Seriously. Go Vote.

 

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Oh, hey, Americans! Guess what day it is. If you said "Election Day," you are correct, to the extent that today is therefore the FINAL day to vote if you haven't done so already. It doesn't matter if you think your candidate will win. Go vote. Hillary Clinton supporters back in 2016 assumed she was going to win and didn't vote, and we ended up with Donald Trump. So. Go. Vote.

Do you have a sense of doom because you suspect your area is largely voting for the other guy anyway, so why bother? STOP THAT! GO VOTE! Who knows? Texas was trending purple last week! TEXAS! The most Republican state known to this country! Go. Out. And. Vote. Do not assume you know how your fellow citizens are voting and do not assume your vote doesn't count. The fact that so many politicians are trying to suppress votes PROVES how important every single one is!

Besides, there is more to today's vote than just the presidency. Remember that the biggest changes come from LOCAL government, so be sure to go out and vote, and vote fully down ticket!

Are you concerned about potential COVID contamination? Good. Smart of you. Still go out and vote if you haven't already! Wear your mask. Put on gloves that you instantly remove once you're done. Bring hand sanitizer and/or wipes (although polling places should have those). Make sure to not touch your face until you can properly wash up. Bring your absentee ballot with you and hand deliver it. Ask for a paper ballot to fill out there with your own pen that you've brought with. Do what you need to in order to stay safe, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, GO VOTE!

Also also also, DO NOT LET ANYONE PREVENT YOU FROM VOTING! 

For more information, go to the website.

Here's a few more infographics I found over on Tumblr.

And one more from Facebook this time.

I double checked with Snopes.com, and this is completely true. So DO NOT let anyone take away your vote! The above image about the provisional ballot was accompanied with the below text. I was not able to verify this portion, and I do not know if it's only valid in New York state. On the chance that it is valid, I did want to pass the information along.

"If your name is not in the poll book, there might be a problem with your registration. Election inspectors in New York state are supposed to give voters two options:

1. Get a court order.

There are judges standing by on Election Day to hear cases like this immediately. If you present compelling evidence that you live where you live and ought to be able to vote on a machine, the court will order it so. Bring the paper copy of the court order which is signed by the judge into the polling site, an election inspector will give you a ballot as though your name were in the poll book. (I don't know any more details about this, so people should do their own research.)

2. Complete an affidavit ballot.

It's a ballot that looks just like the one you would put into a machine but instead of putting it into the machine, you put it into a special envelope. You have to fill out the envelope with all your personal information. (It's imperative that you sign the envelope!!) It will go down to the board of elections with all other vital election documents at the end of the day. The board of elections will then check all of your personal information, and if it is verified that you are who you say you are and you live where you live and you should have been able to cast your ballot, they will open the envelope and count your vote. If they cannot verify that information, your vote won't count. You will get a letter within three weeks (That timing might be different this year) saying whether or not your vote counted and, if not, why."

Information from a friend of a friend.

Also, remember that your job was supposed to give you ample time to go to the polls today when they scheduled you. If you do not have time allotted for voting, you have the right to leave work - make sure you inform your supervisor/boss what you're doing - to go vote. You are allotted x-hours of PAID time off work to vote. In my state it's 2hrs. Please check to see the regulations for your state. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GIVE UP YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE IN ORDER TO KEEP YOUR JOB OR AVOID LOSING PAID HOURS AT WORK.

If you are lacking transportation to your polling place, remember that Uber and Lyft are giving significant discounts for rides to and from the polls. Also, give a quick search to see if there's any free or low-cost public transportation you can use.

• Uber - Our 2020 Get Out The Vote Effort
• Lyft - Your Ride to Vote
• Rideshare2Vote.com

If nothing else, see if your friends and/or family can give you a ride.

Now, if you mailed in your vote, you should get a digital notification (via email or text) or a physical one via snail-mail to let you know your vote is counted. Please check, if you haven't done so already, if there is a way to track your ballot and confirm it is counted. If it is not, for any reason, you should get a notification alerting you of that as well, along with the reason your vote wasn't counted. PLEASE CHECK IN ON YOUR BALLOTS!

Along those lines, please remember that most of Biden's supporters seem to have voted early/mailed in their ballots as an attempt to mitigate the potential for COVID-19 contamination. Meanwhile, most of Trump's supporters seem to believe his rhetoric that mail-ins are rigged, and so they opted to wait to vote in person at the polls today. Because of this discrepancy in how the two sides decided to vote, the results we get tonight may not actually be the official, final votes. Assuming we get any sort of decision at all tonight. Please keep in mind that it may be a week or two before all the mail-in ballots are counted. The road ahead of us is going to be long and rough and November is NOT going to be a fun month. Please be patient, be understanding, and try to focus on your mental health and what you need to do for that.

