No one outside of New Orleans will understand the excitement that I am feeling… The USPS just announced that mailers can begin to send periodicals and standard mail to us! I am so excited and I still probably won’t get much mail. It will probably be a let down in a few weeks when I only get junk mail again.

It’s really weird to think that I haven’t gotten any magazines, catalogs, and junk mail in over 8 months. And this is the federal government… why couldn’t they spend a little money so that we could have some mail? Well, I guess the wait is over. I’ve become good at waiting for things.

I’m leaving for California really early tomorrow, but I’m really interested in the election tomorrow. I’m actually watching the news and the ads are more interesting than the news. It’s almost like super bowl sunday. I haven’t been as good at watching the ads lately, so this is a lot of fun. I actually expected there to be more mudslinging.

So far I’ve been happy with all of my early voting decisions except for Criminal Sheriff. I made the wrong decision. I didn’t have a lot to go on because there wasn’t a whole lot of easily accessible information at the time. I made most of my decisions from the league of women voters, but that information can be a little misleading if the candidate lies. I’ve since discovered that DeSalvo is nothing but lies – he’s also exceptionally stupid person compared to Gusman. Oh well. I guess I’m allowed to make one mistake – I hope that Gusman will win even so.

I am a voter. While I’m not going to tell the world who I voted for (because the whole world reads this and is interested), I will describe my prevoting experience.

For those who didn’t have the chance to hear me complain, I will not be in town for the New Orleans election on April 22. That weekend also happens to be the French Quarter Fest, one of my favorite festivals (it’s free!). I will be in the San Francisco bay area for my father’s wedding.

So I walked to City Hall, the ugliest building in the entire city, and proceeded down the hall trying to find room 1W23. Yep, New Orleans should win the “most confusing and unneedingly complex building number system” award. Sadly, it’s not even as simple as the W standing for west. Most likely the brother of a past mayor was paid 100k a year to develop and maintain the door numbering system. Job well done. Incidently, the architect of this god-foresaken building was probably his cousin.

Back to voting… The room was actually fairly easy to find because of the line of people waiting to vote down its hallway. In case anyone was interested, the makeup of people while I was there was about half to 2/3 white vs. black. I got to see Sen. Mary Landrieu vote right before me. She attempted to appear interested in those waiting in line.

The talkative guy in front of me was as redneck as a New Orleanian could get. He was telling me about how he didn’t know how to use the computerized voting machines. He went on to tell me that he is never going to need to use a computer because:

“My brother doesn’t even have a library card for his parish library, so how would he ever go to Germany and check out a book. Besides, there are enough books here to keep me busy.”

I am glad that it makes as much sense here as it did in person. My only guess is that he was trying to say that he is literate but not computer literate – I’m not sure if that point came across as well as he might have wished.

Those who know me, know that I do not play the piano. They are right. After 3 years of having no access to a piano, I’ve decided that I needed to own one so that I could continue my upon my one semester of lessons. I’m the worst pianist, but I’m already getting better.

In case you cared, I got a fairly nice Yamaha digital piano. It’s got fully weighted keys, so the action is fairly close to that of a real piano. I like it because I can hook up headphones and no one can hear how bad I am. So, I guess I’m becoming a musician again. Perhaps I will even start to compose music again.