Day One Done

Today (Friday) was my first day of being a precinct judge for early voting. I was one of two judges. The other one, Kara, belongs to the other political party--assigned this way by design. We also have two clerks--one from each political party--working at the polling place. 

Earlier in the week, I'd reached out to Kara to introduce myself. She didn't respond. I then took the initiative of sending out an e-mail to our team, introducing myself, setting the schedule and breaks, etc. I bring this up, because given she couldn't bother to get back to me, I had a feeling I knew what I was in for with my co-judge. And I was not wrong. 

The good news is I have only three more shifts with her. The bad news is she reminds me too much of Marty's sister-in-law (his brother's wife), who will not lift a finger to help with anything, whines about how horrible her life is and has to one-up everyone around her. If you won the lottery, she won it twice. If you lost your grandmother, she lost two grannies and a cat. Anyway, I have three more 13 hour shifts with Kara.

I'm not making her sound worse than she is. However, I am making my threshold of tolerance sound lower than it is. Pretty much, I tuned Kara out most of the day while she blathered on to the clerks.  

Kara's abject laziness and non-stop talkativeness aside, today went well. There was one slight hiccup. I stepped outside to eat lunch when the tabulation machine started beeping. One of the clerks hunted me down to tell me I needed to get back into the voting room right away, as if my mere presence could stop the beeping. It could not. 

The only other interesting tid-bit is I kicked out a Southern woman who started talking trash about "those people." I was horrified. I have experienced racism one other time since I got here with a member of the Ladies Auxiliary (and probably one of the primary reasons I don't want to hang out with them). My feelings then and now aren't different. If the woman I kicked out today feels the need to call the Secretary of State's office to report me, I will give her the number. 

Overall, I enjoyed my first day. Corona Patty and Corona Gail stopped by to vote and say hello. Many people thanked us for working the voting polls. With few exceptions everyone tended to be polite and friendly. Now off to sleep. I need to be back at 6:15 tomorrow.