A Polling Place Story

Tuesday, November 6th, 2018. Placerville, CA. Polling place #320:

I walk in the conference room where polling is taking place for the mid-terms. Directly in front of me is a long table with a woman sitting behind it helping a man in a wheelchair. Another table is situated to the left of her, angling at about 45° with two more woman sitting attentively. A sign reading "A" is hanging off the front of it. Yet another table, to the left of the "A" table, is to its left again. Two more people are at that one, a woman on the left and a young man to her left. This woman greets me ...

"Hello! Can I help you?" she asks me.

"Hello yourself! Yes ... I'm here to vote" I tell her.

"I notice you have a mail-in ballot" she observes.

"I do! I have a question about that afterward. Now, I see an 'A' and a 'B' table but I don't see any 'N' table for me so ... where do I go?" I ask. Out of the corner of my eye I notice the woman at Table "A" shaking her head back and forth at my conversation in an "Oh, brother ... one of them" sort of ways. I turn to look at her and she quickly looks down at her charts, half concealing a sneer.

"Start at that first table when you walked in. That lady will get you on your way" the woman at Table "B" informs me cheerfully.

"Thank you" I respond and wait for the woman working with the handicapped gentleman finish.

In moments, she gets me checked in and directs me to Table "B." I walk past Table "A" and the sneering woman and look at her once again, but she still has her head down and won't look at me to save her life. I guess I'm just too much of a ball of fire for her to pay me any mind. Again I approach Table "B" and speak with the personable woman who first greeted me. She repeats my name - as she heard it when I checked in - finds my name, flips her chart around and asks me to sign beside my name. She hands me my ballot.

"Here you go. Behind you is seating so you can vote. Now ... you had a question about the mail-in ballot you brought with you?"

"Thank you ... and yes, I do. Can I drop this off here?"

"Yes. It's signed by the addressee, dated and you've signed it as well?"

"Yes ma'am to all three" I inform her.

"That box, right over there beside the ballot box ... that's where you deposit it" I'm told.

"Terrific!" I walk over, drop the mail-in ballot in its box and go vote.

I'm done in 30 seconds, get up from my seat and hold up my ballot. "This receptacle here?" I ask before depositing my completed ballot.

"Wow!" Table "B" woman exclaims "That was fast!"

"I don't fool around" I tell her. "This isn't my first rodeo, you know ..." She smiles at me. I snag my complimentary "I Voted!" sticker and waved as I strolled my way to the exit: "Have a good rest of a voting afternoon!"

As I walk out, I turn directly at The Sneering Woman at Table "A" one last time, ready to flash her a "I don't know what your problem is, lady, but you volunteered to perform with this circus and the adoring public who come knocking at its door so you better suck it up and work it until the very end" look but, once more, she's looking at her charts, doing everything in her power to avoid me. I almost stopped to ask her an annoying question or two but my mere presence appeared to have already accomplished that. I didn't need to do anything further.

I had to wonder, though: Why the hell was the woman working a polling station knowing she's going to get all kinds of personalities walking through the door if she's not ready to take on all comers? It's not as if I was a pain in the ass or anything. The last few years I've volunteered myself to work the elections and I well knew I needed to pull up my suspenders, make certain my underwear were straight and secure and put on a happy face.


I'll never know the answer to what her problem was. And I'm okay with that ...

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP )

Time

Indeed, the Halloween season is over.

Especially when you begin to droop, when the mold begins to appear, when your color fades and when you start to leak.

So long, Friend. You were good while you lasted.

Better days ...

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP )

5 Personal Things

Hello, Faithful Readers!

Know what today is? Why, November 5th, the fifth day of NaBloPoMo! You know what that means? It means it's the first of six different blog postings where I, your trusty essayist, detail five individual and personal pieces of information about my ownself! Lucky you!

Ready? Then let's get right to it! Here we go!

#1: I have an abnormally low LDL cholesterol level, around 40 200 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). This is the so called "bad" cholesterol so this is a good thing. Yep, I'm a medical freak of nature.

#2: If it's summertime, I have cherry pits in my mouth. Continually during the summer months (and whenever I can get them) I eat cherries like they're going out of style and I retain the pits to roll around in my mouth throughout the day. It's a habit.

#3: I sported a mullet for more than 20 consecutive years. It wasn't until about 15 or so years ago I finally gave that hairstyle up. Hey, something works for you? You stick with it.

#4: I cannot eat anything off of a metal surface with metal utensils. There is a coppery, metallic tang in anything that transfers to food metal to metal. It's akin to scraping fingernails on a chalkboard for me. If I'm served on a metal plate, it gets returned. I just can't do it.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO ... !!!

