As You Go A-Voting

     Remember to vote just the once, if indeed you vote at all.  Edgar Allen Poe may have died of over-voting and a careful search through the tinfoil-hat sites of Left and Right will likely unearth at least one suspiciously-vague tale of modern fraudulent voters being led to slaughter and dumped in an anonymous ditch once their usefulness has passed.  Don't be like them:* vote no more than once and be on the qui vive when you do!
_____________________________________
* This also includes not being the flamboyantly imaginary product of a disordered mind.  Avoid that; it can't possibly be nice.

Yes, It's Swing Shifts

     And thus I am awake at what, to most people, is the middle of the night, or at least very late.  It's early from where I sit, though none too early; there's breakfast in front of me (simple "breakfast hash" of fried potatoes, bacon and an egg), a couple of pairs of jeans in the dryer, and an entire Monday ahead, stretching out for hours.  Of course, to me it's "Tuesday," since I had Monday on Sunday, and no Sunday at all.

     For two pins, I'd bundle up and ride the scooter -- at least until I remember the several pins in my knee and the difficulty of reading downtown's pockmarked road surfaces by headlight and streetlight.  It's chilly enough to keep all but the most desperate of desperadoes indoors, and that's kind of tricky to weigh, too.  Four and a door feels safer than two and none, though it is largely a notional sort of safety. Tuesday may rain but the remainder of the week is forecast to be sunny and seasonal.

Go Team Us!

     On Saturday, Tam and I managed to rake up all the leaves, bag all of them in the front and side yards, and mow the front and side yards.  That's more than I thought we'd manage.

     Still to be done, bagging the back yard leaves and mowing that part of the lawn.  Also some string-trimmer work along the fences and the stubby driveway.  And I think we have two piles of leaves raked from along the curb to bag, since the City only runs a street-sweeping machine on our street twice a year, if that..

Another One-Day Weekend, Another--

     Oh, screw this.  I have leaves to rake and a litter box to change.  I had hoped to do something almost NaNoWriMo-ish this year, but between the demands of work* and me being too flippin' much of a sensitive snowflake, that is looking unlikely.

     Life's tough all over and mine, sucky though it can be, is of such relative luxury that 99% of the human beings who ever lived would think I was royalty.  Three generations back, my ancestors had dirt floors and relived themselves in a hole in the ground -- if they were lucky.  Luckier still if they got the Sears catalog. So waah, and move on.
_________________________________
* I have two "number-one priority" tasks at present, each very time-intensive, and it depends on complex alignments among my bosses and their bosses which one I work on at any given time.  Then I'm often the only person in the Engineering shop, and a fair amount of our work is walk-in, along the lines of, "Hey, I need this widget for something that has to get done today, but all the knobs fell off and it came apart.  After I tried to get the mud out of it...  Oh, from when it went into the swamp...   Because my dog was chewing on it, and when I chased him, he ran down there.  That was after I plugged it in and sparks came out.  I need it in fifteen minutes." or, worse yet, we get jobs over the intercom or PA system, "Engineering to Room B," and you run down there empty-handed, to learn that a programming error has run two very expensive robots into one another and they need to be back online right now! Then when I return to the workshop, one of my three bosses is there and I get a stern look or a talking-to about Staying On Task.  I smile and thank them for doing such a nice job of riding herd on scatter-brained little old me.  Why?  Because it pays the Big Bucks, or as big as spinster with no formal education has any right to expect. But wow, some days I hate it from the flower right down to the roots, and every night I grind my teeth in my sleep.

Compare And Contrast

     From the lede para. of a 2014 Slate article on Global Warmening:
     "...[N]onindustrial areas, such as Greenland and the Antarctic, experience the industrial pollution generated in the United States and in Russia, to mention just two countries."

     Why, those filthy, black-hearted bastards in the States and Russia!  Don't they care about the starving poor in, oh...China?*

     From a 2014 article at eia.gov:
    China produces and consumes almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined

     Hey, kids, do you know what's the dirtiest stuff you can burn to make energy? ...Coal. And did you know which country does the least amount of stack scrubbing to clean that stuff up? C'mon, guess.

