The Morning After

[ambitious_wench]

It's been a quiet week in my home town, out on the edge of urban sprawl. If there was a Chatterbox cafe here, the regulars would be sitting around nursing cups of coffee with octane levels pushing the upper range of double digits, gnawing on toast that could stand in for dwarf-bread and fried eggs tough enough to shingle roofs.

I had a wonderful time yesterday, cleaning the house and then enjoying the company of my friend Susan and Techi. Tip: Rib eye steak is the unsung and hidden secret of the butcher's trade for grilling. Tender, flavorful and never tough or leathery. Lay a sheer layer of Tony Chachere's Cajun spice on both sidesbefore laying on a grill, and it becomes a delight to the carnivor's pallate.  Food is magic, and the cooking space is sacred. 

Today I'm at work, and the sky is pissing down rain here in Norwich, CT. Outside, swallows fly through the rain drops, aerial acrobats. Long, fast, low runs, pulling up hard and fast to clear the low hedge, curving up in an almost vertical parabola, banking to return on a parallel path low over the same hedge and skimming the leaves of grass with minimal clearance. They delight in the rain, it seems.

panacea1 has written an evocative piece in her Live Journal;  The innocence of fireworks and the horrific reality of war. 

turnberryknkn has proved himself a gentleman, and a gentle man.  I have proved myself incapable of dealing with self-identified fascists. 

I leave work at 1 pm today, and plan to go to one of the local pet and fish stores to buy supplies for the tank that Susan was given for her shop.  I'm looking forward to it.

I worry about the validity of the upcoming elections.  I worry about national security.  I worry about personal freedom, and the delicate balance between the two.  I worry that I will have to live under 4 more years of Bush's bumbling ineptness, and the malicious intent of his lords and masters. 

I worry that I won't be able to register to vote in time in my new jurisdiction when I move in October, that I will fall through the cracks of the electoral process, no longer living in the state I registered in, and not having established residency in my new state.  I worry that my vote won't count in my new state because of the electoral college.  Is CT pretty much sealed and delivered to Bush?  How do I find out?

Gotta love Google: Looks like CT is solidly Democrat Whew.

I find the electoral college baffling.  People elect the president, not states.  The Australian model of voting seems interesting;  Provided every vote is counted, I think a mandatory vote might be a good idea.  I'd want to study how it's done and the pitfalls of it before giving my opinion, of course. 

While was there, I discoverd this gem of an essay

Meanwhile, I'll appreciate the freedoms I do have.  And thank the vets and civil servants who guard and maintain it. 

Comments

[djfiggy.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if Australia uses the Proportional Representation system, but the current Canadian government is looking over that concept. We currently use the "first-past-the-post" system that some people say is woefully outdated. OTOH, it has created strong majority governments for most of the last half of the 20th century (I'm thinking since 1945) and a slight part of the 21st, and if Canada went for a PR system, we'd probably see many more minority governments like we have right now.