NoJo Weekend

I went to a birthday party this weekend.  At Chuckie Cheese.  I warned the wife to avoid touching her face until she got home and boiled her hands and that was my plan too.  I must have slipped up.  Maybe I felt a stabby pain in my eye or maybe I covered my mouth if/when I sneezed, but I think I broke my own rule.  Now I’ve got a tickle in my throat and some post nasal drip going on.

I think I’ve got the Chuckie Cheese virus and it’s spread by (literally) snot nosed kids.  Aw, that’s just gross to think about.

The grandsons celebrated their third and first birthdays running around fueled by sugar.  I will admit that the cake was quite cute with mountains, stalks of grass, railroad tracks and Thomas.  Is it Thomas the Engine?  I don’t even know.  At three-years old, any train with a face seems to be Thomas.

That evening, our foreign exchange student and a friend arrived for a short visit.  It’s been 15 years since we sponsored her (wow, that seems like a long time ago) and now she’s spending three years in Boston doing research in microbiology.  She’s a smart one.  She and her friend travelled from Boston to New York, just in time for Sandy’s arrival.  The friend they were bunking with said "come on down, it won’t be as bad as all that."  She confirmed that it was as bad as all that, and worse.  They were in lower-mid-town, originally two blocks from the East River and ten floors up.  The building’s basement flooded and there was a foot of water on the first floor.  The power plant a few blocks away had several explosions (transformers?), but their power had already gone out.  They arrived too late to catch the Chuckie Cheese virus, so they avoided at least one disaster this weekend.

I have a several hour meeting tonight at my polling place to set up the signs and put tape on the floor to direct the flow of traffic, and open up the polling booths and set up the pollbooks to check in voters.  Then, it’s up early tomorrow morning to be at the poll before it opens to do the last minute check lists and have everything ready when the doors open precisely at 7am.  I’ll work the poll until after closing (8pm) and we’ll take down everything and return the polling place to the all purpose room of the local elementary school.

The good news is that I get the day off from work and it doesn’t count as a personal day.  My employer actually encourages employees to volunteer at the polls, not as campaign workers but as poll workers.  The other good news is that I get paid by the board of elections for the training time, set up time and election day time.  If I remember correctly, I’ll get either $100 or $150.  Ain’t democracy the bestest?

I got a little geeky (geekier?) and made my own election return watching spreadsheet.  A column for the state names, a column to indicate which of the two major candidates should win/does win that state and the number of electoral college votes for that state.  I’ve been keeping an eye on the polling that is compiled by FiveThirtyEight, but when I put the numbers in myself, and played around with a couple of scenarios, the probable result became very clear.  I’m not sure why Mitt hasn’t strapped the dog to the roof of the car and headed on down the road.  The only possible glimmer of hope that I see for the Republican ticket is if the entire Northeast, from Delaware to Maine and west to Illinois, has a delayed reaction to Sandy, breaks off and sinks into the ocean.  Even with Ohio, Mitt has to win states that aren’t the slightest bit red.

Other than that, I’ve got nothing to write.

Ender is out.