I'm 3 pounds up, and did some cleaning in the nursery. (I want it ready by Easter. I'm tackling it somewhat like I did Gerhard's house, slowly but surely.) I did no knitting last week, though I started again today.

Sunday after church we took a picture with the GPSr of a sign touting the sale of "piza dough" for the Gramattically Incorrect locationless cache. It seems I see mistakes all over the place till I'm actually looking for one.

Sunday night a new one popped up in Howe Park right close to our house. We went out first thing Monday morning in the hopes of being first to find, and indeed we were. It's a wedding memory cache (the placers have only been married 3.5 years!) so I left bubbles from the wedding last summer. I also put our marriage picture on the webpage.

Bowling was OK for me and disastrous for Rich. I got a little up on my average with 130, 155, 128, though I still haven't gotten back to 135. We won two, because we took the series, but not for our great play but because they fell apart at the end of the last game.

Tuesday was a LOOOOOONG day. We got up at 4:30 in order to be at the polls at 6, and we finished counting and taking the ballots back by 9 or so. In that time, we had all of 56 voters. Fortunately, we were in the same hall as a bigger precinct and other people, so we did have people to talk to. Our co-worker flitted from here to there. After she made coffee, she wasn't around much. With only a little work, it didn't matter, and I think she'd work if there was work. I finished my book (which is very interesting.)

Our most interesting visitor was a lady who came in with her sample ballot, but when we looked her up in the roster she wasn't there. Rich called the office and they said they'd accidently removed her, let her vote. She'd already displayed some confusion because she couldn't find the polling place, had asked a cop, and ended up in North Highlands. We started her with a provisional, and Rich asked if she wanted a Democratic ballot, and she said yes, yet the sample ballot was Republican. So when she asked me for help, I showed her the ballot was all written in, and she then said someone had given it to her... at which point I reluctantly asked for her ID. She was the same person, and still wanted help. Our co-worker was helping her, and in the process they spoiled one ballot, then when she turned in our sample, it was all written in. OK. We enclosed it in the provisional envelope and let the office sort it out.

If only Florida had had provisional ballots, a lot of this confusion could have been avoided. Most of our voters agree with us and miss the punch cards. That way you can see the numbers a lot better. We had a couple of other provisionals, and a few HAVA (Help America Vote Act) people (you ask for their ID). Some people turned in their absentee ballots or couldn't find them, so they have to swear they're not voting twice and vote provisional.

We only had one other spoiled ballot. One interesting new voter had a number of questions... he was Nonpartisan so could vote in the major party primary if he wanted, but said he was voting for Bush in November so he didn't need the Republican ballot this time. I found this interesting since he was African-American. Later he asked if the ballot counted if he skipped some choices. Of course it does. In fact, I wish the SecState, reporting 100% in non-contested races, would report undercounts, though he does report the number of votes.

Our priest came by to drop off his absentee ballot, so we had a nice talk with him. The supervisor was by three times. The first she griped about Spanish materials (we have no Spanish voters, so the stuff was handy but not out) and the second about the news camera who'd been by (she said it had to be 100 feet away, but that's interviewing voters.)

One lady came in with cookies! We offered to let her vote twice!

We had voters at 8 when the polls closed, of course, but still got it packed away and counted (we don't count the votes, we count the ballots) and delivered by just past 9. Yay.

Last week I took a mental health break from Casey. There was so much rain, and I just didn't feel like being indoors with the kid. Today we went to an Activated Storytellers show. They were great as usual. I'm going to print up one of the plays they showed us for the kid. I find the carschooling fascinating. You wonder how they get along all the time, surely there are fights.

Today, Rich was supposed to donate blood and again he failed. We went off to the River to a three-stage Easter egg hunt cache. This one is in good shape. The guy has also fixed the one in Novato, so we will do that one of these days, too.

ObRich: military films.

I am pretty sure I wouldn't recognize my baby 6 years later, especially if I thought she was dead! What an amazing story.

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

Jeff Jarvis says the Sacramento Bee "ombudsman" is clueless [quelle suprise!] on blogs.

Daschle can't call himself a Catholic. Hahaha. Our Bishop Weigand is mentioned.

