Day 3225

I voted today. The lines were not as bad as I expected, although I did have trouble finding a parking place. As usual, I was the only one standing in line who wasn't looking at their cell phone. I continue to be amazed by how much time some people spend texting. It's rare if I send one text message a month. The lady ahead of me in line never stopped texting. I can't even imagine texting continuously for 30 to 45 minutes. My fingers would hurt. Since I wasn't using my phone, I had plenty of time to look at people's shoes. Nobody wears decent shoes anymore. Young and old alike were all wearing ugly running shoes. I don't know what this means, but the old people were definitely winning in my precinct. There were at least ten old people in line for every young person.

I wonder why early voting has become so popular? Evidently there were huge lines yesterday when early voting started. It's not like an early vote counts any more than a late vote. I actually prefer to wait until election day because our precinct still uses paper ballots on election day. It also rains a lot on election day, which is why I voted today. Our early voting locations all use electronic voting machines. I guess these things are legit, but they don't inspire confidence. How do you know if your vote is even counted? I often wonder if my voting machine is even hooked up to anything.

I'm sure the country is as divided as everyone says we are, but you'd never know it from standing in line at my polling place. Everyone was very friendly. It felt like people were neighbors first and voters second. Neighbors can be sneaky though. Probably a lot of people were actually voting to cancel out the vote of another neighbor. I know I was.

Dash woke me up several times last night. Once I had to catch him before he fell off the bed and the other times I had to take him outside. I thought we were safe when I saw him squat in the yard, but then I turned around and realized he'd left a trail of poop all the way from the bedroom to the back door. It's so hard to get back to sleep after you've spent fifteen minutes cleaning up poop.

I got caught up with some correspondence today. I'm not nearly as good about answering letters as I used to be. After I get finished writing the blog, there just isn't that much to say. I guess there's nothing wrong with repeating myself. The few people I still write never read the blog anyway.

I made an appointment to get a haircut tomorrow. I'm long overdue. Under normal circumstances I might stop by the Apple Store on the way home and get the new Series 4 Apple watch. I'm feeling poor though. The stock market is doing terrible and my storage warehouse rent is due next week. The watch will have to wait.

Freckles is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2264

When I went to breakfast this morning, something seemed missing. The place was half empty and when I entered the building, the coffee roasters where I always got my morning coffee were gone. I was confused at first, but it didn't take long to figure out what was going on. Directly across the street there was a brand new competitive restaurant. The little coffee company that shared space with my restaurant, along with half the customers seemed to have jumped ship. I even noticed a number of familiar cars parked at the restaurant across the street. I found this all a little unsettling. Where did these people's loyalty go? Like me, most of these customers had been coming here for years. Jeez, I skip one week because of the flu, and when I return, everything had changed. You know how I feel about change. Now, every time I go for breakfast I'm going to feel torn between a sense of loyalty for my familiar meal and a sense of curiosity about what's just across the street. I would have preferred that this didn't happen.

After breakfast, I went to the nearest early voting location and voted. I still can't figure out why the early voting locations have modern touch screen ballots and the regular voting locations still use paper ballots where you select your candidate by making a black dot in front of the name with a pencil. I'm still a little suspicious of the electronic ballots, but I suppose my vote gets counted. Like I expected, there were several pages of judges to vote for. I had no idea who most of them were. Unless a judge has gotten involved in a scandal and been on the local news, I'll probably never recognize their name. I vote for judges the same way I bet on horses. I just pick a nice sounding name and go for it.

Dot did not want to go to the vet today. I had a hard time getting her in the car and when we arrived, I had an even harder time getting her inside the building. Usually, she is fine about going to the cancer center, but not today. I could tell she was nervous when we were sitting in the lobby, but I couldn't figure out why. There were no scans today or anything that might be remotely frightening. I felt bad. Dot struggled while the vet tech tried to draw blood and ended up getting a hematoma in her neck. The oncologist wants to continue her chemotherapy for another three weeks and then do another scan to measure the growth of the tumor in her liver. We'll decide at that point whether this has all been worth it.

Although voting and Dot's vet appointment ate up a big chunk of the day, I still managed to get quite a bit of work done. I completed a big website update, balanced my checkbook, and picked up something for dinner at the grocery store. That seems plenty for one day. Although it was still quite cold this morning, there's already a feeling of Spring in the air. The trees are starting to bud and I'm already starting to see some early Spring flowers. Spring flowers are always a good thing.

Bingo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day