In Which We Prove That Every Vote Really DOES Count

Here are some facts and figures to chew on, followed by a rant.

New Hampshire has one of the largest parliamentary bodies (read: legislature) in the English-speaking world. The NH General Court is made up of the Senate, with 24 members, and the House, with 400 members. No, I did not add a 0 by accident. That's right - Four. Hundred.

NH population according to the 2010 US Census is 1,318,194. That gives us 1 Representative for every 3295 residents.

Out of the 1.3 million NH residents, 21.2% are under the age of 18 and therefore unable to vote. So the voting population is (at most) 1,038,736. As of January 2012, there are 791,249 registered voters in NH. Which drops our Rep-to-resident ratio all the way down to 1/1978.

In the 2008 Presidential election, NH voter turnout was 72.5% (kicking the national turnout rate of 61%, I might add). Assuming a similar turnout this year, that puts us at 573,656 ballots cast in NH. Which now drops the ratio to 1 Representative per every 1434 voters. How few people it now takes to swing the election one way or another.

My presidential vote may be a drop in the ocean, but my vote for State Representative is more like a drop in a shot glass. Although, I should say my votes. I actually have 8 votes for State Rep. My district is my town, and based on our town population, we get 8 Representatives. It's not broken down by area any further, so I currently have a ballot with 16 names from which to choose.

I understand not breaking the district down further to assign each Representative a specific area. I'm not crazy about it, I think it makes it much harder for me to understand who my elected Representatives are and who they stand for, but I do understand. I don't really understand why NH needs 400 Representatives, but that's coming from someone who grew up in a similarly small state that manages to get by with merely 151 Representatives.

What I do not understand is why, on Election Eve, I can find so little information on any of my 16 choices. I very much dislike voting "blind" - I want to have at least read up on a candidate or an issue before I make my choice. At this point in my life, I do not vote a party-line ticket. However, I feel like that is what I am going to have to do tomorrow if I want to vote for Representatives at all.

No candidate websites with their policy statements. Barely half of them answered the questionnaire sent out by the Town Patch online newspaper - and that had more questions about their hometowns, families, and education than it did about their ideas for government.

I am incredibly frustrated that I feel completely incapable of making an informed decision. And I'm wondering, if getting elected doesn't actually seem to require any campaigning beyond having a voter decide they like the way your name looks on paper, then maybe I should run for State Representative. I mean, throw up a cheap, static, 1-page website and I'd already be miles ahead of my competition....

On second thought, never mind. A wee bit of research shows that NH Reps and Senators get paid a whopping $200 per biennium. And I didn't drop a 0 this time either.

Parking Wars

I live in a condo complex of 2-bedroom townhouses. There are 16 units, 16 covered carport parking spaces, and 24 outdoor parking lot spaces. If every unit has 2 cars (which they don't, there are at least 4 that I know of with only one car) that leaves 8 visitor parking spaces. Granted a couple get "lost" in the winter under snowbanks. But still. There *should* be plenty of parking. So why did I have to listen to a 45 minute bitch-fest from a bunch of neighbors during the open discussion portion of tonight's Condo Board meeting? Gah. Too bad I'm only Madame President and not Grand Supreme Ruler on High, because if I was the latter, I could have had them all beheaded or sent to the dungeon or at least made to sit in different corners until they could be nice to each other.

How Do You Say "Argh" In Hebrew?

Warning - the following post contains self-pity and whining. Please check back tomorrow for a more positive attitude.
7:45PM Israeli time

Sartre said "Hell is other people", and right now I very much agree. This introvert has had more than enough socialization for today, to the point I'm trying to decide if I'm up to heading down to the lobby cafe for dinner by myself, or if I'm just going to order overpriced room service.

To start with, class was frustrating today. I want to succeed at this; I don't want to be the little girl who can't fix the machines. And of course, in attempting to do a relatively routine part replacement, it took me 3 times (and someone else finally inserting the part) to get it right. So frustrating. Also frustrating is the fact that we're doing a lot of listening to lectures/slides right now. Which is fine with me, especially since we're going to get plenty of hands-on time later this week and next, but everyone else keeps asking questions that would really be better answered by just trying scenarios out on the machines.

