HAPPY BIRTHDAY dickcranium

A very happy birthday to a man who admires my kinky exercise habits!! :D

I hope you get loads of kisses, balloons and lots of other fun for your day today!

Getting the Vote Out

I'm 45 years old (almost--13 more days!) I have been voting since 1980. I always vote. For one thing I do believe if you don't vote, you have no right to bitch if things don't go your way. For another thing, I believe at the local levels especially your voice really does count. For three years now, I've lived in Berkeley, but this is the first election here where most of the city council is up for election, including mayor. Tuesday night next week, I'll be sitting in a hotel room in Vegas watching the returns on the Intarwebs and on the news. I'm just that way. I scream and shout and swear over the political arena the way some people do over sports matches. I'm just that way.

Since I am gone over the election I needed to vote early. This would have been the first year I ever had to vote absentee, but I never got my absentee form. I was about to panic when I got onto the web and found I could go to city hall and vote early. I did this last week and I've been meaning to write about it ever since.

As is often the case with me, nothing is ever easy. I went to my 8am pilates class and feeling both tired and perky at the same time (and only on a half cup of stale coffee) I went across Milva to city hall. I gave my name to the clerk and sat down to wait my turn to vote. She called me back up to the desk and confirmed my name and address and then added "You're marked as inactive."

Inactive? I voted in that sham of a special election we had back in March. Did that make me inactive some how? I had received my state voters guide but not my personalized bulletin that should contain my absentee ballot. I told the clerk that and she called the county registrars office. It seems that a few months back when I was in a tussle with the post office regarding the delivery of my mail they just marked EVERYTHING as 'return to sender no forwarding address' and my voter's registration was one of those things returned. I got on the phone with the county clerk and swore I've not moved, I am a resident and eligible to vote. It took 20 minutes of sorting all this before the 'inactive' flag was removed and I was allowed to vote.

The night before I'd gone online and re-read the various issues and made notes. My hand-written notes took a page and a half--front and back. It's a good thing I did. My ballot was TWENTY-FOUR PAGES.

Honestly, I've never had a ballot that long in my life!

There were city officials, school boards, and city measures, county measures, county judiciary, state officials, state measures, state-level judiciaries, and that doesn't even count the special district elections where we have representatives for ACTransit, EBMUD, the East Bay Park district and more.

It took me almost a half hour to vote. I was mentally staggering by the time I confirmed everything and hit the final button.

I met the Enigma for coffee afterward, still reeling from the experience. He suspects such an overwhelming ballot is there to dissuade people from participating in the voting process. I disagree, of course. I've lived in places where most local/regional offices were appointed rather than elected. That definitely cuts down on the number of people you have to research and vote for, but it does allow for a lot of cronyism and local political machine bosses. Having all positions within municipal government elected positions does not guarantee no cronyism, but it does reduce it a bit. The trade-off you get, of course, is a local ballot the size of the SF phone book!

Ah well. I'm done. I voted. I got my sticker. The county knows I'm not 'inactive'. Now all that remains is to sit in my isolated cheering section of the Las Vegas strip, my eyes trained on the results from coast to coast.

Go. Me.

Go. Us.

Meme Seepage

I found this interesting:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
North Central
Philadelphia
The West
Boston
The Inland North
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have?

Thanks to the US Navy and a nomadic upbringing, I was 14 before I lived in an area with a strong regional accent. By then, it was too late for it to really take hold.

Landmark Governement Study Examines Depression.

The final stage of a landmark federal study on treating depression suggests that two-thirds of sufferers eventually can be helped if they are patient enough to keep trying medications until they find one that works.

Thirteen percent of the 123 study participants who did not get better on the first three drugs they tried were helped by a fourth, researchers found.

But there is a downside to so many attempts: The more tries people made, the more likely it was that they later would relapse and slide back into depression.

Interesting. I am on Celexa now. I started six years ago on Xanax, then progressed to Paxil combined with Gabapentin. I have to say I am happiest with Celexa. My level of calm, of peace and contentment is strong. I'm not giddy, euphoric, or manic. I'm simply: happy.