barely a line

My voting place is a school gym that hosts four precincts. This morning the line for one of them (14/25, I think, for you locals) was about 50 people long, while the others were only 2-3 people long. Fortunately for me, I'm in 14/23, and there was one person ahead of me at the table. Time of arrival at the building (not the gym): 8:35. Time out, including a stop at the bake sale (the school kids actually went to the trouble to have kosher goods, so I rewarded that): 8:48. I hadn't seen in advance the text of the one ballot question, so that might have accounted for as much as one minute of my time there. All in all, this was much smoother than I expected, and I was at work by 9:05. (I think it took me longer to vote in the mid-terms two years ago.)

I saw no campaigners or pollsters at all, by the way -- pretty unusual.

If I correctly interpreted things, I was voter #82 in my precinct. I understand turnout is supposed to be high today, but you can't tell that from my precinct.

I have never had, or even seen ("in the flesh"), an "I voted" sticker. We get paper stubs -- "receipts" in the sense of showing we were there, but there is no paper trail for actual votes.

I had received some private offers from "non-swing" states of vote trades, but in the end I decided that my vote for Bob Barr in PA is more important than that vote would be in some other state. In PA it affects our ballot access, among things; in another state it's just a statistic -- so in my eyes my vote here is worth many times what it would be worth in a trade scenario. I didn't feel it would be ethical (and perhaps not legal) to ask for an exchange rate other than 1:1.

short takes (no election content)

A coworker is currently helping to train a bloodhound for police work. She is not in the law-enforcement business; she happens to run an animal sanctuary when she's not being a software geek, and somehow that apparently led to this. How cool. (Also sounds like a lot of work; she's training with the dog every morning and evening for the next couple weeks.)

Erik's appetite has been much improved this past week. I'm not sure what's different, but I'm glad to see it. We have not started him on prednizone yet; my vet is playing phone-tag with assorted specialists first.

Porridge: what really happened that fateful morning.

A funny cat video (from a locked entry, so identify yourself if you like but I won't).

This bunny hero made me smile (link from paquerette). I had a house rabbit for a few months a long time ago (before the cats). He was a rescue, and I'd read that rabbits were smart enough to be trained to use a litter box. I failed at that and wasn't interested in keeping him in a cage his entire life, so he went off to live with other house-trained rabbits on the theory that there's power in crowds.

From Language Log: be careful your translation says what you think it does.

Hey, CMU alum from approximately my generation, and others who enjoy quirky folk music: Michael Spiro has made much of his music available for free download. (I'm going to buy one of the CDs anyway, because he asked nicely and I believe in supporting independent musicians. I have the other on vinyl, so I probably won't buy the CD.) I particularly commend to you "The Folkie" and "Killing Me Softly With Kung-Fu". I would also point you at "Music, Sex, and Cookies", except the file appears to be corrupted. :-(