Tag: Early Voting

Lost

I had my whole weekend planned out but now that it is here I just feel lost. I need to vote, I need to go grocery shopping, I need to carve the pumpkin I bought last week, I need to see if I can fix the fret buzz on one of my guitars (though the more I read up on possible causes and solutions the more terrified I am to start tweaking a 35 year old instrument).

I mean, my to do list is nice and full… why do I feel lost today? I was hoping a good nights sleep would straighten out my brain but that didn’t help at all. I’m sure it’s nothing and once I get the ball rolling today I will be out of this fog.

I don’t know. We’ll see. Happy Saturday to all of you, and may your personal to do list be full of things that make you happy while being easily achievable. Let’s all have a day full of completed goals, what do you say!

When?

I want to vote tomorrow morning before work, if I can. The early voting polls open at 8:00am. I think I can pull it off. I’m hoping my wife can go with me. If she can’t then it won’t be Friday because of work, or Saturday because of travel, so Sunday?

I won’t be able to play any guitar before work tomorrow if we go to vote. Friday might work. Saturday is highly unlikely. Sunday? Maybe. We’ll have to see.

I took these this morning after finishing my exercise for the day. I thought I might use one for the photo a day thing, but I went with a cat pic from the previous post.

Guitar noodling on Friday. Two days from now. Make it so.

Monday

Two thoughts on baseball. First, the Dodgers won the National League Pennant. Better the Dodgers (who aren’t from New York but used to be) than the Mets (who actually are from New York). When I was a kid there was a stretch of time where the World Series was the fucking Yankees vs the Dodgers over and over again. I just googled it and it was really only twice, 1978 and 1981. They met in 1977 too but that was before I started following the game. Whatever, it feels like the two teams have met in the World Series 10000 times.

Suffice to say that I am totally rooting for the Dodgers even though I really, really hate them. As much as I hate them, I don’t hate them nearly as much as I hate the fucking Yankees. There is no team in the sporting universe that I hate as much as I hate the fucking Yankees. My big question though is why the hell is Major League baseball waiting until Friday to start the series? The match up was set on Sunday and we’re not playing a game until Friday? Is the goal to make sure all of America forgets about baseball completely? Friday? Really?

Super subject change. It is October 21st. Early voting in Massachusetts started two days ago, on October 19th. I have not voted yet. I am hoping to get to it tomorrow (Tuesday). If not it will probably Thursday, or maybe over the weekend. If you live in Massachusetts, maybe you’ll join me in voting early. It’s fun and it takes some of the pressure off, even if the pressure doesn’t really exist and is only in your (my) head due to the whole fascist threat to democracy thing.

Vote.

Vote Blue.

Vote for Harris.

Vote

We are less than a month away from the 2024 Presidential Election where We The People will once again show that fascist piece of shit that we don’t want him around anymore.

I had two questions come to mind that always come to mind just before a big election. One, what is the status of my voter registration. Two, when does the early voting period start.

Massachusetts has handy online tools to answer both questions. First, how’s my registration looking? I went here and found that I am active and all is well, as it should be.

Next, I went here and found the following early voting information:

Early Voting Periods

In-person early voting takes place during a designated early voting period, set by state law.

For statewide elections, early voting periods include guaranteed weekend voting hours for every community.

November Election Early Voting Period: October 19 – November 1

Okay, that sounds good. Now that I knew the dates involved I went to my city’s website to get specifics and found this:

There you have it. If you, like me, live in Methuen, MA… you’re welcome.

Busy Morning

Lots of meetings this morning. Busy busy. Lots of projects. Busy busy.

I have a day off on Thursday. A use it or lose it vacation time kinda thing. I just need to get there. It’s gonna be tough. I have a lot of things on my to do list for that day. A haircut*, early voting**, guitar playing***, maybe some photo walk stuff around town****. Stuff like that. There is also Bond movies. They are leaving Amazon Prime Video in 10 days and I am still only half way through Diamonds are Forever. I am half a movie away from Roger Moore.

Okay, breakfast is almost done, I’ve plowed through last night’s email. Let’s get crackin’ for really reals now. Have a good Tuesday, everyone.

*A side effect of weight loss surgery is hair loss. They told me it starts between three and six months (I’m nearly at six months) and it lasts for 3-4 months (it started about two months ago). Fortunately it will grow back… in theory. I am 51 years old. Maybe it’s just my time. I mean my hair hasn’t gone grey yet, which is miraculous in itself. Maybe my run of good hair luck is coming to an end. For now though, I have been too afraid of losing it to get it cut and it’s long enough to actually look long in the back and it hangs in my eyes. It’s time. It’s time to get it cut.

One other note, when I was a little little pre-school kid my hair was super curly. Somehow as it started to fall out it has also started to get a little curly again. How weird is that?

**I am pretty sure Methuen’s early voting is open on Thursday, I just don’t know where or what time. I think it’s at city hall this time, but I need to figure that out.

***Jen is scheduled to go into the office that day so I should be able to make noise without bothering her.

****I said no film until November but… maybe?

Brain Droppings

Random stuff coming……….

I am very pleased that I was able to cast my ballot in the presidential election early and safely. My state and my city have seriously come through for me in these unhealthy, uncertain times. I am proud of what we the people have accomplished in this regard and I am proud that as an American I was able to have my opinion heard.

