Katie Bee, Shir, thank you both so much for your lovely condolence cards. I'm grateful for your thought and care.

I'm glad I was able to address your card properly at last, esse. I also sent a thank you card to my stepmother that was returned to me the same week, so it's good to know personal mail does get delivered. Eventually.

We voted! It is a lovely rainy day and I decided it was better to stand in a long line on a rainy day than to stand in a much longer line on a blistering hot sunny day. An hour and a quarter later I have a shiny I voted pen and sticker.

Also on the good news front. We will only be working 3 hour shifts on election day because they had so many new workers train this year. Awesomeness!

Laura, that is awesome news about the new poll workers! When I did it, it was a constant struggle to get enough people to cover all the polling places.

My ballot has been accepted, and it looks as if about 22% of my county has already voted.

Wow, that's great to read, Laura! And you got a pen! I never got an I voted pen.

Yes, it was either clean all the pens after each voter or give them the pen to keep. It was an unexpected treat. People in line under umbrellas were all sociable and good natured. Masked. One 22 year old was there as a candidate for the state senate. It was nice to talk to him although he isn't my district. Love seeing young people getting involved.

That's all fantastic news, Laura. Nice to read!

We dropped our ballots off at least three weeks ago, and Matt is tracking them. They've at least been accepted; I don't know if there's anything beyond that.

I'm currently waiting for a heretical tuna noodle casserole to come out of the oven. Heretical because we have A Family Recipe handed down from at least Grandma Prior... possibly Great Grandma Garver? In any case, I'm surprised my oven didn't spit it out for its noveau-noodle gall. We'll see how my gut reacts. (It has no condensed soup in it, which is what made me want to try this fancy version. No condensed soup? Madness.)

Getting pretty experimental there, JenP! Hope it comes out good

We gave out pens at my polling place in the primary, but they were just regular old bics, not I Voted pens! That's fun.

I have to do my least favorite thing (one of my least favorite things, anyway, I do have a lot of least favorites) - taking a letter written by a committee that I had no part in and sending it to "my counterpart" at our customers. Do I know what to say about it other than "here, have a letter"? No. Will I be able to answer any questions our customers may have? Also no. And I just read through the letter and it's either very badly written or our policy is very confusing. Sigh. Why they don't just do a mass email from higher up I don't know.

I need to remind myself that when I was looking for this job what I wanted was to be a cog in a corporate machine. I shouldn't complain when that gets amplified, I guess.