     Life's tough.  It's tougher if you're stupid.
_______________________________________
* In fairness, the article does make passing mention of China's emissions, three paragraphs down, though it fails to point out that country's commanding lead in pollution production.

Conversation In The Washroom

     So there I am at work, washing my hands, when one of my friends -- I'll just call her "D," since that's not any of her initials -- steps up to the next sink over and remarks, "This election's getting close, isn't it!"

     I roll my eyes, "Ohgawd, we're really doing this next Tuesday, aren't we?"

     She laughs, "No, I mean it's neck and neck.   ...But I see your point."

     I laugh too.  "And yours.  Either way, a lot of people aren't gonna be happy."

     Wednesday, look for monumental hangovers.  At best.

And In Sports News

     I'm told some not-really-local sportsball team named after a baby creature, a team widely followed hereabouts despite greater proximity to a different, red-legged sportsball franchise, has done something unusual by winning an end-of-season competition they had not won in 108 years.  Also, there's another thing about a goat, I'm not sure what -- perhaps they serve goat meat at the arena, or use them to crop the playing surface?  Anyway, I'd like to express my congratulation's to Chicago's Immature Animals, and to all of the Immature Animal sportsball fans!

     ...I hope all of you realize this comes at a cost, as it is A Sure Sign Of Doom and there's still a giant meteor hurtling in our general direction, possibly marked "C.O.D., Earth."

Today's Post

     Posting today was much delayed by an early start occasioned by my car going into the shop, followed by what I am embarrassed to admit was my first motor scooter commute of the year.

     A slightly scary commute, too, headed to the North Campus in gusty winds: three bridges and one overpass, not including the canal, and doesn't the wind just howl at every crossing!  But I made it, with a very heavily-laden scooter: purse, briefcase, lunch box plus some parts for the too-often-ignored machinery at that site.

     An hour shy of lunchtime, the garage called.  My car was done.  Took it in for routine service plus what sounded like a hole in the exhaust system, possible brake issues and a sidelight that needs replaced (someone scraped it and broke it.  I have the new part but it's a mystery how to install it).  So, what was the verdict?  Brakes, a-okay.  Exhaust, just a little flex section that needed replaced.  Oil change, fine. Light, oh hells no, you have to pull the entire bumper cover; their advice was, "Have a body shop do it."  Cost of all that was reasonable.  But there was one more thing wrong: tires.

     The tires have been questionable for some time: deep cracks in the sidewalls.  Yeah, deep dry rot: they were dying of old age.  They also weren't very grippy, even for little-old-lady, city-driving values of "grippy."  It's an RX300, with big SUV-sized wheels, and that meant I dropped about six and a half C-notes on new shoes for baby.  Ouch. 

     Big ouch.  Beats the heck out of skidding sideways through an intersection saying bad words, or trying to change a tire by the side of the road with the delightful kit of tools found in most modern cars.  Gotta go back in Monday or Tuesday and have 'em check lug nut torque, just to be on the safe side.

     Anyway, I was happy to avoid evening rush hour on two wheels; I left most of the cargo at work, scootered home and Tam ran me to garage, where I picked up my now-quiet car and returned to work.  Wow, it's like driving a Lexus or something.

The Aggressive Vine In Question

     I wasn't entirely accurate on the leaves, they're a little saw-toothy and tend to grow in pairs:

     The smaller ones are about 3/4 of an inch long, call it 18mm if you lean that way.  Any ideas?  The stem grows lots of fine, aggressive roots on a vertical surface, and it makes long horizontal runs just under or just above the soil.  The stem gets brittle as it grows larger.

Making A List, Checking It Twice

     I printed out my ballot listing and made a set of first-round selections.  Most of them are easy choices, since the majority of downticket contestants are not particularly rabid and they're generally upfront about their positions if you do a little research.  --Not that you'd know that from the TV ads, which rarely mention party affiliation unless it's already well-known.

