Election Day

hi readers.

now, while florida has been known to suck on occasion since we’ve been down here, it has also proven to be quite awesome from time to time. take the weather, for instance. when not bracing for a hurricane, one really can’t beat the tropics. palm trees and 80 degree weather in november? yeah, i’ll take that over the cold drizzle and grey overcast skies of snowless michigan right now. and being this close to all of the theme parks, ocean, and beaches? slightly more stuff to do here than in clare. granted, you have to pay $1200 a month in rent, and you do run the risk of being shot at or killed in a car accident via one of the many, many stellar drivers we have down here... but, that's the price you pay for location.

what i’m getting at, folks, is that florida has a tendency of surprising you with little flashes of awesome when you’re least expecting it (of course, this also swings the opposite way, but let’s try to stay optimistic here). the hough family was recently made aware of yet another one of florida’s perks: the ability to vote early.

florida isn’t the only state in the union that does this, i know, so i’d urge you to look into whether or not that’s available to you in your own backyard. here in America’s Penis (if you look at a map of the continental united states, this is what florida looks like… seriously, people), kris and i decided to take full advantage of this and ‘get our vote on.’ as its somewhat still frowned upon to leave babies unattended down here (apparently the ol’ 'leave-the-baby-under-an- upside-down-laundry-basket-with-a-brick-on-top' trick doesn’t "fly" anymore), we had to take the cannonball with us to the local early voting location – the nearest branch of the orange county library.

expecting a four-hour stand-a-thon, the hough family geared up like we were setting off into the serengeti. parking was terrible, and we had to fight our way through hordes of volunteers out supporting their candidate of choice (mostly local positions - county commissioners, stuff like that - no mccain people about... though there were plenty of obama people to be seen). the circus ended up being a little easier than we had anticipated, and running the entire gauntlet ended up only taking about an hour. i had alayna strapped to me in a harness, and she only started acting up when i was in the voting booth.

the people around me most likely did not appreciate this.

anyway, the moral of the story (if there even is one) is this: vote early. do it. get it out of the way. seriously. regardless of whether or not you’re voting for the erratic old guy/bat-shit crazy lady combo or the socialist/foot-in-mouth combo, save yourself the trouble of standing in line for hours and hours on november 4th and make that crap happen.

if you don’t, you don’t get to complain about anything for the next four years. and complaining is an american right.

fight for your rights, america... fight for your rights.