving.  The fam­ily esti­mates that more that three hun­dred presents will lose their jobs to keep the fam­ily in the black.  Sources close to the cou­ple say that they are lim­it­ing present bestowals to sib­lings, par­ents, and pos­si­bly grandparents.

Wife, Holli Rausch, added, “These announce­ments were hard for us to make. One thing we haven’t con­sid­ered is just how over­whelm­ingly awk­ward every day of the rest of our lives is going to be now. But we’ll just have to live with that or get new friends.”

To stem the back­lash from the announce­ment, the Miles Rausch fam­ily has begun a Christ­mas™ let­ter which could be ready for online dis­tri­b­u­tion as early as March of next year.

2008 Unofficial Election Results

Gen­eral Elec­tion (National)

Pres­i­dent: Barak Obama (306)

Vice Pres­i­dent: Joseph Biden

Gen­eral Elec­tion (South Dakota)

United States Sen­a­tor: Tim John­son (62.55%)

United States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive: Stephanie Her­seth San­dlin (67.84%)

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sioner: Gary Han­son (65.89%)

Dis­trict 04

State Sen­a­tor: Jim Peter­son (100%)

State Rep­re­sen­ta­tives: Val Rausch (39.65%) ; Steve Street (36.98%)

Dis­trict 09

State Sen­a­tor: Tom Demp­ster (52.01%)

State Rep­re­sen­ta­tives: Deb Peters (30.25%) ; Richard A. Engels (29.04%)

Vote Or Die (Slowly Over The Next Four Years)

Today is the first Tues­day after the first Mon­day in Novem­ber, mak­ing it Elec­tion Day. If ever there was a day to make time to get home before seven, today is it. The South Dakota Sec­re­tary of State web­site has a num­ber of great elec­tion resources, includ­ing this gem: Unof­fi­cial Gen­eral Elec­tion Results.

This web appli­ca­tion will auto­mat­i­cally update itself when new elec­tion results are in. The site allows you to view elec­tion results for Statewide Elec­tions, Bal­lot Ques­tions, and Leg­isla­tive Results to name a few. It’s the per­fect web companion.

A bowl of pop­corn, a warm blan­ket, a loved one, and elec­tion results. Who could ask for more?

MilesRausch.com endorses Val Rausch!

The Bachelor Party

Da Crew

If any­one was going to ruin my bach­e­lor party, it was going to be me. I have a bad habit when it come to peo­ple try­ing to do nice things for me; I don’t usu­ally let them. That’s why, when­ever any­one would ask me if I was excited for my bach­e­lor party, I would ten­ta­tively respond with “Yeah…”. Not that I didn’t have the utmost faith in Bryce and Tony (and every­one else involved in the plan­ning), but I had no faith in myself to actu­ally let a group of peo­ple (guys, no less) devote an entire evening to me.

That being said, it was a great time. The first high­light of the night was Bob David­son. That might sound strange, but Bob is a good friend, and I was really glad that he was able to make it. Of course the other high­lights were every­one else in atten­dance: Bryce, Tony, Dan, and David.

First, Bob came over to my apart­ment in Madi­son, and we drove down to Sioux Falls together. Our first stop was Buf­falo Wild Wings, pretty much the only place in town for wings that we yet know about. I ordered 6 Teriyaki and 6 Asian Zing. Bryce got really hot ones, and took them to go. Both Bryce and I were in tears. I ordered a Jack and Coke to drink, and the wait­ress, when she brought water, set a glass of water in front of Bob on a nap­kin, and then slid it over to me, and put Bob’s glass of water on the table with­out a nap­kin. This behav­ior made us think that he had some­how offended the young lady, but we decided not to address it.

After wings, we went to Nitwits Com­edy Club, which is a cou­ple blocks from our apart­ment, and we saw some stand-up. There were three per­form­ers: the first one was lame, the sec­ond one was good, and the last one was funny. I had some girly drinks there and made Bryce order them for me, which meant he had to order twice as much of his nor­mal drinks to seem not gay in front of the wait staff.

After this, though, the plans were kinda up in the air. Dan had brought a PS3 with Rock Band, and the goal was to play it at the hotel, but the hotel didn’t have AV hookups. So, what to do? Rent a TV from Wal-Mart.

Yes, I said “rent”.

The way it works is that Wal-Mart’s return pol­icy is pretty for­giv­ing. At least, for now. We went in and picked out an SD TV to get. One that wasn’t so expen­sive that, if we couldn’t return it, we’d be stuck with a huge bill. Despite the rules, I called Holli. We were look­ing at HD TVs, and I thought, “Boy, those sure look nice.” I flirted with the idea of buy­ing one. Holli told me what the wed­ding money that we had so far accu­mu­lated would buy, and she said she trusted my judge­ment. In the end, I wasn’t brave enough to actu­ally buy one. We cavorted around town, but got to Best Buy too late. So it was back to Wal-Mart. We got the “per­fect” TV and headed back to the hotel room.

Then we played Rock Band. It was that sim­ple. The hotel room was nice, and there was a desk to put the TV on. Then we all took turns on the dif­fer­ent instru­ments: gui­tar, gui­tar, drums, and micro­phone. Bob left first, because he had to work. Then Dan left. And even­tu­ally it was Bryce, Tony, David, and I. The next morn­ing, Bryce returned the TV claim­ing, “I thought it was an HD TV.” The per­son responded that it doesn’t even say “HD” on the side. “I know. I’m retarded.”

That phrase appar­ently works for Wal-Mart’s return policy.

All-in-all, it was a fun time, and even though no one got so drunk they couldn’t remem­ber the night, it was filled with wings, com­edy, screw­ing “the man”, and video games; all my great­est pas­sions with my great­est friends.

See the pic­tures in My Bach­e­lor Party.

Our Honeymoon — pictures

We’ll both post about this later, but I thought I’d show off the pic­tures we have so far. Inter­net is $9.95 for 24 hours of usage, which means that this might be the only time we do that.

Our Hon­ey­moon — Day 1: Air­ports, All-Star Music Resort, Dis­ney Hol­ly­wood Studios

Our Hon­ey­moon — Day 2: Dis­ney Magic Kingdom

Our Hon­ey­moon — Day 3: EPCOT, Down­town Dis­ney, Boma’s

Our Hon­ey­moon — Day 4: Dis­ney Ani­mal King­dom with Albie

Our Hon­ey­moon — Day 3 — Diana+

Our Hon­ey­moon — Day 4 — Diana+