And my driver’s license and my “I voted” sticker. No free coffee at Starbuck’s for me. It’s okay, I had to work anyway.

I was anticipating today’s voting experience with a healthy sense of dread. My polling place aka the Beach Urchins’ elementary school, always has long lines for big elections. I hate to wait. And then there was my horrible experience at the 2006 mid-term election. I honestly can’t remember if I actually voted or not. I’m afraid to click that link myself. The 2004 election is a murky memory of wind, rain, darkness, and people cutting in line. I’m pretty sure I blahgged about it but that was back when I was rolling my own blahg and it isn’t easy to link to a single entry and I just don’t wanna think about it all.

At any rate, last night I was wishing that a regular, under-60, able-bodied bag lady like me could vote by mail in the Great Lake State without lying about her whereabouts on election day. And then, I didn’t manage to get out quite as early as I had wanted to this morning. So. When I got over to Haisley at 6:30, there were approximately 50 people in line* and I reluctantly took my place. Not having a book or knitting or anything, I settled in with my iPhone, trying to download messages from Lizard Breath with umpteen million large bumblebee photos in them. My iPhone was not equal to the task. Just then, somebody said, “Kayak Woman!” Lo and behold, my long-lost buddy Jane, from back in the halcyon days of the Haisley Mafia! My mood totally turned upside down! The weather was beautiful (it’s November and this is Michigan, it could’ve been a blizzard or a tornado or torrential rain or all of the above). People were in good spirits. I was catching up with a friend from the Jurassic Age.

The line got longer and by the time the doors opened at seven, it was all the way down the Haisley driveway and around the corner up Duncan and people in line were speculating that the line would snake all the way up to Miller and around into the Circle Streets. I felt fortunate to have gotten there when I did.

The best news was that I didn’t have any problems voting at all! Well, except that I didn’t manage to snag an “I voted” sticker but that was a minor detail. Froog did NOT eat my ballot. The machine sucked it in and did not spit it back out. I was done. It was 7:40. Yay! I skipped down the same hall I traversed about a billion times back in the day, past a display of “dia de los muertos” artwork, and out the back door, stopping to talk to a teacher along the way. One that wasn’t there when the beach urchins were.

I’ve commented on a smattering of other blahgs with a truncated version of my voting experience today. How was YOUR voting experience? Lines? No lines? Problems? Or not? Early voting?

*Contrary to what one of my “tweets” seemed to imply today, I was *not* the first voter. I was around 55 or whatever (blarg, that’s my upcoming age, sigh). Anyway, I “tweeted” from the hallway when the actual first voter came out. She had arrived at the school at 5:45 AM.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.