Ok, so I found a template I like. I still have to mess with the header a little, but besides that, it seems like it is doing everything it should do. Please let me know what browser you are using if it is acting screwy at all on your computer.
In other news, I voted yesterday. Our state has early absentee voting and yesterday was the first day it was available. Since Mr. A was out of town for work, I didn’t have anything else to do, so the girls and I went downtown after dinner.
The only catch was the default ballot they gave everyone was an optical scan paper ballot. Given the irregularites with those in the past (not to mention how easy it would be for my ballot to just get lost), I wanted to vote on a computer. I had to specifically request it and there was only one available for everyone in our entire county. We waited about 30 minutes, but it was fun. We spent our time talking to other waiting Obama voters and watching the news crews observing us.
Since I have already voted, I will be free on election day to work the polls (I may not have signed up on time for this year) or do campaign work because my mom agreed to watch the girls. And hopefully we will be able to go to a victory party downtown.
Unrelated to anything else, this story about grown women with lifelike baby dolls is freaking me out.
I’m so glad that the GOP isn’t going to push for a further appeal. I’m nervous about them using the optical scan ballots and am leery about voting early to begin with. I’m afraid that the votes are going to count. You’re very wise in waiting to use the computer.
I saw the grown women baby doll thing and it freaked me out too. Actually, I thought of you when I saw it knowing it would creep you out.
I remember hearing about those freaky dolls when a documentary came out earlier in the year. Collecting them is strange enough, but it’s the way some women treat them like actual babies all day long that is creepy as hell. And there are preemie ones! And! There are stores where you put on a hospital gown and a fake nurse pretends to do a health examination on the doll before handing it over.
At the risk of being close-minded, that is just weird.
Oops. I clearly meant AREN’T going to count. Or maybe that was a Freudian slip given my party affiliation.
I’m curious about your reluctance to use optical scan and your preference for computer voting. Do you get a paper receipt to confirm your vote, and does the system print an internal tape for backup purposes?
The usual concern is that touch-screen voting is *less* secure because many of the systems don’t produce any paper trail at all, and optical scan is preferable because there’s a physical record of every vote.
I’m not trying to be dismissive of your concern, I’m just interested because you’re saying the opposite of what I most often hear from the voting-reform crowd around here. (I live in DC …)
I have mixed feelings about the reborn dolls. I’ve seen them for sale on eBay for a couple years now, and while the idea of owning and/or collecting them doesn’t appeal to me at all, and while I agree it is somehow creepy that grown women treat them like little babies, I think they are a pretty amazing work of art. The degree of skill and talent that it takes to so perfectly render the skintones and features of an infant really does inspire awe in me, and once you’ve seen some of the lesser quality reborn dolls you can appreciate the high end dolls all the more. I especially admire anybody who can make a whole business out of creating and selling them, but at the same time, if I ever did buy one it would be for a little girl who wanted an extra-special, especially lifelike baby doll, and not for a grown woman who wanted to act like a little girl!
I think those dolls are sorta scary. And the grown women who play with them are a bit ummm…different, lol. : )
About the template, am sorta glad you went back to your one with the family eating a meal, I like that one best, although the other one wasn’t bad either. : ) Oh yeah, you asked what browser. I go through….I go through internet explorer. And just to let ya know. About 2 or 3 weeks ago, I had a really bad time commenting on your blog and a few from typepad and *especially* wordpress, too. My comments were going straight to their spam folders. However my comments to blogspot, went through just fine. Then all on it’s own it just started working again. Go figure. : )
The picture of the pieces of lifelike baby on a platter were the worst.
Wow, I didn’t come visit for some days and now there are so many changes!! I like the looks of the blog.
Now, about the dolls, thanks for the link. My husband’s aunt (his mom’s brother’s wife) is addicted to those dolls and I was absolutely creeped out by the photos that she posted online months ago. One day my SIL and I counted the dolls, she has 16 of them and a whole WARDROBE of matching outfits, pacifiers, everything. I thought she was literally going crazy, but then lately I noticed that she’s posting even more photos (you would throw up just reading the labels in “baby voice” that she writes) and that lots of other women are commenting on them! So, good to know it’s a trend, and that she’s not really “sick” (or, if she is, she’s in good company, it seems). Oh, and I’ve gotten used to the pictures by now (them floating in the pool, sitting in the sun, hugging each other, etc…).
The preemie versions are especially disturbing. There are versions that have no relationship to actual preemies (they’re just tinier versions of healthy full-term babies) and then there are the ones that actually do approximate what a premature baby looks and feels like — and that’s almost worse.
And yet, there’s part of me that can’t believe that my kids were ever as small as their preemie clothes — or the photos of their tiny heads in my hands — suggest, and I suppose a reproduction would bring it all back.
of course, that’s the FREAKY part of me.
[I'm not early voting because I want to cast that ballot on the day, as part of a nod to history. Then again, I live in a quiet precinct, and the kids are off school that day, so we can go early and I can hope that they remember this election, at least vaguely.]