Oh, and voting! We also did all the reading and filled out our ballots this weekend. So now I can go drop them off tomorrow and hopefully that'll get our names taken off the robocall lists (fingers crossed).
The state ballot initiatives were all bad this year. (I was uncertain about the school board meeting one, and then I discovered that it got on the ballot thanks to Jon Caldara, second-biggest asshole in the state, which made it easy to decide.) The local ballot issues were much more a mixed bag; one interesting thing about deciding on the educational mill levies was realizing that although our county has the highest property tax rate in the state, the property valuations are actually pretty low. So the actual amount of money for running the schools is only moderate.
In the federal races, the only acceptable candidates were Democrats, of course, but I was pleased that in the local races I found a couple Republicans I could support. I think patisanship is a bit political problem, and I always vote on the individual candidates' merits, so it's kind of depressing when I spend a lot of effort doing that and my ballot ends up a straight ticket anyway. But this year there were a couple conservatives who were clearly more competent, better at the job, AND espousing sensible policy. So that was refreshing.
And now that I've voted, I'm going to go back to ignoring politics as much as I possibly can for another year.
