As the weather gets nicer, I'm stuck wearing a mask more and more when walking the dogs

[conuly]

I don't want to lose my game of pandemic pinball, after all, and the more people there are on the streets, the harder it is to dodge them.

Speaking of the disease, I thought NY now had vote by mail available for everybody, but I just can't seem to figure out how to sign up if I'm not going to actually be absent the city on election day. God, I sure hope this'll all be over by November, and it's not like our polling place gets terribly bad lines, but all the same - I don't want Mommy going out to vote in a crowd. Not if it can at all be avoided. I wonder if I can sneak her in as being chronically ill or disabled, which is always an option anyway. I mean, she is rather old....

Also also, Jenn begs me to inform you all that she did, in fact, make pancakes with the starter and she is also making cinnamon raisin bread. She is actually adding raisins into the cinnamon raisin bread, though, so I am loath to count it. Blech. Anyway, assuming I didn't get thoroughly scammed - which is always a possibility! - I managed to purchase 50 pounds of all purpose from a restaurant supply company at a not unreasonable markup. Don't look at me like that - I wasn't able to get any other size! (And that was actually my second try. The first one sold out between clicking "put in cart" and "checkout"!) Once it arrives, assuming it does arrive, she's off the hook.

Comments

[rhoda_rants]

Do they not do early voting? That's a thing right? Anyway, because I was curious (and my librarian instincts are still running) I Googled and got this. You can download the form and mail it from home, and see if they send you a ballot at least.

[conuly]

We only just got early voting for everybody this past year.

[marahmarie]

"Pandemic pinball" OMG I want to bottle that term. Or frame it. Or name my next post after it. That is golden.

[conuly]

Steal it, pass it around. My dream is to hear my oh-so-witty coinages spoken by somebody who's never met me or anybody I know.

[marahmarie]

I googled it and you could make it big. Search gives such longtail results you could easily put it right out in front. And yes, I'll do my part and steal it too (eventually) - thanks. :)

[marahmarie]

I just hope you can store it tightly sealed and that it goes reasonably fast as I have bad memories of what was attracted to similar quantities in a place I once worked. I could actually run from my chair just thinking about it.

Speaking of the disease, I thought NY now had vote by mail available for everybody, but I just can't seem to figure out how to sign up if I'm not going to actually be absent

It doesn't work like that in FL. I'm very much present each time I get a mail-in ballot - NY doesn't allow you to* essentially vote-from-home?

*I voted in-person in NY so I genuinely wouldn't know - but I wouldn't have thought a state like NY would restrict it in such fashion when FL doesn't.

[conuly]

We have a deep freezer. We can shove it in there.

[marahmarie]

What counts as "temporary illness" re: absentee ballots? Possible loophole for all of you (that with the right story you could possibly drive a truck right through).

How...backwards is that.

ETA: check this out.

[conuly]

I don't know, honestly.

[hudebnik]

New York State has for many years had very restrictive voting laws: no in-person early voting, no vote-by-mail unless you have a good "absentee" excuse, a deadline months in advance to register to vote, a deadline even longer in advance to change your party registration, etc. This was because of deadlock between the traditionally-Republican State Senate and the traditionally-Democratic State Assembly: neither one was willing to pass any electoral-reform law that the other liked.

In 2018, the State Senate got a Democratic majority for the first time in -- I don't know, decades? The new all-blue State government immediately started passing election reform laws: we now have a week or two of in-person early voting, the registration deadlines have become saner, and I think absentee voting is easier than before. I used the new in-person early voting in 2019, as I was planning to be out of town on election day: it was somewhat less convenient, since the nearest early-voting station is farther from my house than the nearest election-day polling place, but it was still less than two miles, and everything went smoothly.

[marahmarie]

See, I left NY in 2000 so never voted there again. Up until then I'd voted in two presidential elections (Clinton both times) in person each time, and was proud to, and wouldn't have missed it for the world.

The world's changed since, though. It's not even safe, IMO, for certain demographics to show up in person considering the ferocity of some on the R side, not to mention I've since realized certain demographics simply can't get to polling places all that easily nor reliably and never could; in such cases vote-by-mail is very much needed and an incredibly useful thing to have.

[malinaldarose]

I got a post card about voting by mail the other day, and now I don't remember what I did with it. I'd better check the recycling.

[conuly]

Good luck on finding it.

[wpadmirer]

I hope your flour arrives! I send good vibes for that.

[conuly]

Thanks :)

[kareina]

Ok, I am curious, how old is "rather old" as used in that sentence?

[conuly]

She'll be 71 at the end of August. Add a few age-years for the cancer - she didn't seem old until after the chemo.

[kareina]

Yah, cancer really does add the age-years for those luckily for it to not eat all of one's remaining years in one go.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I voted in person. It was easy enough--but only because of the particularities of where I am and who I am, in that I'm a stubborn shit and wasn't put off by the lack of information. My polling place hadn't been changed but I couldn't be sure that I wasn't going to have to play scavenger hunt even as I headed out.

Other people, had their polling places aggregated. That's right, social distance, but shunt more people to a single location.

*whip-pan topic shift* The brazen disregard of raisin bread including raisins. I'll be honest, when I did a shop prior to Only Essential Travel, seeing the rice pallets were depleted, I considered one of the bags of flour but calmed myself because I had no way to store or use That Much fast enough (it was whole bran milled--all purpose is more shelf stable.) I left it where families could buy it, families used to cooking with it.