Today was a good day.
A. I'm at a stage in my program where that doesn't happen often enough. Pretty much all of October was mediocre. But today I was writing manuscripts and making graphs and spreadsheets and it was clicking.
I don't know what the variable was. Caffeinated lunch? Three-degree improvement in the near-Arctic temperature scheme of my office? Residual high from last night's baseball game? First fall storm of the year? Boots and wool socks that made the three-degree improvement just enough to ward off hypothermia?
Crossing my fingers I can replicate the conditions tomorrow, because Thanksgiving is approaching like a bat out of hell.
B. Hilariously lame: there were two campaign flyers in my mailbox when I got home. At 6:30. On Election Day. It's too late, my friends, but "The Maddison Household" (me. And my... plants? There's my wife, but she's a bobcat) thanks you for outlining your priorities so concisely on the back of your postcard. If only you'd outlined them a little earlier, people might have read them before they voted.
C. Campaign flyers were a waste of trees and postage, because I voted last Friday. We can do that in this state. I waltzed in at 8 on my way to work, doffing my cap in the foyer as one is required to do here, and there was an ancient man standing in the shadowy hall to the left of the door. I was looking around for the polling place sign when he said, "We've been waiting for you." I felt like Halloween had come early.
That early in the morning, I was the only person there to vote. And there were seven polling place workers, drinking coffee. I presented my voter card to one of the laptop-wielding octagenarians, and while he navigated whatever label-printing program he had to deal with, Mr. We've Been Waiting for You informed me that before I could vote he would need to see last semester's grades and an expense report, which they would be sending to my parents.
My knee-jerk response was to point out that I have a little blue card from the state that says I get to vote, and we don't joke about election law, thank you very much, but it was early and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and sweetly informed them that I give grades, I don't recieve them, and my parents haven't bought me anything but Christmas presents for a decade. I know the backpack can be misleading. Eventually they printed my label, affixed it to the voter roll, let me sign, and apologized for not having the pen uncapped for me. What?
They made it up to me, though, while I was standing in the booth giving a thumbs up to my favorite politicians, when one of them said to another, "Marjorie, we're deducting an hour every time you fall asleep over there. You have negative volunteer hours now." I almost messed up voting for my county court judge while trying to stifle a laugh.