Chili's Closes / Working Boise Election Night
First up, I need to say goodbye to a beloved hangout I've had for the last 3 years: Area Chili's Restaurants Abruptly Close.
Monday evening earlier this week, 6 of the 8 Portland-area Chili's Restaurants closed forever without any warning, leaving more than 100 people suddenly out of work. Almost every Thursday night since about the middle of 2005, I've joined a couple Portland friends in going to the Hillsboro Chili's just off Cornell at US26 for 9 PM happy hour. Over the years, we've had lots of good times at the restaurant and as time went by it became less and less about the food and more about being with friends and catching up on the week's activities. Our favorite server, a guy named Josh, was the true draw and an entertaining dude. If he wasn't there one Thursday, we'd go somewhere else. That's how important he was to the experience. We were his regulars and he always said that when we show up Thursday nights, it means his day is winding down and the evening rush is over. Going to Chili's every Thursday was a ritual tradition that started around four years ago when my sister, Val, and her then-boyfriend, Franko, found the place and met Josh. Since then, there have been other regular characters too like the bar-flower, Tara, who liked to flirt with the random guys who happened in. There was also a group of business geeks who'd come in dressed for business with their laptops in tow and abuse the free Wi-Fi all evening. And who could forget the generous drunks who'd tip in hundreds of dollars before being kicked out for being loud? Good times. Hundreds of good times, in fact.
Franko and I have spent the last few days trying to think of another hangout but it's depressing. To make matters worse, in the four years they've been going to Chili's, no one thought to get Josh's contact information. It would have been nice to have kept in touch and follow him to whichever restaurant he gets employed by next (If he chooses that route) but who saw this coming? Before I left for Boise, I properly thanked him for years of camaraderie and said goodbye but I think we all knew I'd be back at least once one day and I don't think anyone got to really say goodbye to everyone. It's just a shock. Like a clubhouse being torn down.
So while that nonsense is going on in Portland, I'm over here in Idaho greasing the wheels of government:
Tuesday night from about 7 PM to 1 AM, I was a deputized election official for Ada County, Idaho. The state was having another primary/caucus-type election and the most populous county in the state (Which contains Boise) needed lots of help counting and dealing with ballots. Jaci was signed up to join me but she got home from work that night and crashed. In all, we were about 200 people in a warehouse moving ballots from one section to another in a very efficient but slow manner. Even though I got there on time, there were already over a hundred people there and waiting for work so I didn't get a place to sit at one of the many sorting tables. Things didn't get really moving until 8:30 after we were all deputized (That's "Deputy Rabbit," to you, punks!) when ballots began arriving in black rectangular precinct boxes from the polling places.
An organizer approached me and asked if I had anything to do as I was one of the last people sitting off on my own looking lonely. She placed a woman and me at a table to perform "Jogging and Staging," which was the most lively of jobs that night. Here's the process from the beginning- Ballots would enter the building and be hand-sorted by the hundred or so people at the sorting tables. They would look for irregularities, write-ins and blank ballots. Once sorted and counted, the ballots would come to us "Joggers" who would take the ballots and aerate the ballot stacks in a special machine that jiggled the paper to make it easier to slide through the vote-counting machines. That would be the final step. Us two jogger/stagers did a lot of running around though because we'd have to help feed the counting machine attendants ballots as well as stack the empty ballot boxes in another area.
I do admit, it was a lot of fun and once I found my place I met a lot of entertaining people. A token police officer floated around and chatted with us for the majority of the evening learning the process and killing time. I was there for all of five hours, earning a whopping $50! Woo! But seriously, I have new respect for the elections process and for how long it takes to count and process ballots. It really is incredible.
Monday evening earlier this week, 6 of the 8 Portland-area Chili's Restaurants closed forever without any warning, leaving more than 100 people suddenly out of work. Almost every Thursday night since about the middle of 2005, I've joined a couple Portland friends in going to the Hillsboro Chili's just off Cornell at US26 for 9 PM happy hour. Over the years, we've had lots of good times at the restaurant and as time went by it became less and less about the food and more about being with friends and catching up on the week's activities. Our favorite server, a guy named Josh, was the true draw and an entertaining dude. If he wasn't there one Thursday, we'd go somewhere else. That's how important he was to the experience. We were his regulars and he always said that when we show up Thursday nights, it means his day is winding down and the evening rush is over. Going to Chili's every Thursday was a ritual tradition that started around four years ago when my sister, Val, and her then-boyfriend, Franko, found the place and met Josh. Since then, there have been other regular characters too like the bar-flower, Tara, who liked to flirt with the random guys who happened in. There was also a group of business geeks who'd come in dressed for business with their laptops in tow and abuse the free Wi-Fi all evening. And who could forget the generous drunks who'd tip in hundreds of dollars before being kicked out for being loud? Good times. Hundreds of good times, in fact.
Franko and I have spent the last few days trying to think of another hangout but it's depressing. To make matters worse, in the four years they've been going to Chili's, no one thought to get Josh's contact information. It would have been nice to have kept in touch and follow him to whichever restaurant he gets employed by next (If he chooses that route) but who saw this coming? Before I left for Boise, I properly thanked him for years of camaraderie and said goodbye but I think we all knew I'd be back at least once one day and I don't think anyone got to really say goodbye to everyone. It's just a shock. Like a clubhouse being torn down.
So while that nonsense is going on in Portland, I'm over here in Idaho greasing the wheels of government:
Tuesday night from about 7 PM to 1 AM, I was a deputized election official for Ada County, Idaho. The state was having another primary/caucus-type election and the most populous county in the state (Which contains Boise) needed lots of help counting and dealing with ballots. Jaci was signed up to join me but she got home from work that night and crashed. In all, we were about 200 people in a warehouse moving ballots from one section to another in a very efficient but slow manner. Even though I got there on time, there were already over a hundred people there and waiting for work so I didn't get a place to sit at one of the many sorting tables. Things didn't get really moving until 8:30 after we were all deputized (That's "Deputy Rabbit," to you, punks!) when ballots began arriving in black rectangular precinct boxes from the polling places.
An organizer approached me and asked if I had anything to do as I was one of the last people sitting off on my own looking lonely. She placed a woman and me at a table to perform "Jogging and Staging," which was the most lively of jobs that night. Here's the process from the beginning- Ballots would enter the building and be hand-sorted by the hundred or so people at the sorting tables. They would look for irregularities, write-ins and blank ballots. Once sorted and counted, the ballots would come to us "Joggers" who would take the ballots and aerate the ballot stacks in a special machine that jiggled the paper to make it easier to slide through the vote-counting machines. That would be the final step. Us two jogger/stagers did a lot of running around though because we'd have to help feed the counting machine attendants ballots as well as stack the empty ballot boxes in another area.
I do admit, it was a lot of fun and once I found my place I met a lot of entertaining people. A token police officer floated around and chatted with us for the majority of the evening learning the process and killing time. I was there for all of five hours, earning a whopping $50! Woo! But seriously, I have new respect for the elections process and for how long it takes to count and process ballots. It really is incredible.