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11:54 p.m. - 2003-10-28
Snow and Air Time
I forgot to mention last night, that I also did work on election stuff. I talked with my liaison in Ottawa for a while. He was bemoaning their weather - cold drizzly rain. Of course, he's also required to work seven days a week for the next month or two so that might be part of the problem too. It'll make for a nice Christmas bonus though. He told me that I wasn't going to be allowed to renumber my polls at this time - there problem being that migrating the lists for each poll to a new number would be too much for them to do with all the other tasks that need doing. Fair game - could I ask for a commitment when the time crunch isn't so great? Yes no problem. I think I'll try to hurry up and get this bit in so that maybe a space will open up before the next election. Ten hour stints now are preferable to 16 hour clean up days during an election, because of the confusion the numbering might cause.

I had a meeting today with one of the people I used to volunteer with a lot. She was a teacher in the Catholic system, but is retired now. The last time I saw her physically, was at the last election when she brought in the paperwork that has to be supplied to remove a name from the voter's list. Her husband had died not long before and she didn't want anyone to use his vote. What frustrated me that day was that I didn't have a lot of time to spend with her, I wanted to help her through that process. We only had about half an hour before I had to go. I did go into the data room and watch the removal later just to be certain there were no mistakes. There are always several requests for the same service during an election. When I can, I bring the person into my office do the removal as they watch and sit with them until they're ready to move forward. It's upsetting when timing means that you can't do that for a friend. We have spoken by phone since then but our schedules haven't meshed until now so that we could spend time just talking. She's going to take a position with me during the election so we talked about that then moved on to more personal stuff.

I left my home at about 11:20 am to get to the restaurant - the Vietnamese place I've mentioned before. Outside I started having a lot of trouble breathing - that's very odd for this time of year, but I thought maybe all the dust we'd stirred up yesterday while moving all the furniture had triggered a reaction. About a year ago we had a field mouse infestation, that took a while to deal with, so it was possible that there was still some detritus left from that. It seemed strange that it would continue into the next day, especially when there was a good north wind and showers clearing out the atmosphere though. When I left the restaurant, I popped into the lawyers' office nearby and finally got my oath of office notarized, then headed off to the grocery store. I was surprised and a bit upset, because even a hour later, I still was fighting to breathe outside even though I was fine inside the restaurant. Got home and turned on the news. The high school half a block from me had had to be completely evacuated just before lunch because something in their ventilation system was making everyone sick. The teachers had ventilated the building through the back door - the portion of the school closest to my home and pointing directly toward it - as soon as they realized how serious the problem was. That explained why there were so many students in the restaurant for so long - my friend and I were trying to figure that one out. A number of the students were ones she had taught in elementary school long ago and she knew they weren't the type to skip classes. It also explained the ambulances that went by as I was crossing the street to go to the grocery store. No word on what the substance was but it must have been pretty potent to have that strong an effect.

Tonight it's snowing - heavily. It's that wet sticky snow that makes great snowballs or snow men, but wreaks hovac with downed power lines, icy streets and tree branches that snap off because of the snow's weight. We're told to expect about 10 cm/4 " in the next day, but it will melt in a couple of days when it warms up again. We took some of the kittens out on the balcony tonight just so they could see what it felt like. I don't think any of them will be trying to sneak outside anytime when they see the white stuff. After all they were born during the hottest part of one of the hottest summers we've had in a while. Icy paws are not on. Anyway another burst of energy from a solar flare this morning, the third strongest ever recorded in history, is expected to hit earth's atmosphere sometime tonight. I'm going to go and see if the aurora borealis - the Northern Lights - is dancing tonight.

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