Miserable Drip & Election Mayhem

Today's blog is a weather report. When you've got nothing else to say the weather becomes the conversation topic. North Texas weather can be such a trial, but the lead up to Spring is the worst. Or the funnest if you like rock and roll storms full of sound and fury and a chance of a tornado or grapefruit size hail. That was our entertainment here in the wee hours this morning. A lot of noisy rain and big booms with bright light effects. No tornado in my immediate zone though. I've yet to hear the tornado sirens go off this year.

The past few days had been in the 80s with one day almost breaking the record at 91. I'd spent one afternoon reading by the pool. I thought the cold misery was done for the year. But last night's storm from the south brought in fresh hell from the north and after the 2 fronts got done fighting the north won, just like it always does. So the temps have been falling all day. It's been dripping all day, a winter in the northwest type drippy winter day. And that dripping is predicted to turn into some form of ice as daylight leaves. It could be snow, hail or an ice storm. Of the 3 the one I truly dislike is an ice storm. I've had falling down issues during an ice storm.

I forgot to mention, my current dreary view of the world is what I'm looking at right now in the photo above. Looking out the window to the right of my computer desk.

Earlier today I braved the cold when it was still in the 40s and returned that Gail Sheehy book about Hillary called Hillary's Choice. I checked out a couple new books and asked the librarian if the library was tomorrow's caucus place for this precinct. She did not know. So much for libraries being a good source of information.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about tomorrow's voting. I do know that the library is my voting location tomorrow, that is Step One in the Texas Two Step. Step Two starts when the polls close, Step Two being the caucus. The location of which I do not know.

That wonder of useless information, that I may have complained about before, that being the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, had an article this morning which was ostensibly about all the confusion over tomorrow, but somehow did not answer the key question, as in where are the damn caucuses? Instead they had a cutesy dumb Myth and Fact list that was particularly insipid. Like "Myth: Voting twice means voting early and then voting again during the day Tuesday." Or "Myth: Voting twice means I can vote in both the Democratic and Republican primaries." Or "Myth: I can vote Tuesday without having registered."

Apparently this Texas Two Step method has been in play for 20 years but this is the first election where people are actually interested. I'm thinking Texas will get rid of this, well, idiotic, method by the next election cycle because by the end of tomorrow night it likely will be nationally controversial because no one will be able to understand how it was Hillary won the Texas popular vote while Obama won the most delegates. That's my prediction and I'm sticking to it.

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TEXAS TWO STEP UPDATE: Upon consulting an election expert I have learned the Texas caucuses take place at wherever your polling place is. The Star-Telegram actually said this, but I, dense reader that I am, was not able to parse their verbiage and accurately extract its meaning. I also think when I read that the caucus starts when the voting ends that they couldn't possibly mean in the same location. But how would one get quickly from the voting location to the caucus location, I wondered? It never crossing my mind that they could be one and the same.

So, tomorrow we have a set up here in Texas for one gigantic Cluster Muckup. Early voting has already broken all records. Tomorrow's turnout, despite the cold weather, is expected to break all records. So, how in the world are they going to clear out the voting equipment and set up a caucus meeting in the small meeting room that acts as the polling place in the library I visited earlier today?

I was going to just vote in the primary and ignore the caucus and stay home and watch American Idol. But now I'm thinking I can try and figure out my VCR and watch American Idol later. This should be at least as entertaining a mess as Saturday's security incompetence at Hillary's Stockyards rally.