Dean Esmay on the decision that Catholic Health Care has to offer birth control to employees: "I just want to go on record as saying that the California Supreme Court has spit upon the first amendment, and embraced un-American religious discrimination. I very much hope that the Federal courts strike this down in five seconds flat."

Some Ideas to keep the next 8 months interesting.

The good news: Iraq war roundup, and the Deck today.

Iranian-Americans back John Kerry. So do the North Koreans.

David Adesnik (scroll down) Kerry as Commander-in-Chief.

Who is John Kerry?

Peggy Noonan:

I didn't think a man with a face that anguished would make it this far. I mean without other qualities that overwhelm and even counter the message of the face, which is: I suffer from mild clinical depression, do you?

You call it nuance, I call it waffle.

I think Ex-gov. Gray is more relaxed and a lot happier. Apparently he spent his life trying for a position he was deeply unhappy in. His recent appearances on TV he's looked positively mellow, like the ulcer is gone.

On the value of war over police action:

The criminal-justice system is designed to value procedure over outcome. This is entirely fitting in a case of piscicide, and it's a trade-off worth making even when dealing with crimes against human beings. But we are at war with an enemy that seeks to destroy our civilization, an enemy that observes no civilized rules of combat. Defining that conflict as merely a criminal justice matter risks tying the hands of the government as it tries to protect citizens from atrocities that could be far worse than Sept. 11.

Instantman:

Bush seems to be falling victum to his own success. We have been so successful in the war on terror that the country doesn't see it as a war anymore.

Consider the following: If you were told on 9/21/2001 that by this date:

The Taliban have fallen

Iraq has fallen and has become a bastion of free press in the islamic world.

Libya had given up its WMD's

North Korea is in multi-lateral talks about WMD's

A majority of the leadership of Al Queda are dead or in custody

Pro-democracy rumblings are going on in Iran

Arafat is isolated

Many convictions of domestic sleepers or Al Queda members (Portland, NY etc...) and finally

NO SUCCESSFUL TERROR ATTACKS ON US SOIL

And all of this has cost less than 1000 dead American soldiers.

You'd be thinking "not bad."

Bush said in his Sept. 20th speech that even if the country forgets he will not. He was right.

The anti-war types keep comparing Iraq to Vietnam. This has made me think...

If less than a year after US troops first landed in Vietnam, they had occupied all of North Vietnam, had Ho Chi Minh and General Giap dead or in custody, had an interim government in place, and were preparing for free elections (which of course in actuality Vietnam still doesn't have forty years later), all for under five hundred combat casulaties, that wouldn't have been such a bad outcome.

Of course people will say the situations aren't comparable. That's right -- they aren't comparable, so people should stop trying to make bogus analogies between the two situations.

Bush better remember that, though... there are rumblings.

Reader Glenn Boice:
To my mind, continued support of a president who has many objectionable policies in other areas of interest to me is dependent upon confidence in his future leadership on the war. I for one need to hear much more from him about the war objectives for his second term.

This "pandering" political strategy works only when voters such as myself sacrifice less-important principles in favor of the most important, the war. However, if I come to believe that a Democratic candidate can be as effective on the war as President Bush, or - worse - that President Bush in a second term will be as ineffective on the war as the likely Democratic candidates, then my heretofore solid support for the President will be far less certain this fall.
----Instapundit

Phil Bowermaster: "I was, at best, lukewarm on George W. Bush until September 12, 2001. I have been a stauch supporter ever since, believing that he has done exactly what was needed by taking the war to our enemy. I understood that the war had to take precedence over everything else, but I'm beginning to wonder...does President Bush understand that? If he does, then why is he pandering left and right? The smart thing would be to move to the center on all these social issues and keep his support solid. As it is, in November I plan to hold my nose and vote for Bush. The fact that I have to put it that way indicates that he has, indeed, wasted the good will that I had for him."

On the other hand, there's Libya. Glenn goes on:

Bush said he was prepared to go to war, and Kerry didn't believe him, acted in accordance with that disbelief -- and wound up complaining that he was hornswoggled.
Now consider this: Islamist terrorists repeatedly say that their plan is to conquer the world for their faith, and bring all the unbelievers to heel. And in particular, they say they want to kill as many Americans as possible along the way.
Will Kerry disbelieve them, too?