I saw a post earlier today that suggested taking the evening to just cook. Prepare a big pot of soup or a casserole or something. Anything that will take some time, take your mind off of the election for a bit, and provide you with meals for the rest of the week so you don't have to focus on that.

Also, because I understand how stressful this time has been and will be, I want to remind everyone that there are helplines to call if you are struggling with your mental health and/or suicidal thoughts. Please try to reach out for help. Likewise, remember to reach out to your friends and family to check in on them. They might not have the strength to let you know they're struggling. We can get through this together if we look out for one another and know it's safe to lean on each other.

I'm sure there's a lot more I should let everyone know, but I'm a bit burnt out. Sorry, folks. Also, if you're not an American citizen, sorry you had to wade through all of that simply because, dear lord, our voting here is such a mess!

Anyway, I think that's all the major house cleaning I needed to do here. So, to reiterate to make sure everyone hears me:

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Hoooo-boy, that was a lot, wasn't it? Sadly, that's what's going to be taking up the majority of this blog post. Sorry again to any who have already voted, knew all of the above already, or isn't an American citizen. I'm sure this was a fun little read for you.

To be honest, not much else has gone on this week. I just wasn't feeling Halloween this year, which is SUUUCH a bummer, but, well, welcome to 2020, I guess. We didn't decorate our place. We didn't really watch any spooky or Halloween-themed movies. Most of the ones we usually watch as staples - Sweeney Todd, Little Shop of Horror, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Young Frankenstein, Blood & Chocolate, Rocky Horror Picture Show - we didn't even bother finding. We did get in Hocus Pocus though. Seemed appropriate, ya know, with the full moon on Halloween and all.

We did also start up the latest season of Lucifer on Netflix... does that count? I also watched I, Frankenstein. It's not the greatest movie, but it is a fun action flick, and the transition of the gargoyles between their human and stone forms is beautifully done. 

Didn't even watch really any of the spooky streams posted by OutsideXbox or Outside Xtra, so those are all still sitting in my YouTube notifications.... We DID, however, make sure to watch the Oxventures and the Among Us streams.

Speaking of, that's probably the closest to a "Halloween party" that we got. On Friday, during another of Ronoxym's Twitch streams, we played a few hours of Among Us once again. This time, Hubby and I convinced everyone to try out the Hide-and-Seek rules we learned.

For those who don't know this mod, I believe these are all of the rules we had enacted:

1. There is only 1 impostor, who announces themselves to the other players so the crewmates know who to avoid. (Not that it mattered for me. A lot of my deaths were because I forgot who said they were the impostor and I ran right up to them...)
2. The impostor can vent, but they cannot cause sabotages.
3. No one reports bodies or calls for an emergency meeting. The crewmates simply attempt to avoid the imposter as they race to get their tasks done.
4. The impostor's cone of vision is drastically diminished to hinder their ability to find the crewmates and kill them. The crewmates are also encouraged to announce where the impostor is as a means to warn the surviving crewmates.
5. The dead crewmates are allowed to continue talking, but they CANNOT announce or otherwise warn where the impostor is. 

These modified rules to the game turns a social deduction game about finding a traitor into something more akin to an asymmetrical survivor-slasher-horror game such as Friday the 13th: The Game. I am WORLDS better at this version of the game. I don't have to worry about deducing anything or being deceptive. I just need to figure out routes to keep myself safe, strategize which tasks to do when to try to stay alive, or strategize the best way to sneak up on people (usually while they're doing long tasks or ones that take up their full screen) for the most effective killing spree. Plus, as the killer, I get to be SUUUUPER creepy in voice chat.

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A bit bummed that I only got to be the impostor 2x this go, and they were back-to-back on top of that. Oh well. Can't wait to see how much fun we manage this week; assuming we play again Friday night, which seems to be A Thing now....

So, that was Friday. On Saturday, we got a nice amount of trick-or-treaters at my work. It was great to see kids still enjoying the holiday and being properly careful. For the most part, we only got trick-or-treaters one family at a time, or friends who were clearly walking around together anyway. There were two or three times where it was clear the kids were strangers, and I was a bit concerned with them clumping together to wait for candy, but, again, for the most part, they all seemed to be following proper guidelines. I particularly appreciate that parents made sure that even the kids already wearing full Halloween face masks wore their typical cloth face coverings underneath.