However…

The downside of voting early is that November 3rd, election day, is kinda irrelevant to me now. Maybe not irrelevant, but more like unimportant. At least until the returns start coming in. I go on social media and have a thousand people asking thousands of other people, what are your voting plans, or how are you going to vote, or are you excited to vote, or everyone get out the vote, etc, etc, and my response is… been there, done that. I took election day off, just in case. I should have taken the day after so I could stay up all night watching returns. On second thought, that would probably be a bad idea. I tend to get a little… animated when fascism is taking over my country and I don’t want to put any added stress on my ticker, or wake up the neighbors, or anything like that.

Basically though… I’m done, there isn’t much excitement about the process left.

Counting today, there are nine days left in October. At the start of the month I decided I wasn’t going to do an album in a month. A few days ago I changed my mind. I’ve got 10 songs in the pipeline. They are all short. They are all weird. They are all simple things based around little poly-rhythmic tricks, or guitarmonies. I haven’t written any lyrics or melodies yet. None of the songs will be instrumentals, but they will all be mostly instrumentals. There aren’t going to be any hooks. Vocal tracks will be short and simple and lyrics will probably just be a line or two. The point of it all is to hear a guitar playing in 4/4 in your left ear, and a guitar playing almost the same thing in 7/8 in your right ear, and how they occasionally line up with each other. Or, songs where the “melody” is just three guitars with tons of fuzz playing in harmony.

In other words, October Music is Robbie’s “I’ve been listening to King Crimson” month.

I still can’t believe that Massachusetts had 1,000 new Covid-19 cases yesterday. The last time we’d had 1,000 cases was in May. All of the progress we made has been flushed down the toilet. How are we as a society capable of landing a space ship on an asteroid 300 million kilometers away and bring it home with a sample of asteroid rocks, but not able to stay in our houses so we don’t get sick. Why are we incapable of just wearing friggin masks and washing our friggin hands?

I thought I was going to have more this morning, but I’m letting myself get distracted. In closing, let me paraphrase my favorite line from this week’s episode of Archer.

I’m your rampage sherpa.

Talk to you all later. Happy Friday.

Early Voting Recap

Well, I did it.

The early voting poles opened up at 8am. I walked into the side entrance of the Methuen police department at about 8:01. Some towns have lines in the morning, so I didn’t want to risk being late for work. I had nothing to worry about.

You walk in, give your name, they look you up on a little tablet computer thingie… and if you’re me, the send you over to the inactive register table because apparently I never sent in my f*****g city census (mother f*****g city census), so I had to give an ID. Normal people do not need to show an ID. There are signs all over the place saying you don’t need to show your ID. The dude behind me in line? Walked in and without being asked handed over his ID. Insert the sound of an exasperated sigh right here.

So now I am back on the active voter list (grrrrrrr) and I am ready to go. They printed out a little label with the date, the location, my precinct, and my name. They taped it onto an envelope. I then had to put my name and address and my John Hancock onto the envelope. Finally, I get a ballot and off I go, voting against that fascist piece of crap who has no idea what it means to be an American. That orange pile of fascist goo. Then I put the ballot into the envelope, seal it, and hand it over. The pole worker made sure it was signed and sealed, then put it into a box for my precinct.

On November 8, 2016, each box will be delivered to the proper precinct, and then the voter will be checked off again, the envelope will be unsealed, and the ballot will be loaded into the ballot machine. Done and done.

Now that it’s done, we ask the questions: Why did I do it, and would I do it again?

The why is simple. I hate that fascist piece of dog shit who is running on the Republican ticket in place of an actual Republican so much that I simply could not wait any longer. I had to cast the ballot now. The two week wait until 11/8/16 was going to make me lose my friggin’ mind. I am usually a very patient person, but the wait was making me sick. I had to vote early for my own sanity. It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Unfortunately, I now have to wait two unbearable weeks to find out if the fascist lost or not.

Would I do it again? I don’t know. I have to say that my name being attached to the envelope that is currently holding my ballot is bothering me a little bit. The whole idea is a secret ballot. Yes you have to give your name when you vote on the actual election day too, but you do not have to attach your name to the ballot in any way. That’s not the case right now. If some corrupt asshole piece of shit wanted to know who I voted for, he’d just have to find my envelope and look. I don’t like that. On the other hand, I got to vote on my telecommuting day so I had no worries about being late to work because I voted in the morning. I didn’t have to worry about getting stuck in bad traffic and not being able to vote if I had decided to vote after work. My home and office are far enough apart that there is no way I could vote during the work day. I did it at my convenience and didn’t have to worry about anything. I might do this again.

So there is my early voting recap. One vote against fascism down, hopefully millions and millions more will follow.

I’m with her.

Early Voting?

I’m thinking about taking part in the early voting program that Massachusetts made all of the cities and towns set up. Partly because it will let me vote before work on a telecommuting day, but also because I hate the thought of that orange pile of fascist goo winning the election so much that I want to give myself some cushion against something going wrong on election day. Like, what if I get sick and can’t get to the poles? Or what if I have to vote after work but my car breaks down on the highway and I can’t get there.

I haven’t looked at any of the ballot questions yet, but if I can do some research tonight and tomorrow, I might vote against fascism on Thursday. We’ll see.