Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. ~ Jerry Garcia

For Tuesday morning Anne had set the alarm clock to phasers on stun.  No wait, setting the alarm for 5 AM would have been phasers on stun.  She had actually set the alarm for 4 AM that means that the phasers were set to kill.  Fortunately, she immediately erupted from bed and turned off the alarm before any serious damage was done.  I drifted in and out of sleep for a bit, but heard her closing the front door at a quarter to five.  I got up, biked for 15 miles, came home, showered, dressed for work and made it to the polls at 6:30.  I voted and felt good about myself until I got to work.  There I noticed that some people had little I voted stickers.  I was jealous until I saw the pick your sticker poll on one of my favorite political blogs, the Daily Kos.  Here is an edited, read cleaned up, version of the Daily Kos poll, Pick your sticker:

• I voted! 
• I voted hard! 
• I voted better than you! 
• I voted while holding my nose! 
• I voted, so I can complain about my elected officials for another year! 

Monday morning at work, I commiserated with another Michigan State alumni about State’s 37-6 loss last weekend to Iowa.  I said, “Hi Jake.”  Maybe it was the tone of my voice or maybe it was the expression on my face or maybe it was both, because he answered, “You knew that they had to lose.”  I responded, “A loss is a loss, but that was way more than a loss.”  Jake smiled and shrugged and I moved on.  Similar Monday morning quarterbacking will occur after this election.  With Michigan State’s game your only qualification for having an opinion was seemingly being an MSU alumnus.  The Ram’s won on Sunday and being a resident of Saint Louis, was the only qualification for an opinion on that game.  By my mind, the only people who should hold, let alone express an opinion about this election should be only those people who actually voted.

My fellow engineers are a rather conservative lot.  I think that they will take this statement as a compliment.  A former company president once addressed a rather large assembly of us engineers with this criticism, he labeled us, “pale, male and stale”, by which you can read white, male and old.  This criticism had been related to him by a young, African-American, female, an engineering co-worker.  That was a few years ago and none of us hearing that are any younger, fewer still are female and rarest of all are those that are non-white.  So with this realization about the skewed nature of my office’s demographics, I’ll trudge into work on Wednesday morning and absorb the slings and gentle arrows of my fellow co-workers, but I’ll also consider the source.

As I am writing this post, I have no election night results; none of the polls are closed yet.  Anne is still not home yet, but should be soon.  We’ll probably listen to some of the election results, but I for one plan on going to bed early.  Whether this election is a blowout or not, I’ll wait until the morning to find out.