Grr

So, after what I can only call excessive drama, I am back online with a new Sony Vaio, with all the fun of reauthorizing Office 2010, reinstalling iTunes, reinstalling Yahoo, and so on (yes, yes, folks, this time I will remember AIM....)

I couldn't help remembering when I was a little girl and I could just pull my brand new circus train right out of the box and begin playing with it right under the interested eyes of a small brother and a big dog* without having to do anything else. Of course, the small brother in question began to eat the little animals on the circus train, which created its own drama, and so far, aside from a small incident where the little one sat on the wireless router just as the computer was attempting to confirm that yes, yes, I did in fact purchase a copy of Microsoft Office 2010 and am not just an evil, evil person attempting to steal products, but rather a person trying to add words to a few novels that currently kinda need time and attention, this new computer has created considerably less drama.

So far. I'm feeling a bit pessimistic with computers these days.

* Those of you who can remember or who have seen pictures of this particular dog, Ami, will no doubt point out that Ami was not, in actual fact, a big dog, but rather a little basenji who was particularly skilled at curling up near radiators, but I will just point out that I was a small child, so Ami was big to ME.

Early voting

In other news, we went ahead and did early voting again today.

Same place as when I last did early voting - the West Oaks library over in Ocoee, near a combined Baskin-Robbins/Dunkin Donuts that seemed to be yelling, quite loudly, "Come! Eat us!" We actually managed to resist the call. (Mostly because you can't take ice cream into the library.)

Quite a contrast from the last time, which was early voting for a presidential election, with lines stretching way, way outside and up a hill and everyone eager and excited. This time, the number of volunteers about equaled the number of voters, and everyone except the volunteers seemed kinda depressed. (In my own case part of this was from realizing yet again that the West Oak library does a much better job of organizing DVDs than the Winter Garden branch does. )

Afterwards, I put on my little "I voted" sticker, and ran into a Potential Voter.

"There's an election today?" she exclaimed.

"Well, early voting," we explained. "The actual election is Tuesday."

"Wow," she said. "I didn't hear about it. So...who do you think I should vote for?"

Since this was primarily a primary election (I'm a registered non-partisan, but showed up for the supposedly non-partisan Orange County Mayor vote since that's all about the bus system) and I had no idea what party she was registered for, this was a slightly difficult question to answer, especially, as it turned out, she was unaware that yes, yes, Florida will be voting in a new senator and governor this year. I went with, "Anyone but Rick Scott," (who may be running the most irritating and offensive television ads, bar none, that I've seen in a history of excessively irritating and offensive television ads).

"I'm really interested in education," she told us.

"Well, most politicians will at least say they're interested in education," said my brother.

Did I mention that in this election, which she was unaware of, we are also voting in new members of the (generally irritating) Orange County School Board?