#5: Every time I purchase a pair of shoes, I almost always re-lace them. That's because, for some reason, when they assemble the laces in shoes at the factory the laces constantly begin at the top of shoes going INTO the eyelets. I need those laces coming OUT of the beginning eyelets and doing so with all successive eyelets. No exceptions.

And there you go! Wasn't that fun? And just think: In five more days, on the 10th, you'll get five more pearls of information about yours truly. I know ... the anticipation, it's almost to the point of excruciating. 

Like they say: The waiting is the hardest part ...

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP )

Get Up, Get Going

As I've gotten older I've found - and especially in the last year - my "buddy" Insomnia runs a continuous free-for-all event somewhere inside my body with exactly zero sign of surcease any time in the immediate future. 

For the most part, I don't have a problem with this. I've rarely required much sleep (I subsist on 5-6 hours regularly) and it behooves my schedule for the most part. I'm continuously doing something and, currently, I'm busier than ever. Trips, writing, drawing, various household projects, etc. My hours awake are rarely wasted. And in truth it's rather difficult to accomplish any of my activities while slumbering.

But, Insomnia is a sly, sometimes devious devil. 

With the time change this morning, it was comforting knowing after a pretty full day of outdoor chores I would be relishing in that extra hour of sleep. I beat myself up physically Saturday and I knew my body needed a little recovery time. 

Fat chance I'd be getting it though. I was up just after 3:00 a.m. this morning. And that was prior to changing the clocks. 

I mean ... I don't have a problem getting up early. But I did take a few minutes to consider whether or not I really needed to get the coffee maker running at that hour knowing there was a full day yet ahead ...

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP )

Life ... And The Wonder Of It All

In Life, some things simply aren't able to be explained.

At least not when stumbled on unexpectedly.

What they do is surprise you, then linger, often causing you to ponder them over in your mind.

You might never understand them, no matter how hard you try. Then again, it's possible for you to "get" their message immediately. 

The long and the short of it is this: Take Life with a grain of salt and enjoy the curious, sometimes bewildering wonder it supplies when offered.

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP )

Flawed Logic

... and then this conversation happened this morning ...

"Hey, the time change is this weekend, isn't it?"

"Yes! I'm so excited! That means I won't have to get up as early to drive to Lodi Monday morning!"

"Ermmmm ... actually you will ..."

"No, because of the time change I won't have to."

"Hokay ... so applying that logic, from this Monday forward until the time changes back once again in March next year, I expect you to not say one word about getting up early. Because, you know, you won't be getting up as early. Because of the time change."

" . . . . . . . . . . . . "

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP being a dream crusher )

Here I Go Again ...

Let's get this straight: I'm insane.

I mean, not clinically. Though, to be fair, if you ask a lot of folks I know or who have to associate with me or who have bumped into me during their everyday doings of life, they would probably state otherwise. Other than that? Yes, I'm insane.

Here, I'll prove it to you ...

October just ended. (Duh.) Among the usual riff-raff I decided to join a buddy of mine in a #Drawlloween challenge - 31 drawings, one per day based on prompts he provided. I'd never heard of Drawlloween previously and decided "Why the hell not?" It had been years and years since I did anything and, beside the occasional poster for an event or what have you, I hadn't sat down with pen and paper in 20+ years. Not seriously, at any rate. A challenge like that would expose a lot of what I needed to learn and improve on. Besides, It will be fun!" I told myself, all the while knowing deep down I was fooling my myself.

Long story short, yes ... it was fun. I learned (and relearned) a lot of things, including directions I want to go with drawing. I learned a few techniques I want to improve on and boy, do I need improving. The down and dirty: I survived the challenge.

So, here we are in a fresh new month: November. And, once more, I've been invited on another challenge, a continuing art contest, to again draw and post an image a day based on prompts for a nifty little cause, #crystalvember, in support of a lady currently fighting cancer. It's back to the drawing board for me!

My first #crystalvember entry, "T Rex Skull"

(... but ... you never would have known that ...)

 
But wait ... that's not all!

Additionally, it's National Blog Posting Month (better known as #NaBloPoMo) and, once again, I'm challenging myself to submit a blog post each and every day in the month of November.

If that wasn't enough, I'm doing these two events knowing I won't be home a third of the month. That's right, for at least 10 full days I'll be on the road visiting several (5!) different states and sleeping in places where I probably won't get a decent night's rest ... which in turn will further complicate my circadian rhythms and mess further with my insomnia.

But who needs sleep anyway? If I'm up and awake it just means I have more opportunities to create and get things done, right? Where's the down side? Besides, I can sleep when I'm dead.

So here I go. Busy as a beaver with strict scheduling being the first order of each day. Offer good thoughts to me in my effort to keep up ... and keep sane.

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP )