1. Worked the election again. Am very, very glad this was just a boring primary and we had less than 20% turnout, if the general election goes the same way it's going to be a disaster. Vote early, vote often! Just like I did.

2. Did I mention Homestuck fandom is dangerous? At election day set-up I used the word "cull" to mean "kill for incompetence and the good of the gene pool" without even thinking about it twice and confused several people. (Of course the supervisor I was paraphrasing used the words "go to your house and beat you to death" instead, so really I was just trying to be more polite. And that should tell you all you need to know about my election judging experience)

3. I posted a thing tracking the plants that are blooming on my weekly walk to common_nature. Hopefully this will be an ongoing monthly update right through November! I have a spreadsheet and all.(In fact currently I have recreational spreadsheets going for books read, things bought at yard sales, wildflowers seen, records owned, and words written. It's like a festival of spreadsheets!) It's going to get harder as the months go on, though, because I know early spring weeds the best, and also, mosquitoes and poison ivy.

4. princessofgeeks made some posts about nuts and bolts of betaing and different sorts of betas because of my request for behind-the-scenes descriptions of the beta process! It was exactly what I was looking for, and I want more of this type of stuff. (Incidentally, I am slowly trickling my con.txt panel ideas onto the official con.txt website suggestions page, but I think I'm going to put only a few more in, so if there's another one you really want to see go up, speak up! Or submit it yourself, I'm not possessive. :D

3. I've been listening to the Pinkwater Podcast's audiobook of The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror lately. I hadn't re-read it in years (actually, I first encountered it in audiobook form, so maybe that's re-listened) because I had found the plot rather thin and boring, compared to most of the other Pinkwater books I'd read.

I still find the "plot", what there is of it, rather thin. On the other hand, it has hipsters - real hipsters, the kind who hang out at a coffee bar/bakery called the Dharma Buns, have deep thoughts about communism and read bad free verse poetry to each other, rather than being ironically racist on Tumblr. And it has a teenage boy who has conceived of a passion for a girl he barely knows who doesn't like him and insists on pressing his suit even after she repeatedly tells him she isn't interested in him or in boys in general, and this is presented as obviously creepy, possibly dangerous, and reasonably terrifying rather than an epic romance, which there needs to be more of in YA fiction in general. (Come to think of it, maybe we weren't supposed to immediately assume stalker-boy was also the overall villain, and that's why the plot always seemed thin to me? But it's pretty damn obvious.)

Also I had forgotten how very OT3 Rat, Winston and Walter are in this one, and how awesome and hilarious their OT3 dynamic is. When I was walking home today I dreamed up a futurefic story for them wherein ( they're all in their late twenties or so, and Walter and Winston are still renting the house near Blueberry park that they moved into after college )

Also, Rat ⋄ Dirk "Bro" Strider. Somebody get on that.