Okay, you’re fixing to leave work in, like, an hour. Or maybe you’re home, nursing a cup of tea. This is the key moment: you’ve thought three or four times this week that you’d like to come to our kick-off party tonight at 6 at Nectar’s, but now you’re wondering if it’s worth it, if you’ll even be missed. It is, and you will. We need you there tonight. Yes, you. You, sitting in front of the computer. You can stop by.

Yes. You. Can.

VDB had made a solemn oath not to post today, in order to avoid stepping on the front page story begging people to come to the State Senate Kick-off tonight at Nectar’s, from 6-9. But sometimes journalistic reflexes will not be stilled, and a story Must Be Told. Case in point: four women, ranging in age from 66 to 90, decided yesterday to demonstrate the porous quality of the security at Vermont Yankee. Basically they walked into the plant, but there was one moment of high drama. Made for TV drama, really.

At the last moment, faced with the advancing protestors, the guard snapped to attention and attempted to close the huge automated gate — but the senior ninja ladies used their catlike reflexes to come in anyway, and the gate wound up being a measure of their distinct insideness rather than an impediment to it. Round one: senior ninja ladies.

Now, VY spokesman Rob Williams will no doubt point out that the system worked beautifully: the guard had apparently not been drinking, and the lock actually functioned, albeit a bit after the point where it would have made a serious difference.

Still, it’s worth asking, and inquiring minds want to know: if a quartet of concerned seniors can penetrate security this far in sensible Birkenstocks, what could the terrorists manage — in close-toed shoes?

A last reminder about our kick-off party for the 2o10 State Senate campaign: tonight, Tuesday September 29, 6-9 pm, at Nectar’s. Everyone is welcome, and not just welcome, but very cordially invited. If you’re a regular reader of this site, you and I have spent quite a lot of time together in the last four years, and I’ve invited you to more than a few political events. But this one is special. Very special.

Not just because suddenly my own political butt is on the line, although there is that, of course. But no, this party is special because we all know for a fact now that we’re out to design the post-Douglas era this cycle, and it’s high time we started putting our heads together on that.

Hope to see you there, alone or with your posse. And many thanks to Bailey Cummings, ace photographer.

The Markowitz campaign has released a very stylish, long-format campaign video (long in the sense of over 5 minutes), and it’s well worth a look. Why? Always worth seeing how a potential Governor frames him or herself, as well as the issues at hand. But for a novelist like VDB, there’s a better reason: the story of Markowitz actually finding a baby abandoned in the forest. A real, newborn infant. No doubt somewhere in the past we’d heard that tale, but never told in its entirety. Politics aside, it’s just gripping story.