Civic Duty....

Well, yesterday was primary day in Texas. I had a meeting in the morning or I would have gone on my way to work. As it is, I went after work. It's my first time to vote since being back in Texas, so I'd never been to this particular polling place before. When I lived here before, the polling places were in schools, usually elementary schools. I looked up my voting location and got X Community Center, then looked up directions. Not too far from my house, though not as convenient as Arkansas, where I simply walked across the street. I kept thinking I'd passed it up, but then I found it. I actually wound up following a couple of cars down a very dilapidated road to what is a very dilapidated community center. Actually, it's a small cinder block building, with no where close to adequate parking for this type of event. Good thing the weather was nice because the line backed up all the way to the end of the street. I grabbed a cereal bar and my book cause I figured I'd be in that line until midnight. Shortly after getting in line, someone mentioned they had two lines - one for Democratic and one for Republican. I got to go to the short line, well actually I walked right in and voted and left. I'll leave it to your imagination as to which line was long and which line was short. I was just extremely happy to not have to hang around for hours to vote.

Texas also has something to do with voting in the caucus later in the evening (I'm still trying to wrap my tired brain around this as I don't remember if from before). I'll admit, I didn't attend. I went home and did yoga. Come to find out this morning, all the caucusing places were no where near big enough for the folks that turned out, so it would probably have been a miserable experience anyway.

I knew Texas would be close and it was - HC squeaked by, but BO was close on her heals. I've talked with friends and we're just puzzled. It seems to me like several of the candidates just aren't over loaded with experience. This morning it dawned on me that it's not that the parties can't find folks with experience to run but it's probably that the folks with the experience don't want the job. Can't say as I blame them. This country is expecting a lot from the new President and I'm thinking whoever is elected is going to have a hard time meeting those expectations.

Just odd....

It seems like this year we've gone without a winter. It's nice and balmy one day and then cold the next. Or the humidity is over the top (wreaking havoc with my hair) one day and non-existent the next. The coming week will be like that. Nice weekend - in the 70's, balmy. It is cloudy today, but still warm. Our high today - 72. Our high tomorrow - 48. Ugh. I wish it would pick a season and stick with it.

But, that's not the really odd thing - weather is wonky everywhere. I recently re-hooked up my Canon BubbleJet printer to my computer. I love my HP Photo printer, but the Canon is a great little everyday printer. Nice and speedy and the ink cartridges aren't expensive. So, I'm all set to go, only to discover that it won't print in black. It will print in color, so no problem with the Christmas letter way back in December. It thought maybe since it had been about six 6 months since last use that maybe it was the ink cartridge, so I got a new one. Not it. Well, printing in black would be nice, so last night I start searching to see what I can come up with. Big thing seems to be cleaning the print heads. Tried that, nada, nothing, zilch. I can line up the print heads and get black, but it still won't print black. Then I come across a message board, which is several years old. One poster said they changed the paper from letter to photo and it worked (yes, there are variations on this theme it seems). So, I tried this and it worked. Just for grins, today I tried it again with the paper selection equals letter. Nothing. Changed it back to photo paper and it works just fine. I'm still going to explore the printer heads and nozzles, but if it works for one paper type, you'd think it would work for another. I'm totally puzzled, but happy that I can get it to print.

And, this weeks picture is a one of the shrubs in front of my house. It doesn't look like much most of the time, but it's really kind of pretty when it's in bloom.