Well, I voted...with any luck we'll know the winner before Friday.

This is going to be a crazy election.

I waited in line to VOTE for about an hour and half, with a sick sinus headache that won't quite go-away, but is a heck of a lot better than the vertigo plaguing me Sunday night into Monday morning. Yes, it's definitely a sinus infection. I have set up an appointment to see my Doctor on Friday - earliest could get in. Hopefully he can give me something to clear it up, assuming it doesn't go away on its own before then.


NY changed a year ago from the old voting machines of my youth, where you stand in a line, go in, click off the candidates you want, then pull a lever. To this insane process - where you stand in a long line to pick up a ballot, then go to a place to fill in the ovals on the ballot in ink, then stand in another long line to get the ballot scanned. Whomever came up with this method, deserves a month of papercuts. Although it may be better than the way my parents vote in Hilton Head, South Carolina which is by computer. They stand in a long line, show id, match name and address, then are accompanied to a computer - where a volunteer shows them what to do, then they push the buttons for each candidate they want. If there is a write-in candidate, they push a button, then type the name in, then push again and are done. My mother told me that a woman ahead of her in line had two cards with her - one with her maiden name and one with her married name, she said that she was registered under her maiden name, but they had the wrong address. And she had to use her married name card to verify the address.

Meanwhile in Florida and Ohio - they've had to throw out provisional ballots (ballots that are filled in by pen, and accompany a signed affadavit) because a lot of people neglected to sign the affadavit's. In Ohio, if you vote provisionally by mail, you have to appear in person at a certain place and time to verify your ballot. (They are fighting over this rule in Ohio at the moment. It's become a pro-longed war between the paranoid/racist people who fear voter fraud vs. the people who fear voter suppression.

The way things are going at the moment, I'm not sure how they're going to figure out who won this race? And I fear it going to the Supreme Court or the House of Representatives.

Not worrying about the uncontrollables, whoever wins? We'll survive.

Good news - the sinus headache is not as bad as it was. The decongestant appears to be working a bit. It's a weak one. I can't take pseudophrenine (which is used to make crystal meth, by the way) because of the tremor.

Discussed election with the Momster, who proceeded to rant, albeit briefly about the Republican hen-penny's in her neighborhood. She lives in South Carolina, you can't get redder than South Carolina (it like Kansas will vote for Romney unless someone gets hit by lightening). Well, unless you live in Kansas, I suppose. The hen-penny's (rather love this term) are screaming that the world will end if Obama is elected for a second term. (I pointed out that actually there are hen-penny's are both sides of this race. She agreed with me on that point. The hen-penny's on the left believe the world will end if Romney gets elected. People? Life will go on in either event. We still have the Congressional juggernaught to stand in the way.)

Hen-penny is a character similar to Chicken Little, who in the folk-tale, was constantly proclaiming that the sky is falling or the end of days is upon us. Truth is - people have been doing this since 2000 BC. Most of the Old Testament and the New One is people worrying about the end of days. Heck most of the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm seem to be about that.
We are forever worrying about the sky falling. It's amazing we get anything done.

I have decided to ignore the election until tomorrow morning for the sake of my sanity and well, blood pressure. Just taking a glimspe of the current results sent it sky-rocketing.

I voted. I can't control what other people do. My state will most likely carry Obama. But even though NY may or may not have a bigger population than say a state like Ohio or Arizona, the election is decided not on popular vote but on the electoral collage points. We are basically voting for electoral collage reps. We don't live in a democracy, we live in a "republic". People don't seem to understand this - because it is confusing.

In short, I'm taking my old man's advice from earlier this summer - try not to worry too much about the uncontrollables or the uncontrollable variables. You do the best you can with what you are given.