Let's here it for the Boy

Everywhere Bush campaigned, his candidate lost. That worked out well for the rest of us, didn't it. We had good results here too. The Democratic candidate for District Attorney won, in spite of (or maybe because of) the arrogance of the Republican incumbent. I was pleased about that. Very pleased about the governors in Virginia and New Jersey, although they were both incumbents so it's not really a gain, just staying the course. But still...I like to be an optimist whenever I can.

Having my car/horse serviced took forever yesterday, but part of that was getting an estimate on having 2 of the seatbelts in the back seat replaced. "How did they get damaged? Will it be covered under warranty?" Heck no, my dog chewed them. "What kind of dog?" Will I get a discount if I give the right answer? Anyway, it will cost $260 to replace them. They cost $75 each, and the rest is labor. I opted not to have it done yesterday but it took nearly 2 hours for them to service and wash the car. They did a nice job of washing it, though, and they tucked in the broken part of the fender that was hanging out, looking embarrassingly awful. So I drove away a winner, $100.50 poorer but feeling proud of my shiny machine.

I voted on the way home. My polling place is a former one-room schoolhouse, the cutest building you've ever seen. I was voter #95 at 5:45, which is a really high number for an off-year election. After voting I stopped at Ken's because he had his outside light on, which is sort of a signal that he expects me to stop. No, not this time--Bill had stopped after voting and the light was inadvertently left on. I stayed for an hour to visit anyway, got home at 7. The solar warming thing may have worked during the day, but it was only 56 in the living room at 7. It took forever to warm the room but I finally got it up to 70, cranking the fire up to an appropriate 500 degrees. Hooray! This wood doesn't seem to burn very hot so it takes a lot of effort, poking, bellowing (with bellows, not lungs) and arranging the draft to get a hot fire. But I was proudly successful last night.

The dogs were extreme in their "Let's Get Her Out of Bed" routine this morning. Tess hates it when I don't leap out of bed the minute I awaken, so she wants to lick me until I get up. I hate that, being licked in the face. They're not allowed to do that. She'll lick my eyelids--YUCK! Chances likes to hit me hard with her giant paws, than smash on top of my head with her butt as she does her dive and flip routine. So I wanted to lie in bed, pondering the state of the world and the cuteness of the guy who plays Dr. Shepard on Grey's Anatomy. Tess, when yelled at for licking, puts her nose 1/4 of an inch from my face and breathes at it. In and out, in and out warm moist breath. It's really annoying because I'm just waiting for her to lick me. Then the two of them sit up and stare at my head, like a pair of vultures. The are very cute when they do this, really incredibly cute, and I'd love to have a picture of it. They give me the most powerful "get out of bed" laser stares. Tess' final act of desperation is to drag the covers off of my body, which she did this morning. OK, that will do it. The hell with Dr. Shepard. Patrick what's-his-name.

And now I've just been asked to run the report I submitted to the director over, including the figures I deleted. I deleted the stuff that's not done by my department because I didn't want us to take credit for something we don't do. "Oh you're so noble," she said with a smile. But she really wants to know all the activity for the month of October, which is certainly reasonable. So I'll run the report, reformat it and make it look nice again. At least it's not cataloging classical music CD's for Lake Placid.