I even saw a little Ladybug cosplayer! She was about 5, I think. She also seemed 100% done with trick-or-treating already, which is kind of sad since I saw her around 4pm, I think. She looked tired, Mom was carrying her, she was fussing with her costume's gloves, which were too big, and her blonde hair was hung loose. I joked a little with her as she took her piece of candy: "What happened to your pigtails? Did you lose them?" The mom told me her daughter had the pigtails, but took them out pretty quickly. Then there was a second of recognition before the mom excitedly told her daughter, "See? She knew who Ladybug was!" So, I'm thinking the poor girl had a lot of people not knowing what her costume was supposed to be? I hope the rest of her Trick-or-Treating experience perked up.

Once home, Hubby and I made our traditional Haunted Meatloaf. As in, "haunted" with ghost pepper chili.

This isn't even all of the meatloaf he made. There was at least one more batch this size.

Hubby was kind. He started with a batch that barely had any flakes in it so he didn't kill me (I can barely handle spice). These are marked as the "mild" meatloaves. Then he made the main batch with about half-dozen mini-pockets filled with the crushed pepper before mixing it all together. These are marked as "spicy" and make up the majority of the loaves in my fridge right now. Finally, he set aside about six where he half-filled the pan with that spicy meat mixture, then LINED the top with a layer of crushed ghost peppers, and filled the pan the rest of the way with that spicy meat mixture. These are the "super hot" ones that I will avoid at all costs. 

I prefer my "hauntings" to be closer to Casper than The Exorcist, thank you.

Dinner made and in the process of being eaten, Hubby and I spent the remainder of our evening on our Animal Crossing islands, celebrating Halloween there without any need for social distancing or masks, and we could both trick-or-treat and have trick-or-treaters to our heart's content. Especially since we didn't have any kids come to our place IRL. 

I ended up taking about 300 screen shots and videos throughout the night! Here's some of the highlights.

Some shots from my island; some from Hubby's

Mostly my island, but the shots with Stitches the cub are from Hubby's.

So many pictures of me just trying to compose a spooky feel.
Most of these are on my island, but the first 3,
and the theatrical one by the graveyard are all on Hubby's island.
Hubby went from his Adrien Agreste cosplay to full on Chat Noir.

I had way too much fun trick-or-treating my villagers at home, giving my wandering villagers candy as they sprint up to me yelling "Trick or Treat!", purposefully not giving my villagers candy to see the prank they'd pull - resulting in having the scarecrow, mummy, zombie, and joker (jester?) face paint patterns throughout the night; wish you could save them to use later - and scaring my villagers by dressing up as Jack. Plus you have the villagers using the Haunt and Scare reactions, which is just adorable. Also, now we have a whole 2nd page available for more reactions. Maybe we'll finally get a blowing a kiss or air hug reaction or something? I NEED TO GLOMP SOME OF THESE VILLAGERS AND SOME OF MY FRIENDS WHEN THEY VISIT!. Back on topic though, both Hubby's and my islands were all spooky and Halloween-y with the nighttime Jack visit and overcast sky. It was lovely. I needed a whole month of that.

Speaking of, I still have the decorations up, because it seemed a shame to get the final Halloween crafts and the Halloween themed wallpaper, flooring, and rug at the end of the day. At least I'll have them for next year, but... I'm going to enjoy them for about a week before I start thinking about the next holiday.

.... [Unintended Intermission] ....

Okay. Life has gotten crazy again. It is now after 3pm, so I hope all of my above advice about voting is still helpful to people.

In the meantime, and one of the reasons this has taken so long to post, I went to the polls myself (along with Hubby, of course). So, please remember to go vote! 

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Finally, this is my only Tuesday off this month. I do have nearly every Friday off, however, so I may be moving my blog updates to Fridays for the foreseeable future. I'll let you know if/when I switch back to Tuesdays. I'm also not officially signed up for NaNo this year, so I probably won't have any sort of word-count updates like I normally do in November. I AM planning on writing something Plagg-centric for Friday the 13th though. Can't flake out on Plagg Appreciation Day after all, right? Besides, it does feel a bit fitting that my first published work during this whole pandemic would be something dedicated to Plagg.

Okay, I got to go or this post will never make it to the public before the polls close! So, one last time: