In which the protagonist, accepting that it will never improve, gives up on complaining about the weather

...except to say that she's betting that she will have shoveled more than 5' of snow this winter (having left some of it to housemates) when all is said and done, and she's not happy about it.

Anyway, as of today I am officially registered to vote in the state of WI. However, I did *not* register with any particular party, because WI doesn't require one to (actually, I probably would have, but I didn't see the option on the registration form and I wanted to leave the polling place as soon as possible). My polling place is in the moderately sketchy area that I go half a mile out of my way to avoid when walking home from work at night... but whatever. WI uses paper ballots, which confuse me mightily. I neglected to study the layout and determine whether there was a write-in option anywhere (not that I foresee wanting to vote for persons not on the ballot, but these things are good to know).

Earlier this evening, I was amused that CNN called WI for McCain before any results were officially in, and that they waited all of 20 minutes before calling it for Obama. w00t. This makes me optimistic that I have possibly voted for the winner of a national election for the first time (since my 2004 choices for presidential nominee (Dean) and President (Kerry) both lost).

Obama in Madison

The following speech was given at the Kohl Center (I was all the way up in the nosebleed section).

More snow; the descent into madness continues

Another foot today. We're at 7' total since the beginning of December (the normal amount is about 2'). WTF? I miss being able to see the ground. I also miss the sun, as it tends to be cloudy while it's snowing every day (and on the special occasions when the sun does come out for whole hours at a time it's usually because the temperature have dropped below 10 degrees).

I had to trudge home from the downtown office over more than a mile of unshoveled sidewalks and several snowdrifts up to my knees. Adding insult to injury, while I was walking, I was passed by a bus. Then five minutes later I was passed by another bus on the same line, which is completely wrong. They're supposed to run every half-hour and there were not supposed to be any around the time I left the office (hence my decision to walk). I hate infrequent, scheduled public transportation - it's f*ing useless when the weather is crappy and it gets off schedule (which, of course is the only time I'd want to use it).

I got home to find our walks in need of shoveling for the third time since this morning (I shoveled once in the morning and one of my roomies redid them during the day... I also think someone may have shoveled last night). The snow mountain in front of the house is now taller than me. And it's spawned a second snow mountain at the end of the driveway, which is also about my height. So any future snow will have to be carried halfway down the block so I don't hurt myself trying to fling it over the top of a 5'6" pile.

Spring can't come too soon (although someone pointed out that around here snow is not unheard of in May).