The Google Primary Pancake Chicken Penance Rant

I don't think I took any pictures today, so here are two from, um, maybe Sunday. I forget. Yesterday it was pouring rain and cold during the day, but cleared up later. These could be yesterday, except I think I got home later than these shots seem to indicate.

Onward.

I've been trying to post after midnight every night for OCD-level consistency, but clearly it's contributing to my 2 AM and 3 AM arrivals in bed. And I have to be at work before 7 AM for the Chicken...Something meeting. I honestly don't remember the official nickname of it, but it's a sales rally thing. Presumably the mucky-mucks didn't realize when they scheduled it months ago that it would fall on a day reserved for penance and self-denial. It's not the most compatible message to go with the sale of big ticket items! Anyway, while all that is going on I have to park extra-far from my building, so I've been getting my walking in at work, mostly. Poor Tuffy!

I've been staying late to build up comp time for my trip to Gallifrey One in a week and a half, but tonight I left at 5:30 PM to go vote and then eat pancakes at church. I drove to the elementary school as usual, but there was no voting going on there. So I drove home, and John and I both hunted for the sample ballot that listed the polling place. It was a bingo hall, and I'd never seen or heard of it. Google Maps placed it directly under the traffic light at Golf Links and Kolb, and told me to take a U turn at that intersection, with no instructions beyond that. That was supremely unhelpful. It was more like five blocks south of there, almost at the David-Monthan sentry gate. Inside people were milling around, looking at a yellow-highlighted precinct on a large map, trying to figure out whether they were in the right place. I was, and the computer knew it, because I was on the printout.

So I voted, and then drove to the Parish Center, where the Shrove Tuesday pancake supper and informal primary postmortem was already in progress. I was an hour late, and all the food was room temperature by then. But I had fun listening to someone's rundown of Obama biographical highlights, a discussion of whether anyone would even ask who you voted for before dishing out free food at the Clinton primary party, and the consensus that nobody would be devastated if the Other frontrunner won the nomination. Oh, and I also talked birdwatching with the 2nd-most political person in the parish.

John had asked me to bring him some "Catholic pancakes," and I hadn't even said the pancakes were Episcopalian, which come to think of it is kind of a funny line. But there were no pancakes left by 7 PM, not even cold ones. So I stopped off at Denny's and bought him a Grand Slam to go. When I got home he said he was just bantering; he wasn't really asking for pancakes. But he loved 'em anyway.

Meanwhile I heard from my friend in the hospital. She wants to go home, and sounds better than yesterday, but I really don't think she's ready to go anywhere. She was highly amused that Father Smith, with whom I spoke this morning, had trouble working out the proper way to wear a surgical mask when he came to see her. I think she's going to be fine - eventually.

Back at home I tried to get online updates on the primaries. There was a Google Maps thing on which Twitter boxes were popping up every few seconds, supposedly with live political updates and commentary. But it seemed to all be a handful of the same comments over and over. I said a few things on Twitter, and it certainly didn't pick them up on the map! Nor were there any instructions for directing comments that way. Maybe it was broken. They weren't the most globally useful comments anyway, just short versions of a few things I've said here. But the thing is, the eight or so cycling comments on that map thingy weren't terribly useful, either.

Oh, and I did a little editing on chapter seven, before 2 AM for a change.

Bed. Sleep. Now.

Karen