Hurray for checks and balances!

Yesterday was such a lovely celebratory day.

I was at the polls on Tuesday for 15 hours. Turnout approached that of a national election, with long lines till mid-morning and from 4 in the afternoon until closing.

I was responsible for transfers and provisional voting for the first time. I'd been asked to take the position five years ago, but there was a conflict between my surgery and their training schedule and I'd had to decline. The position opened back up this fall and I decided the number of new books I'd be able to afford would offset the reason why the person who'd had the job decided she'd rather stay home with her grandchildren from now on.

But The Reason Why was on her best behavior for once, and in fact walked over to tell me near the end of the afternoon, after she'd managed to keep her temper with a voter who'd annoyed her, that God had told her to be nice. I did not feel the least compulsion to fire back that she ought to listen to him more often, the way I would have normally, since she'd actually been pleasant all day. No doubt she's hoping to land the chief judge position--it's only a matter of time--and she may revert to form once that occurs, but I sure appreciated her attitude on Tuesday.

There was not near as much time as I'd expected to read, but I managed the last little bit of Letters from Yellowstone and made a start in One Good Turn. I struck up a conversation with a woman reading in line and it turns out she's a homeschooler who lives just down the street. She belongs to a bookclub, and it's probably just as well I work evenings and can't attend, since she says its very hard to get the members to read anything outside their safety zone.


This week My Bookstore is stocked with Southern fiction.