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Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Can I breathe now? Just about 11:45 p.m. EST as I start writing this; the polls closed in Hawaii forty-five minutes ago, and if anyone anywhere in the country is still voting, it's because they've been waiting for hours and they can't legally be turned away if they were physically in line when the polls closed. I've been trying very hard to avoid any news, but I couldn't miss this when I went online: my swing state of residence, Pennsylvania, has apparently gone blue. It got its very own New York Times news alert e-mail and a "Top News" blurb on the AOL welcome screen. (Red letters and all: Top News: Kerry Wins Pennsylvania.) Gosh, I feel so symbolically relevant. Overall, however, J. and I set about attaining an absolute minimum of political blather awareness: we avoided every part of the 6 o'clock network news except the local weather forecast, and J. bought some pure-entertainment DVDs on the way home. We wound up watching "Hellboy"—my comment: "Oh, good, something that has nothing at all to do with presidential politics." Pause. "I hope." (Not that I'm saying either candidate is the spawn of the devil...hey, look, a squirrel! [runs]) We watched that till 10 p.m., then switched to the Daily Show election day special ("Prelude to a Recount"); in the process, I consumed an entire bottle of red wine and a Lean Cuisine pepperoni pizza; J. made roast lamb, which took a few hours to cook, and which I'm happy to let him eat all of. We watched the Daily Show, then I dashed up to the office to avoid TV news (I think I hear pundits downstairs). I don't want to know, I don't want to know...not till it's a) certain or b) tomorrow morning, whichever comes first. Random thing of the day: The bird seems not to have liked the Vote t-shirt at all; I think the strong "V" shape may have triggered her Hawk Panic reflex. (Descended from a long line of domesticated budgerigars she may be, but she still freaks out when she sees anything that conforms to the "above me and spread-wing-like" or "near me and squiggly" paradigm—the hawk panic and snake panic reflexes.) She wouldn't step on my hand, fly to my shoulder, or even look at me straight until I changed into another shirt; then she resumed her usual practice of spending as much time as possible on my head, in my hair, clinging to my clothing, and chirping at my jewelry. (You want the maximum amount of pet for the minimum price and total weight, get a parakeet. Our bird is friendly, intelligent, beautiful, interactive, entertaining, and she cost all of $12.99; she's ten pounds of pet in a thirty-gram bag.) Between interruptions, browser crashes, and my insanely-slow dial-up connection, it's 12:50 now. Still haven't looked at the electoral vote maps or exit poll predictions. I'll have to eventually, I guess. Well, not if I post this fast and don't let my browser homepage open. (Depending on how able I am to get to sleep, I might sneak back online at 3 a.m. or so and see how things are going.) But, no matter what: It's past midnight, EST; it's past the official poll-closing time, HAST (Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time); we made it. And, um, we'll all respect each other in the morning, right? See you tomorrow. Don't stay up all night. (Unless you're on the night shift, of course.) And if we're lucky, we'll do this again in four years! [ at 12:52 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] |
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