More griping.

Well, I'm sorry but this got my blood-pressure way up, though in the grand scheme of things and it'll all be the same in a hundred years and all those soothing things! I'm able to vote in the US still, though I used to think I couldn't as I no longer have any address there. So I duly got the registration and request for an absentee ballot form (and one for daughter who'll be able to vote as well!). There's one line which asks for your voting residence and says 'For overseas civilians, last residence in U.S.' In the completion instructions it says 'Provide the address where you ACTUALLY LIVED'. (Their Caps, not mine.) Right, that's easy enough, isn't it? So I filled this thing out and my daughter filled hers out and we sent them off to the local election office where we lived last. Yesterday our absentee ballots arrived - yippee. Except that my daughter's form had her last name spelled incorrectly, and when I opened mine I saw that the affidavit I'd to sign said that I swore that I resided at the address I'd given as my last residence. Sheesh. I had to phone and was told to get back my updated information - only when I repeated the fact that I'd just done this and had filled out my last residence according to the instructions, was I told that overseas residents can use the address of the voter registration office as their residence. ??? Damn, call me difficult, but shouldn't that information go out the first time people fill out this form? (And call me cynical, but I've a gut suspicion that US civilians living abroad are far more likely to be less conservative than USians in general, and then you see problems which might invalidate the absentee votes of those same citizens and you wonder...)

Tonight was one of those totally beautiful summer evenings, and we took Bell for a walk up to my mother's. It got to that particular moment of twilight when light colours glow and really stand out and she was walking away from me. Unfortunately this hightlighted the light and very pouffy hair puffs over her back legs and she looked exactly as if she had on voluminous pantaloons!

Yesterday, while I was <cut away my nefarious activities involving a book sale website>, she fell fast asleep in perfect photo position - mouth wide open around her favourite stuffed animal, facing towards me, cute as could be. I got up extremely quietly to go get the camera, and of course, she immediately woke up and followed me. About 15 minutes later she fell asleep in exactly the same position - perfect! Naturally, the tiny ping the camera made turning on was enough to wake her up again and she would not go back to sleep again. I think she's developed a liking for the camera, and wasn't going to go to sleep so she wouldn't miss the chance of having her pic taken! Then daughter came home and the moment was lost forever.

Still not liking Inkheart very much, but I found a copy of Emma Bull's Falcon on a ABE which was cheap - and the shipping was unbelievably reasonable - $4 for two books surface, $7 air mail. Compared to Amazon's Marketplace - $9-something per book and no discount for buying several books from the same seller - it's wonderful!

Charlotte Grey's on the telly over my shoulder, and I'd forgotten just how very easy on the eyes the French guy is! See - I don't always complain....