Sunday

Busy weekend in the Quad Cities. 3 and 4 had fun with their friends at the wedding and associated events. Modified FFF at 2's for lunch today. Both are now on the road home. Look to 3 for picture sharing.

A front moved in today and the temps are headed into the 20's for lows over the next three days. The wind came up and anything that wasn't tied down got blown down the street. I heard of one report of sleet up in Dubuque.

My primary task today was to get my seven-foot ficus tree into my house for the Winter. I had to find a pot for a transplant first as the current one had been outgrown. What I found was as big of a "pot" as is available for residential use. Maybe 30" tall and almost the same across. I barely got the re-potted tree inside, both from size and weight factors. It should survive the Winter, and will again take it's post outside come Spring. But if it grows as much next Summer as it did this year, it may not make it back inside.

4 was an intern reporter for the local television station on Friday night. This is the station that she interned at last Summer. She had previously declined an offer to do Friday night reports for the high school football this season, as it is pretty hokie unpaid employment. But since she was going to be home for the weekend, she had scheduled herself to go into the station on Friday to complete a project for one of her classes. One thing led to another, and she was sent out to do on-sight reports on certain games. She did great. I couldn't download the tape, but it is on www.kwqc.com

Click on "Sports" and then "The High Light Zone" and then segment 2 of the 10-24-08 program.

I did vote on Friday. At the local library. No line, although I had tried to vote there earlier in the week and took a pass because of a line. In an interesting twist at the library, ACORN had a table set up in the lobby and was handing out kits to voters as they left the building describing the proper steps to take to re-register and vote a second time. Somehow, they figured out that they didn't want my second vote, and I didn't get a packet.

The early voting process got me to thinking about whether those votes and absentee ballots are tracked in any way to the voters' home precincts? Early voting is available at only a few central locations. Obviously, each voter first fills out a name and address sheet for the poll worker. But I didn't see any method used to identify me on the ballot that I subsequently completed, nor on the separate envelope that I sealed the ballot in, and placed in the box. I know that local and state political operatives have always paid close attention to precinct outcomes. I wonder if the new trend in early voting changes this dynamic?

But since they do early voting only for the general election, the precinct data from primary and off-year elections probably give enough data for the politicos to do their slicing-and-dicing thing.

2 and I did almost four miles along the river yesterday. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 minutes. Which means that I'm on target for a sub-hour Turkey Trot. Less than five weeks to go.

On the wedding pics story from above, 3 took them on Mom's digital camera, and then 3 was able to download them to my laptop this morning. That little exercise re-enforced my conclusion that I needed to go digital myself. I even stopped at the local camera store this afternoon and checked out their options. Since that establishment is where my current camera was acquired, and I have had such good luck with it, they'll get my business on this new venture.

Major League Baseball had the third game of the World Series finish at 1:47 AM local in Philly last night. Do those guys have any care about viewers?

I need to rest my intellectual vigor.

Have a great week.

BCOT