A storm, and an election

©2012 Lydia Hinshaw

 ORMOND BEACH, FL -- On this weekend's agenda was the rental of a pressure washer to clean off the black slime that has accumulated on our driveway and walkways over a rainy summer.

 Instead, we endured a brushback pitch from a hurricane, and then an election adventure/ordeal.

 We backed out on the pressure washer because of the weather forecast.  All day Friday we had high winds and occasional downpours as hurricane Sandy passed by more than 200 miles out to sea.

 Late Friday afternoon, we began to have momentary power outages lasting 30 seconds or less.  We hurried to cook dinner, knowing it was just a matter of time before the lights blinked off and didn't come back on.

 Sure enough after perhaps 25 offs-and-ons over three hours, the whole neighborhood went dark around 8 p.m. and stayed that way until nearly midnight.

 As storms go, we've survived much worse.  By midday Saturday, Sandy had lumbered on by, heading to wreak predicted havoc in the northeast, leaving us with gray skies, light breezes and reasonable temperatures.

  Since it was the first day of early voting, and not too hot to stand outside for a while (we even wore fleece jackets), Prince Charming and I walked three blocks to the library to cast our ballots.  It took a bit more than 90 minutes, and made me nostalgic for the last election, in August, when I voted by absentee ballot from a campground in Montana.

 Our ballots were huge, four big legal pages long. Three of them had things to vote for on both sides.  Worst were the constitutional amendments, written in legalese.  I always worry that these things have been framed in such a way that yes means no and no means yes.  

 Thank goodness for the Internet.  Saturday morning I Googled "Florida Constitutional Amendments" and found a site that translated this ridiculous verbosity into a sentence or two of plain English.

 And so we both arrived at the polls with carefully marked sample ballots.  Once we got past the line, it was just a matter of transferring our answers from the crib sheet to the real thing.

 So even though our unsightly driveway will have to wait, we accomplished quite a bit.  We will not be standing in line to vote again anytime soon.