Voted!

My ballot arrived yesterday, and got dropped off at the county elections office today.

The national and international news are full of stories about people standing in line for hours, but Oregon is still the easiest state in the US to vote in. Today was actually the closest I've seen to a line in years-- one drop box out in the parking lot was blocked by someone taking an extended selfie, and and just as I put my ballot in the one by the office entrance, someone else drove up to drop theirs off.

The last few years, my fall drop-off has consisted of hopping off the light rail on my way to the Portland Retro Gaming Expo and walking a couple blocks to the elections office at 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday or Sunday. This year, PRGE was supposed to be in August, the elections office has moved to a different location not accessible by rail, and I've been avoiding mass transit since March anyway.

16 days to go

Lately the weather is very variable. We've had a few days of rain, a few days of clear, chilly nights and sunny afternoons, then clouds and more moderate temperatures, then today the sun came back and it topped 70F. A very nice day to be out and about doing things, if this were the time and place to be out doing things.

Election overload is setting in. The SO reports that friends are dropping off of social media until November 4th. Even FiveThirtyEight has published an article on "8 Tips to Stay Sane in the Final 15 Days of the Campaign", although this seems to be some statistician-specific definition of "sane" that I was previously unacquainted with. (Tip #1: Think about the global pandemic. Tip #2: Remember that nothing is certain...)

Fannish things continue to provide insufficient distraction. SPIEL.digital still hasn't released a proper schedule; I guess we don't get to see it until real registration starts on the 20th. Not a peep has been heard about virtual Smofcon for weeks. OR-eCon's only recent announcement was that it needs more virtual room hosts. I was assuming that they'd be reaching out to the usual list of Orycon panelists to ask if we wanted to participate, but either they haven't or I've fallen out of their system again. Too late now.

Voting has improved my mood though, at least temporarily.