Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which Today Was Very Busy!

I finished yesterday's crochet project today! I'll post photos next Monday, but suffice to say I'm stoked to have finished it. My total time working on that project, including fixing mistakes, stitching the bottom on, stuffing it, and weaving in ends, was 6 hours, 14 minutes, 56 seconds. Yes I timed it to the second. How, you may ask? By only working on it when I had a video playing. When the video would end, I'd write down how long it was before starting another video and watching that while I worked. Many ghosts were hunted, at least 3 dresses were sewn, and almost 100 baby tarantulas were wrangled in the midwest.

I worked until about midnight last night on it and got the whole body of the tree, the bottom of the tree, and 3 tiers of flocking done, then I woke up around 9:30 this morning and...

Went to go vote because it's the second week of November, and in the US, that's a voting day.

I won't talk about how I voted, because that's not the point of this blog.

Instead, I'd like to take a moment to talk about how voting works where I live.

I'm from Maine, so we have Same Day Registration. If you show up to the polls with a piece of mail with your address on it, and that address is in the town you're voting in, guess what? You can register then and there, then hop into the line corresponding to the first letter of your last name. In fact, I watched a newly minted adult do just that, today, and she was so happy to get back into her line so she could vote for the first time.

When you get to the volunteers at the head of the line, they'll ask you your surname, your first name, and then your address. If you're in the rolls (which you will be, if you've already registered once), they'll give you the go-ahead, and then you'll move to someone else who hands you your ballot(s), tells you how many sides each sheet has, and you go off to your booth, where you fill it out with a plain old ballpoint pen.

After that point, you scoop up your ballots and get into line to drop them off in the ballot boxes, which are equipped with scanners that only count how many ballots are placed in each. And just to head off any paranoia anyone may have, they are scanners and not shredders (first, shredders have a very different sound). I know this because last time I voted, one of the scanner tops got jostled and nearly fell off, and you could see the neatly stacked ballots below. It's just a fancy ballot box with a counter app on it.

There is one tiny drawback to these fancy tally boxes, though, and today I got to witness it. 

Occasionally, and this has only happened once in the 14 years I've been voting, your ballot will get stuck. And if you've already started to walk away from the box, one of the nice retirees who keep an eye on the boxes have to chase you down with a very polite "excuse me, sir! Sir!" before they have you come back the five steps you've walked to watch them very carefully take your ballot out of the tray and then put it back on there.

I dig that they make sure you see everything done to your ballot.

My own ballots went through no problem and I scooted out the door before any of the folks who have petitions could beg me for a signature. After all, my mom was waiting for me so we could go shopping afterwards.

We may have bought the cat a sweater.

Did the cat need a sweater? No. Will she wear the sweater? Maybe. Were we very, VERY excited when we bought the sweater? Oh, absolutely.

It's red and has antlers. I'm pretty sure it has white Nordic sweater designs, too...

Anywho, the rest of today was spent enjoying the heck out of the delightfully dry, breezy, bright weather. It was a brisk 44℉/6,67℃, which was a vast change from the disgustingly humid yet windy 72℉/22,22℃ weather yesterday.

It was gross. But today was fantastic and now I'm in my fluffy pajamas and a long sleeved shirt, which is a sight different from the yoga capris and tank tops I've been wearing this week.

Now, what are the plans for this week?

• Art for Thursday (if you wanna shoot me a Ko-Fi with a message telling me which category you'd like to see, that's still a thing - Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Dedbert, Location, Geometric, Word)
• By Next Monday I'll have more crochet for you, including pics of the finished tree!
• Next Tuesday I'll be back to blather some more!

As for me, I'm ready for a snuggle into my flannel sheets with Dedbert by my side, dreaming of adorable beavers like Nibi and maybe working on more manuscript stuff when I get up.

I feel much better now that it's below 60℉/15,56℃.

And now that the voting is over, I'll be able to watch tv without all those stupid, pointless, uninformative political ads.

Ugh.

Instead, I'll just go back to rolling my eyes at emus and snarking about the side effects permitted in medications.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC