Julian put our ballots in the drop box at Bothell City Hall last week. They were received at the Board of Elections on Monday, and had been counted on Wednesday.
If you haven’t submitted your mail-in ballot yet, I strongly suggest that you take it to an official drop box. The Postal Service has had difficulty getting mail delivered on time, especially in swing states. (Coincidence?) I’m expecting a package from a business in downtown Seattle that was mailed on Tuesday and still hasn’t arrived yet. Once you submit your ballot, use your county’s website to be sure it arrived in time to be counted. Washington allows ballots to be postmarked by Election Day; however, other states require ballots to arrive on or before Election Day. Make sure your vote is signed, sealed, delivered, and counted.
I know, I should be thankful to have a job where I can work from home. However, seven months of working from home with no end in sight can get anyone squirrelly. You know you’ve been working from home for too long when:
Business casual attire is clean pajamas or sweats.
Casual Friday attire is a 25-year-old Pearl Jam t-shirt you thought you’d thrown out years ago.
You don’t care about the unibrow because your overgrown bangs cover it.
You can’t remember the last time you shaved. (Razor? What’s that?)
The trip to the grocery store is the highlight of your week.
You’re on a first-name basis with the Grub Hub delivery person.
You haven’t had to hit up an ATM for cash or fill up your car’s gas tank for weeks, if not months.
You squint like a naked mole rat that’s come to the surface whenever you go outside.
You choose your virtual meeting background to send subliminal messages to your coworkers.
Paris, Hawaii, or some far-flung place. Damn pandemic! I’m supposed to be here right now!
Kitchen. It’s lunchtime. Let’s wrap up this meeting already!
Bedroom. What’s up with a 7 am meeting? Or, I live with stir-crazy banshees trying to do online school in the living room.
Outdoors. My home is a pit.
Bookcase. Look at this! I’m so well-read! (Never mind that I can’t get rid of anything, even my college textbooks or documentation for Windows 95, and I’ve never cracked the spines on many of these books.)
As I’ve mentioned before, Washington is a 100% vote by mail state. This is a highly civilized way to do things. You can sit at the kitchen table with the voters’ guides and your beverage of choice while you fill in the ballots. The state even picks up the tab for postage. Not only is this method civilized, it’s far less prone to the chicanery that can occur with other voting methods. There is a paper trail to confirm a voter’s choice. No hanging chads, either. We can track our ballots with the number on the stub that detaches from the sheet.
Our ballots arrived today. Both of us completed voting by 7:30 pm. Julian will take the ballots to the drop box at City Hall, to make sure that they get to the Board of Elections. Although Washington allows ballots to be counted as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day, we don’t want to take chances.
Whoever you choose to vote for, vote as early as you can and make sure your ballot is counted. If you don’t exercise your right to vote, you lose your right to complain afterward if things don’t go your way.
The fall onslaught of rain has begun here. We’re supposed to have back to back to back storms that are predicted to dump an inch of rain each. This afternoon’s storm had thunder, lightning, and hail. These are not usually part of fall rain in the Seattle area.
When the weather turns soupy, my thoughts turn to making soup. Last night’s soup was my reliable hot and sour Cambodian fish soup. Julian actually suggested making it. The recipe calls for catfish, but I refuse to pay $14 a pound for what upstate New Yorkers call bullheads. Rockfish is half the price and works just fine in this recipe.
Tomorrow I may make lentil soup and serve it with the rye bread I made today with Yeast Mode.
What’s up with all of the beards I’ve seen during the pandemic? Have razors become the latest shortage? Politicians like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, although Paul subsequently got rid of his. (One unruly mop of hair on his head was probably enough.) Football players. Apple Store employees.
The preponderance of facial hair can make it difficult to fit a mask properly. When we were at the Apple Store last week, about half of the male employees had bushy beards that pushed out their masks. This should be concerning, especially in areas where social distancing may not be feasible.
A friend of mine is a pediatrician who’s had a beard for 40 years. He recently downsized to a goatee to make sure his face masks would fit snugly when he saw patients and their parents. A word from a wise man.
Autumn arrived with a deluge right on the equinox. It rained most of the week. The Sun finally peeked out late on Friday. The plants on the upper deck are waterlogged. I think I’ve harvested the last padron peppers of the season. The tomatillo and golden berry plants did nothing. I should probably finish off the basil with one last batch of pesto. The only herbs showing much are the parsley and Vietnamese coriander. As many teams and farmers have said, wait’ll next year.
It’s getting harder and harder to look on the bright side of life these days. As I type, the death toll due to Covid-19 in the US has surpassed 200,000. The Federal Government can’t get its act together to put out science-based guidelines for states to follow, let alone approve aid for those who need it most. Many small businesses have given up, including my hair salon and dry cleaner. Here in the Northwest, wildfires are causing mass evacuations and hazardous air quality.
Last Friday was a rough one. I was finishing up work when my cell phone pinged with the news of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death from pancreatic cancer. The knowledge that this president would try to put another Justice on the Supreme Court in the midst of an election campaign was frightening. Julian was close to tears. My first comment was, “And Canada won’t let us in.” Our response was to stay glued to the television news, similar to what we did on September 11, 2001. I picked up our usual Friday night takeout. (In an eerie parallel to our 9/11 dinner, I went to a fish restaurant.) Julian uncorked a bottle of white wine and declared, “This won’t last the night.” It didn’t.
In the words of the late John Lewis, who also succumbed to pancreatic cancer, it’s time to get into some “good trouble.” Work for candidates who will uphold the legacy of Justice Ginsburg. Contribute money to these candidates. Vote, and encourage your friends and family to do so. Take advantage of early voting. We need to get our optimism about our country back.
Arts organizations have had a rough time during this pandemic. Our spring Seattle Symphony concerts were canceled. We signed up for this season’s concerts back in March, before we knew that Covid-19 would hang around in the fall. Our first concert is tonight, but we won’t be going to Benaroya Hall for it. We will watch a live stream at home. The upsides: No line for the restrooms during intermission, and better coffee for Julian.
Back in the 1980s I bought several booklets from Garden Way Publishing, now a part of Workman Press. Garden Way specialized in increasing self-sufficiency. Not only did it publish cookbooks and booklets, but it published gardening and animal husbandry titles as well. Now that Yeast Mode has a prominent place on my counter, I’ve utilized the sourdough booklet extensively. I’ve made bread, cake, cobbler, and pancake recipes out of it. A fine return on an investment of $1.95.
This has been the summer of our discontent here in the Northwest. The pandemic threw any vacation plans into the dumpster. Now we have wildfires up and down the West Coast. The nearest fire to us is in Enumclaw, in southern King County; however, easterly winds are carrying smoke from the other side of the Cascade Mountains here. The view from our living room looks like a dreary December day without the rain. Air quality is very unhealthy. The poor air quality may increase susceptibility to Covid-19, to make matters worse. The only upside is that the heavy smoke cover has kept outdoor temperatures cool, so folks without air conditioning can keep windows shut without suffocating heat.
Recent Comments