We figured there were about 200 people in line (including at the voting booths) when we arrived at 9:10 am. Folks were pretty quiet, reading or doing stuff with iPhones. I only heard one person talking on the phone. I love our polling place at the Ponce library; there were discard magazines and books set out for those in line to browse!

It took about an hour to get to the voting booth. Long ballot, with 3 amendments, multiple judge slots (most unopposed), and miscellaneous homestead exemptions (by locale). I went over the summary carefully to make sure the electronic machine (apparently) was registering what I intended. We didn’t walk around to the opposite side of the building to see if the line was longer or shorter when we left.

So, with all the early voting (both absentee and in-person) can we really call this Election Day? Maybe Polls-Close Day? Or Ballot-Counting Day?

Okay, KW, here ya go: a picture series from yesterday’s hike.

BTW, the image above is looking through the not-falls—the drought and general autumnal conditions mean there wasn’t enough water to make even a trickle over the outcrop….

We went to NW Georgia for today’s big adventure. We parked at the Keown Falls picnic area—lovely, under the trees—and ascended to check the falls (dry), and ascended further, to the top of Johns Mountain. Then we followed the trail south along the spine of Johns Mountain, then, well, as Bill said, it’s all downhill from here.

We found the fall color glorious, brilliant in full sunshine, with few leaves fallen. Spellbinding in every direction….

We took advantage of the picnic area to down some calories, both solid (mmmm good salsa!) and liquid.

Part of our route followed the Pinhoti trail, which, I have now learned (courtesy of the internet—scroll down for map), apparently is the longest foot trail system in GA, and extends into AL for another 136 miles. It connects with other trails to make a walking trail from FL to Canada. So they say.

Georgia mountain woods, in my experience, lack many rodents, birds, and larger critters relative to other North American woods I’ve spent time in. Today was no exception. Our most exciting critter sighting: several busy dung beetles.*

* Get this: one of my recent birthday cards referred to dung beetles….

No connection between text and photo, the latter from this spring, in the UP. By October, the building was almost flat. It held on for a long time with upright walls, maybe ten years after it visibly began to collapse. Or perhaps there is a connection, in the concept of collapse?

Help me. I’m confused.

McCain keeps denigrating the concept of the government redistributing funds, and advocating lower taxes.

And, this very election season, isn’t he running his campaign* with money he asked for from…well, you and I, taxpayers (well, taxpayers who donated to that election fund).

I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like someone who is using other peoples’ money.**

That is: he’s partaking in redistribution RIGHT NOW. BIG TIME.

How hypocritical….

* Is he a serial “borrower”? I’m not much of a historian, but isn’t this the fellow that married a rich babe, then worked for her dad’s company, then got restless and borrowed her $$ to fund his move into elected office? So says Wikipedia.

** McCain also told Katie Couric that the thing he would be glad to leave behind after the polls*** close is asking for money (aka “redistribution”—right?).

*** Asked the same question, Obama chuckled and said he was tired of packing and not having breakfast with his kids. Interesting how his response was from his private life and McCain’s was from his public life.

Actually, too much happened today, so here’s a second post….

We had our final inspection, and passed.* Took something like three minutes. I guess he determined that we now had a roof and lacked a tree inside the house. Maybe it was more complicated than that, though….

It’s also my former favorite holiday. Not so much, now, and I’m not totally sure why. Maybe because so many kids are out there for the candy and their costumes are sometimes…absent. Of course, some years we get a couple of very cute, very little kids, very excited and apparently also thinking it’s an odd thing to be sent to the door of a stranger’s house while wearing a non-normal outfit, and being urged to say totally strange things and wait for candy.

Liminal. Welcome to the wider world, kidlets….

* This means we no longer have paperwork posted by our front door. Yippee! Thanks, Dick! BTW, the tree fell 11 May, the permit was issued 27 June, and now, on the eve of November, the house almost fixed—the contractor part; we still need “window treatments,” etc.

Here’s the premise: your furniture has to match the music you play in that room. If you doubt your ability to make a good match, you can hire a personal music stylist create a playlist that does it for you….

This was my Grandmother’s sofa (but not her living room). She stretched out on it every afternoon after lunch and read Agatha Christie novels and the like, often with a blanket over her knees.

Her music choices (as I recall): classical, including lots of operas.

Now, our furniture/music. I can’t say whether they match or not. Probably not so much—heavily 70s music, but not entirely, and early 20th-C style furniture in the fancier living room, and undistinguished late 20th-C style well-used stuff in the family room….

Quicken and iPhoto serve as a diary of sorts of our days, along with this blog. I see that two years ago I was freshly arrived in NM, trying to adjust to the elevation, and exploring the Gila Cliff dwellings.

It is totally unplanned that tonight’s menu includes brussels sprouts (those cute Brassica buds!), fresh not frozen, just as it did that day…. Thanks, Kel!

All this rebuilding since the tree fell has meant an unanticipated learning curve (not a bad thing).

Today, the Glass Shower Door Guys came to adjust the door, which is a big sheet of glass with hinges (and almost invisible plastic? flanges on the bottom and sides to seal against adjacent surfaces when the door is shut) that closes against a fixed pane to make a glass wall. I took advantage of their expertise and found out how they did that. Simple. On the inside of the hinge are screw heads that take a hex/Allen wrench, and they loosened them just a bit, then forced the door to shift slightly to reposition, and retightened them. Yes, it took two people—one on the wrench and one on the door….

I also asked about the “care and feeding” of the glass, and they suggested coating the inside with a repellent product for windshields (e.g., Rain-X), to help keep soap scum, etc., at bay.

Something else for the hardware store list…. And don’t get me started on the ugly and disfunctional soap dishes out there. We may end up using a (plastic to avoid breakage) rectangular sushi soy sauce dish….

Now, to track down the Tile Guy and ask if it’d also work on tile, since, after all, high-fired tile is glazed, and the glaze, once fired, is essentially glass.

Back on this day in 2004,* I was wandering the ATL Bot Garden admiring the Chihuly exhibit. I was spellbound. In many cases, I found the glass pieces integrated into the vegetation with extreme cleverness, so that I had to look carefully to determine what was glass and what was living.

Your turn!

* I visit the past because I have spent today unsettled by the windy conditions. Give me another year, and maybe I’ll be inured to blustery weather.

Gorgeous new-crop cranberry beans from the Hunter-Gatherer and the Puppeteer….

…at least in a lackadaisical way….

Accomplishments: did a load of wash (and it’s also mostly folded and put away), bought simple hardware-store-style towel rack for the inside of the bathroom cabinet door to hang a cloth to dry marble around sink (it’s more sensitive than laminate, we’re told), sorted through miscellaneous boxes that had accumulated beneath the eaves and were revealed in May by the fallen tree and subsequently stashed for going through “later” (which turned out to be today), found and purchased a digital lamp timer for bedroom to replace the old mechanical version that has taken to “grumbling” in a noticeable and annoying way (and even got it properly set—I think), made a quick stop at TJ’s to stock up on odds and ends (our pantry’s still rather empty since our return), and got more moved in to the remade sections of our home….

In sum, it’s a decent start on chores for the week. Also, leftovers for dinner (that bean soup), so that’s easy. BTW, the last Mad Men of the season is tonight, but I usually don’t make it, so we watch it later.