It's 6:38 in the morning and I've already voted, go me. Our polling place was the busiest I've ever seen it, even at this unholy hour, but so far it doesn't look as if anyone's going to be having to call 1-800-"help, help, I'm being repressed" in our downscale-but-not-ghetto precinct. I'm not sure why our election judges are Republicans, in this overwhelmingly Democratic city, but perhaps it's the state Party's way of making itself feel at least vaguely relevant.

I got my chads all poked out cleanly, and checked especially that I'd punched the Presidential hole through properly. Cook County gets enough goddamn voter-fraud jokes as it is, and being stuck still using the Crap-O-Matic IBM cards in this day and age is a humiliating reminder that we're definitely not on the well-to-do end of town, although they've finally fixed the machine that verifies the ballots.

Mum got a little confused about whom to turn the ballot in to, but I got her straightened out quickly enough, since I was already done. (I will admit to poking the judge-retentions pretty much at random except for the couple I'd heard specifics about.) Between us, and despite the growing line, we were in and out in 20 minutes. I've put my receipt with the dusty one that says November 7th, 2000, in case there's some problem again and I have to exchange my candidate. (They refused to take the last one back, no matter how much I insisted that he wasn't what I ordered, but it's always best to be prepared.)

Interestingly enough, despite the massive increase in turnout, this was the first time I've gotten through the process in this precinct without there being some sort of crisis going on already only half an hour after the polls opened. It's almost as if for once they knew in advance that there was an election coming up.

Now I'm off to eat something, puke it back up from nerves, eat something else, and fall into bed. I may feel the need to be around people as the evening drags on, or Mum may come home to find me as wild-haired as Howard Hughes and wearing kleenex boxes on my feet...

feeling: the calm before the storm