     Democrat Evan Bayh is a sort of kindly-seeming Bond villain, a second-generation U. S. Senator who moves in a cloud fragrant with entitlement and toes the party line while trying maintain a crumbling facade of being a good old aw-shucks Hoosier youth.  He is waging a vicious smear campaign with Republican Todd Young, a fresh-faced former Marine hoping to move from the House to the Senate.  If you went by the ads, you wouldn't vote for either one, though Bayh seems to have been up to a little more barely-okay stuff than his challenger.  Meh.  I went by which one I can trust on firearms laws and invasive government, which gives Young the edge.  Remember, kids, the President gets up to all kind of highly visible nonsense but he doesn't make laws; it's the House and Senate that can really mess things up long term for you and me, usually with POTUS as a distraction.

     The U. S. House race has been much more quiet, perhaps because incumbent Susan Brooks and Democrat Angela Demaree haven't got up to much in the way of mischief.  Or -- hey, it could happen -- perhaps they've got more decorum than the boys tussling over the lucrative Senate seat.  The LP has a horse in that race but Matthew Whittlief is starting way back.  Brooks is a known quantity in a pretty safe district and I'm betting we'll see her win.

     Down the ballot, the GOP is running a Ruckleshaus for state senate, a long-familiar last name in Indiana politics, and I need to see what he's about.  I'm leaning towards the LP's Zachary Roberts on anti-dynastic grounds, but I'm persuadable.

     Way, way down, we've got the non-partisan Indianapolis Public School Board at-large candidates.  Most of them have barely a web presence and their mailers are long on pretty pictures and empty phrases.  I try to find the one who has done the most public service with the greatest amount of "sweat equity," with an eye towards small businessmen over rising politicians (though there's a lot of overlap).  It's a thankless job and you need people who understand there's hugely more work to it than headlines.

     We've also got a couple of ballot questions, one on a state constitutional amendment preserving the right to hunt and fish -- a resounding Yes from me -- and the other wanting to establish a special tax for the city to replace a crummy, low-use bus line with a crummier, dedicated-lane electrified bus line with the main purpose of shuttling hipsters and old yuppies between downtown and Broad Ripple.  This line will tear up College Avenue, my main route to work, for a year or more, permanently remove one lane* from it, and stuff big bus stops into the center at numerous intersections.  People who park on the street will lose spaces, which will hurt the various small businesses. No, No and Hell No.

     There are a lot of other offices up for grabs.  Assume I'll be voting Libertarian by default -- and I never vote to retain a judge. If that was supposed to be a lifetime job, Your Honor, the legislature would have made it a lifetime job.  They did not.
_______________________________________________
* To be fair, we only have three lanes on College Avenue because there used to be streetcar tracks up the middle.  We did not, however, had big ugly streetcar stops up the middle; the thing just stopped and people got on or off.  If it was raining, they carried umbrellas and they always wore hats.  Also, the streetcars carried low- and middle-wage workers between home and work, not from one area of trendy bars and hip apartments to another area of the same.

Meanwhile, On The Herbacious Border

     That's not Virginia Creeper in my yard.  Not even close.  Glossy dark-green pointed-oval, smooth-edged leaves with paler veins that grow singly is what I have, and nasty penetrating tendrils on it.  But Virgina Creeper has five leaves, each a sawtooth-edged pointed oval, and uses little sticky pads to hang onto the wall or whatever; it's considered relatively harmless, though you can't pull it loose without damaging the surface -- you have to cut the root, and then it will fall off on its own.  There's a little of the five-leaved stuff around Roseholme and it's well-behaved, at least compared to the other stuff.

     So what's infesting my yard, trees, fences and walls?  I don't know for sure.

What's On Your (Indiana) Ballot?

     Find out here!

     I'm not going to tell you "get out there and vote!"  There aren't a lot of good choices this year, especially in the Presidential race.  I wouldn't blame anyone for sitting this one out, or for not voting in contests where you don't feel you have anyone to vote for.  Sure, you can vote against, but that means you're probably still voting for a seriously non-ideal candidate.

     If I had a campaign sign in my front yard, it would read, "LOTSA LUCK."  We're going to need it.

     Bit of history: did you know the U. S. didn't even have secret ballots until the mid-19th Century, and most places hadn't had printed, government-supplied ballots until a few years before that?   At one point, legislators were arguing that voting was a public trust and if you let people vote in secret, they'd only vote for their own self-interest instead of considering the needs of the greater community.  What actually happened was voter turnout began to decline and has declined steadily ever since.  Correlation isn't causation but that one makes me wonder.