And then there's the language barrier. Which for once does not seem to be a problem for me, but for everyone else. The course is in English - it was actually specified on the invitation that English fluency was a prerequisite. There is at least one person in the class who not only is not fluent, but you can tell understands only a small percentage of what is being said by anyone. Within the fluent speakers, there are 5-6 different accents competing. Some people understand some accents but not others, et cetera et cetera et cetera. The Israeli instructors sometimes use slightly different terminology than what we use in the States, which seems to be throwing some people off. And so all this amounts to a lot of redundant questions, discussions going around and around the same topic, and questions that are asked in a way such that the given answer really doesn't answer the question at all.

Finally, there seems to be a bad combination of "this is not the same as at home; wah wah wah" and cultural apathy with a lot of the group. We're here in Israel for 2-3 weeks, basically all-expenses paid work trip. And yes, it is great that they have put us up on the beach here in Tel Aviv. The company is also organizing a day-trip for us to Jerusalem this coming weekend with a tour guide - something that runs $100+ per person through the hotel, and the company is doing this for us for free. And yet, there are people complaining because they wanted to go to the beach, go surfing, go dune buggying, go to the freaking Harley Davidson store instead. I'm listening to endless whining about the price of dining out. I've listened to whining about the fact that service is not included in the restaurant bill and oh the horrors, our waiter was acutally "rude" enough to point that out to us last night. I've listened to complaints about slow service - how we waited "an hour" after dinner to get our bill last night. We didn't, we waited maybe 20 minutes, which is nothing. I'm so frustrated by people who expect this to be exactly like the US (or whatever their home country is) and who also have no interest in exploring Israel at all. Don't these guys have any cultural curiosity at all?

I'm hoping most of this annoyance is just delayed jet lag on my part. I remember that the first time I went to France for work, the second day there was the worst and most frustrating. With any luck I will get a good night of sleep tonight and will be less vexed by everything tomorrow.

C'est fini

So this happened.

That's not my story, and it's not 100% accurate to what happened between me and Le copain français, but it comes pretty damn close to it.

It was not my decision (clearly) and in retrospect, I'm not sure how much of it was my fault. Basically shit happened to me, and then different shit happened to him. I dealt with my shit by getting both bitchy and clingy; he dealt with his shit by pulling away, which (of course) made me bitchier and clingier. It pretty much downward spiraled from there.

It's been a while and I still don't really want to talk about it much. What I do want is to go back in time to mid-January and do a lot of things differently. Sadly, my time machine is out of commission, so I'm stuck figuring out how to move on from here. I still miss him and it still hurts. Some days more than others.

L thinks that "One day, great books shall be written about my wig, and how I doth FUCKING FLIPPED IT FOR NO GODDAMN REASON" should be embroidered on a pillow. I'm half tempted to do so, since I have both cross-stitch supplies and an abundance of free time on my hands.

Not Ready Yet

Hallmark put up their Christmas ornament display a month ago.
I started seeing Christmas decorations in stores this weekend.
The local watering hole by work has a winter display in the entry.
There are Christmas ads on TV (and yes, I know, I could get a DVR and skip the ads. Not going to happen.)
The crazy women in accounting at work are already vying for bragging rights as to who will be done with her Christmas shopping first.
And I saw not one but two houses with outside Christmas trees lit on my drive home from work tonight.

IT'S ONLY THE SECOND OF NOVEMBER PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!

When I was a kid, not only did we walk to school barefoot, in the snow, 10 miles uphill both ways, but Christmas season didn't start until AFTER Thanksgiving.  I remember going to the mall on Veteran's Day one year (we always had it off from school) and being surprised that they were actually starting to put up the Christmas trees in the center, a week before Thanksgiving.  Veteran's Day is a week and a half from now.  Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, but not two whole months of it.

Christmas is special.  It is the celebration of the birth of Christ, if that is what you believe in (I do).  It is a time to spend with family and close friends, a time to reflect on the previous year and prepare for the new one coming, a chance to take a break, however small, from the ordinary, hum-drum, every day life.  But Christmas becomes not special if the "season" lasts from November 1st until New Year's.  That's 2 months, a sixth of the year.  After that much time in our faces, Christmas becomes just another part of the ordinary, hum-drum, every day life.

I don't have a solution, other than trying to unplug somewhat from the media and retail hiveminds that seem to be a big part of American society these days.  And that's not really a workable solution for me, either.  As I mentioned above, I don't have, and do not have any intention of getting, a DVR, so I watch TV live and endure commercials.  I can't just not shop between now and Thanksgiving, so I'm going to see decorations and trees and probably hear Christmas music in stores.  But I can, and will, keep my home Christmas-free until after Thanksgiving.