Mortaine’s Blog

I’m on the NaNo Q&A on NaNoWriMo’s website today.

Californians: Today is the LAST DAY to request an absentee ballot! Absentee ballots need to be RECEIVED by your district on or before Tuesday, November 2nd. Postmarked by Nov. 2nd is not sufficient (only military personnel may use postmarks for absentee ballot deadlines). The election is in one week, so if you are planning to request an absentee ballot, you will probably want to go down to your county building and do it in person. You can deliver your voted absentee ballot to ANY ballot box in your county on election day, if you don’t think the post will deliver it in time. You may also have someone else deliver your ballot for you, but you need to fill out an affidavit on the envelope authorizing them to do so. ALL ABSENTEE VOTERS: Make sure you sign your absentee ballot!

In fact, if you do request your absentee ballot in person, you might just find that your county building has a vote early option that you can use. I’ll be voting this Saturday morning; Santa Cruz County has early voting at the county building in the County Clerk’s office. Since I’ll be busy all day on Election Day, I figure I’ll get this out of the way early.

A lot of people don’t know about early voting options. Call your county clerk if you’re interested and don’t know if your county offers this service. Santa Cruz and Santa Clara Counties in California both offer the service and have their early polls open this weekend as well as normal business hours during the week.

Sims 2: Bush and Kerry

So…. very…. wrong. Yet funny!

So, last night I went to the South Bay Meet & Greet, and felt like a total loser cause I had to leave about 10 minutes after it started, so I could get to my MRI on time. Ah, well.

I went in and had MRIs done on both of my feet. Each foot took about 45 minutes, and my upper torso was left out of the machine, so I didn’t have any weird claustrophobia. I listened to music. For the left foot, she put on a CD of piano music, all showtunes and movie tunes (such rollicking hits as “My Heart Will Go On” and “Memories”). Sigh. Anyway, I kept falling asleep. This would have been fine, except she was very clear– I was not to move during the scans. And when I fall asleep, my muscles twitch involuntarily. When I kept drifting off and waking up because my legs had moved, I made a more diligent effort to stay awake.

There was a short intermission between my left foot and my right, so I stretched and went to the bathroom, and requested some rock and roll so I could stay awake. She put on a rock station and I went back into the machine. About 4 songs in, the station abruptly changed…. to Delila. AUGH!!! Sappy love songs and god-blessings! I swear, at one point I thought the tech had put the piano CD back on in the background or something– but no. Delila had put the piano version of “My Heart Will Go On” in the background of her own show. What kind of monster would do that?! Again, I struggled to stay awake.

Drove home, listening to Loveline (mostly– it fades out as you get towards the hill). John had left dinner in the fridge and had fed the pets for me, so I came in, flopped onto the couch, ate a bit, and went straight to bed.

Today, I’m really tired. It started raining this morning at about 1:30 or so, and I had to drive to work through the nasty first-serious-rain-on-a-workday of the season. I just had to drop down to 40 mph, though; no severe accidents or fallen trees to worry about.

And today I’ve got writer-lunch at 1 and a crochet lesson after work (I’m teaching someone, not the other way ’round).

Oh, good thing about last night: my NaNoWriMo t-shirts arrived in the mail! Mine is the one with the superman-like logo, and I also bought a “I’m a lover not a writer” shirt for John.

If you live in California and have not registered to vote since your last move, please do so today.

Today is the deadline to register to vote in California!

The last day to send in your absentee ballot request is October 26th.

Also, if you registered outside a Safeway or on-the-street and did not mail your registration in personally, please contact your county elections office to verify that you are actually registered to vote. This will help prevent snafus at the polls on November 2nd. Your voter registration information is a public document, and you can call your county clerk directly to find out. Keep your registration receipt when you register. If your registration doesn’t go through, you will need it on election day to force your county to count your vote.

Even if you don’t plan to vote, please register anyway– you might learn in your voter information packet about a local initiative that’s important to you and which isn’t covered in the press. And if you don’t plan to vote because you’d like a “None of the Above” option, consider voting anyway– you can always write-in your candidate, and you can always skip ANY question or office on the ballot without invalidating the rest of your ballot.

Among your voter rights in California, you have the right to cast a provisional ballot on election day. This means that, if you go to the polls and are not on the roster, you can vote with a provisional ballot. In Santa Cruz county, where we use paper ballots, your ballot will be placed in a secrecy envelope that will then be put into a second envelope, where you will write your name and address and sign it. The clerk will write in an explanation for why you are voting provisionally (not on the roster, has moved, etc) and your vote will be placed in a separate envelope. A provisional ballot is not counted on election day. Instead, it will be verified by the county clerk’s office, who will check to make sure you didn’t vote elsewhere in the county that day, and that you are eligible to vote in this election. Your vote will then be counted. You can follow-up on the status of your provisional ballot, and, if it was declined, you may challenge that decision and sue to have it counted.