Elections and eclipses

Thought I'd just post quickly about this week's special day -- Tuesday, which was both Election Day and the Transit of Venus.

I love Election Day, every Election Day. I always vote in person (I would hate to live somewhere where I had to mail in my ballot), and I always vote manually, with a pen (don't trust those electronic voting machines, nosirreebob). For this election, Rocket Boy and I had stupidly, idiotically, forgotten to re-register at our new address -- I don't know how we let that get by us, I really don't. Having four-year-old twins cannot be used as an excuse forever. And for a while I wasn't going to vote, because I thought it would be illegal. But then I found some convoluted statements on various election websites that indicated that you really could still vote, even if you'd moved. Also, moving didn't change a single thing about our registration -- we're still in the same congressional district, same everything district. All of Ridgecrest is in the same everything district. So I voted. And emerged from the polling place with my heart singing a happy song.

But in about a month we are DEFINITELY going to re-register, just so there is not a shred of confusion for the fall election.

The Transit of Venus was to become visible around 3:30 here, and I wish I'd gone right over to the Maturango Museum then, so that I could have seen the blobby dot that Venus makes when it crosses over onto the sun. But I didn't know about that yet, so I didn't go until 5 pm, when Rocket Boy got off work and picked up the twins from daycare. Then we all drove over there. The museum has a little observatory, but also several members of the local astronomy club had set up telescopes, so there were plenty of chances for everyone to view the Transit.

Amusingly, Rocket Boy and I realized that we knew at least half the people there -- all the liberals in town had come out for the viewing. Later on there were people we didn't know, looked like most of a Boy Scout troop and all that, but still.

We had a very hard time getting the boos to look through a telescope, even though they do know what Venus is. Or sort of. They've been finding Venus in the night sky since they could barely talk. "Venee" was a very early word for them. But it was really hard to explain that the star-like thing they know and love was now a black dot crawling across the surface of the sun during the daytime. So instead they ran away and played in the museum garden, which is very attractive.

After a while we decided to go eat dinner, so we went to the China Lake buffet, which is not too far away. After eating we returned, and looked through the telescopes (or didn't, in the boos' case) some more.

Of course I didn't bring my camera -- it didn't occur to me that this would be a photo op. But I have some photos taken in the museum garden about a month ago. Here are the boos (a month ago) running through the museum's labyrinth (and sorry about the smears on all the photos -- the lens has been cleaned since that day):

A little friend of theirs from daycare showed up with his grandpa, and he didn't want to look through the telescopes either, so the three little boys ran the labyrinth together. It wasn't 105 degrees, we'd had a cooling trend, but it was at least 85, and still they ran. Ran and ran and ran. Oh to be four, with boundless energy. Here's the museum garden bell, which they and other children rang obsessively:

Finally their little friend's grandpa insisted that he come look through a telescope, and of course then boos wanted to do it too. So they all looked through telescopes, again and again, until we finally got tired of it all and took them home and put them to bed.

And then of course we had the election results to obsess over, and that's always fun, though we were disappointed about what happened in Wisconsin, and as for our local elections... well, what can I say? Ridgecrest is Red. The hotly contested race was for County Supervisor -- and don't ask me what a county supervisor does, but somehow it's very important to us out here in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, 8 people were running. My guy came in 3rd and Rocket Boy's guy came in 5th, but only the top 2 move on to the fall election, so, oh well. Even more locally, Ridgecrest voted for term limits, which means all but one of the city councilmembers will have to leave at the end of their current terms. That'll be an interesting shake-up, though I'm not sure we'll still be here to witness it. Ridgecrest also voted itself a much-needed tax increase, so that's a good thing.

Anyway, it was a lovely day.