I Voted – ABSENTEE!

I’ve been waiting for my ballot. Everyone else had theirs last Friday – and I was getting concerned that maybe there was a problem with my absentee ballot. I printed out an emergency ballot, filled it out and had it ready to go in case my ballot didn’t get here by October 1st (it has to be mailed by Oct 8 to get there in time.)
Why why was I worried? Because I’m voting absentee from abroad, and I want to make sure I have enough time to get my vote mailed and counted.
The good news is that my ballot for Georgia got here yesterday. YEAY!
I filled it out, and sealed it up. I went to the post office – and because the ballot is oversized, and I’m sending it from Germany – back home to the USA
it cost me 4 EUROS (that’s almost $8) to mail it back.
But – despite it all, I did it.

I VOTED.

Now, for those of you in the USA –
~I know it won’t take you two weeks of wondering if your ballot was is going to get your house.
~It won’t cost you $8 in gas to go to the poll or to mail your ballot.
~I know it won’t take you a month of wondering if it got there, or if once the ballot gets there it will be counted….
So, to my view, there’s No EXCUSE.
If I can VOTE from Germany, and do all that – just to make sure MY VOTE makes it on time and that I HAVE A VOICE ….
ON
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2008
I EXPECT NO LESS OF YOU. I don’t care who you vote for.
JUST VOTE.
Update –
Twenty-five states, including nine swing states – Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, – have registration deadlines in the next two weeks.

Voters in the following states (who have not yet registered and/or requested their ballots) must ensure that their FPCAs are sent in NOW!

Oct. 4 – Illinois, Nevada, South Carolina

Oct. 5 – Alaska, Mississippi

Oct. 6 – Colorado, DC, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wyoming

Oct. 8 – Missouri

Oct. 10 – Idaho, New York

All of these states except for NY and WY will accept faxed FPCAs.

Please use the following US fax number: +1-703-693-5527 (the toll free numbers in many parts of the world do not work). All faxes are received in Virginia by the Federal Voting Assistance Program. The FVAP will log in the date and time that the fax was received and then forward it on to your local election official.

For deadline purposes, your form is deemed received when it arrives on the FVAP’s fax machine, but you still must MAIL the original form to your local election official.

Exceptions: NY and WY do NOT accept faxes. The only way to meet the deadlines for NY and WY is to ensure that your original FPCA arrives in the local election office by mail no later than the deadline. (NY and WY will also accept FPCAs by commercial courier.) NOTE: FPCAs need NOT carry a foreign postmark!

Later Deadlines:

The other states have later registration deadlines.

Check them here: http://democratsabroad.org/registration_dates and watch for our forthcoming Voter Alerts.

To check the status of your registration, check http://democratsabroad.org/registration_links.

If your state is not listed, contact your local election official. You can find this information at www.Votesmart.org/voter_county_election_offices.php

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Can I go back to bed now?

What a Friday.

First I wake up to find out that WAMU (one of my US bank accounts is there) has failed and been taken over by the feds… with a partial buyout by JP Morgan Chase. It’s supposed to be business as usual… However –

I went and checked my other bank account – which I had transferred funds to and paid a few bills (I have a credit card there) as well. On both the payments from mid September it said “On Hold – please contact issuing bank” which was, of course, WAMU. My reason for transferring? I wanted to make sure that I had some somewhere else in case what happened – well, happened.

I didn’t panic – and yes, most of my funds did remain in WAMU – I moved enough to simply make sure that if there was an emergency I could get back stateside in a hurry.

So, I guess we’ll see how it turns out in the end, and hope for the best.

Then, I checked my email. In my email was a lovely letter from Ryan Air, telling me that my flights for my october vacation had been changed – significantly. Instead of going from October 29-Nov.4, they were moved to October 29 – Nov. 3 – did I still want the tickets?

Well, after researching, I did find later tickets (departing same day – getting back a day later) for 109 EUR – not the 56 EUR I had paid for the previously mentioned ones. So, either I take their crap flights (and lose a day of my vacation holiday) or I cancel them and buy different ones.

Needless to say I will be on the phone (NOT HAPPY GIRL) with them later today insisting that they change the second return flight to the one on NOV 5 (a day later rather than a day earlier) and NOT charge me any fee, and credit the cost of my call AND provide me some kind of bonus as well. *grumble grumble*

And to top it all off, I went to the kitchen to make breakfast. I decided to open a can of instant latte macchiato mix, and boiled the water to make it. I read the instructions – 5-6 heaping tablespoons of the mix into a 8 ounce glass. Add hot (but not boiling water) and stir.

I did.

And then, I decided to taste it. It was like foamy coffee – with salt. We’re talking so much salt that it just was like pouring salt in your hand and licking it off.

Mind you, I drink proper latte’s almost every day at work, so I know what they should taste like. This wasn’t even close – or a quite simply a poor imitation. This was something I don’t even recognize as being drinkable. It got dumped out, down the sink, and then the rest of the mix tossed. I wound up with tea and breakfast granola bar instead.

Anyhow, I decided that it was Friday, and quite simply, the start of a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day”. So, I’d try to find something funny to make myself laugh – at someone else’s misery. This – really – took the cake.

A blog listing the top 10 worst cover songs ever.

Now, mind you, I thought that the Celene Dion version of ACDC “you shook me all night long” was pretty bad, but at least it was put my fingers in my ears tolerable.

This, however, was by far the worst – and I actually liked the 1981 Soft Cell and 1990’s Marilyn Manson remake of the 1960’s song…. Tainted Love.

I mean this was so bad, I felt like I needed to take a shower, clean out my ears, and burn my computer after watching it.
It did, however, make me laugh that they had the nerve to perform it, and be glad that it wasn’t me performing that crap ever.

The Runner up? Brit’s version of “I love Rock and Roll”. Um… well, here ya go.

Finally, for a few shits and giggles – the ROCK version of “baby got back” by the Throwdown.

Yep, I’m feeling better. Oh, and I’m going back to bed. Maybe when I wake up again, I’ll realize it’s all just a bad dream… (probabally not but worth a try, right?!?)

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Photo Contest Update…

Good Morning!

If you remember in my blog a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I was a Semi Finalist for the Photography contest at work. After nearly two weeks of voting amongst my colleagues, I found out the results this morning.

I didn’t win for my category or the overall.

I’m a bit bummed, but then I rather expected it since my personal photograph wasn’t my favorite. Instead, the one that won in my category was the leaf on a rock with water droplets. That’s cool to me though – I really liked that one and the one of the lotus reflected in water. I figured after seeing the competition (and the fact that I really didn’t like mine all that much) it wasn’t a sure bet.

On the brighter side, however, I had entered a different contest for

http://www.worldofgood.com

and promoting it as a Fair Trade website. I was entered into a drawing and won $50 US to spend on that website (I found that out today too).

Since I was planning on doing a fair trade themed Christmas anyhow this really makes it that much easier for me to order from this site (and a couple others) and get the items I wanted as gifts while purchasing items that are eco-friendly AND bettering the welfare of some of the people in rural communities.

I suppose if I had to choose, I would have liked to win the photography contest – but in the end, I’m pleased that something else close to my heart (and even more so – the people and communities I’ll be helping by purchasing fair trade items).

So, in some small way, I’m a winner – and a so are a whole bunch of others.

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