kmkat and her kneedles

Tax season = done!

Actually, Monday was my last day. Tuesday (today) was the all-day organizational meeting of the new county board. And it WAS all day -- 9am to 4:30, phew. It took that long to revise the rules of order and to vote on committee assignments. I will have my third term on the finance committee (yay!) and managed to get myself elected to the public protection committee. I figure watching Perry Mason, The Defenders (remember them?), Boston Legal, L.A. Law, and every iteration of Law && Order qualifies me to serve on that committee. Right? Right?

The other exciting news is that I am writing this post on my brand-new iPad! What a fun toy. So far I have set up most of the same apps that I have on my iPod Touch -- Gmail and some other Google apps, a couple Twin Cities TV stations for news, Skype, Twitter, a weather app, the Kindle app, Adobe Reader.

Something I figured out while doing all that was that the iPad would be the perfect way to read a daily newspaper again. We have been without a daily paper for most of the past 13 years since we moved to rural Wisconsin. The Minneapolis paper has never had daily delivery here; we subscribed to the St Paul paper for a few months but basically it sucks as a newspaper, we even subscribed to the NYTimes for a while -- always at least a day late but still possibly better than nothing but not enough better to justify the cost. I really, really missed reading the morning paper --it and my breakfast and morning coffee had been a treasured part of my daily routine for many years.

All this is to say I subscribed to the iPad version of the NYTimes tonight.We shall see if it is worth $20/month. The iPad is plugged into its charger right next to my bed. I may start to start the day with the newspaper again.I''m getting excited just thinking about it!

Addition to the update to the update.

Smokey plays this for me every election.

Update to the update.

As I was falling asleep last night it occurred to me that I had not given any background or context for that "I won!" announcement. Not everyone is intimately familiar with all the details of my life ;-)

In 2008 I ran for the Polk County Board of Supervisors, which is equivalent to the boards of commissioners in many states. (Whereas states with county commissioners tend to have boards of 5 - 11 members, Wisconsin takes a different, more grass-roots approach. Our county board has 23 supervisors, although a referendum on yesterday's ballot reduced the size to 15 by an overwhelming majority.) I ran in 2008 because I had been following county politics for a number of years, several people had urged me to run, that year no one else was running in my district. You could way I pushed the "Easy" button to get elected. I was reelected in 2010 and again yesterday, both times defeating the same opponent.

And that's what I have to say about that.

Quick update.

• Tax season has been keeping me quite busy (=understatement of the week).
• I have photos of interesting things that have happened at the office, but it is all things you have seen in previous years -- the 10-key race, the Saturday morning Bloody Marys.
• Yes, we accountants are an exciting lot.
• I did a return today for a couple with a couple hundred thousand dollars in income, taxable income of $69,000, and who had zero tax.
• I thought there was something wrong with the software. So did the accountant who sits in the next cubicle when I showed it to her.
• Even after my manager explained to me how it worked -- something to do with dividend income and the 15% rate -- I still boggled.
• It may be right, but it ain't right, if you know what I mean. 
• Anyway.
• Today was election day in Wisconsin. Presidential primary, plus county and municipal elections.
• I was up for reelection. I had pretty much resigned myself to not being reelected, for a number of reasons.
• Mainly because I did zero campaigning. In previous years I at least sent a flyer to all voters in my district. This year I decided that was a waste of postage because roughly half of them get returned as undeliverable.
• I won anyway, 150 to 139.
• The high voter turnout was probably due to the presidential primary.
• There are ~1900 souls in my district.
• I had done such a good job of resigning myself to losing -- think of all the time I would have to knit, with no meetings to go to! -- that I was a bit disappointed to win.
• That feeling didn't last long. 
• I celebrated by working until 10:45.
• P.M. 

Thankful Thursday.

Last week I covered the basics of what I am thankful for. This week I will start to get specific.

1. Our new, and first, county administrator. Included in his statutory duties is responsibility for the budget; it used to be the responsibility of the finance committee. We had to meet many times, for long hours, and never did nearly as good a job as he did this year. (That's why he is called "a professional".) Last night was the county board meeting where the final budget was voted upon. Last year there was a $2 million error in the budget and one head rolled. Two years ago the meeting lasted from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and we all congratulated ourselves that it didn't go longer. Several years ago this meeting had to be held in the nearby high school auditorium to provide room for all the citizens who were irate about the budget cuts. This year? The entire meeting -- including the public hearing on the budget, the budget presentation and vote, all 23 individual supervisor reports, a half-hour presentation on an entirely different subject -- took a little over two hours. This man is exactly what this county needed. Thank you, Jebus.
2. That the previous county board took the steps to hire an administrator. 
3. That the supervisors on the selection committee did such a good job during their selection process, which narrowed the field of candidates from 46 to 4.
4. That one of their first steps was to propose hiring an administrator. There were several alternatives, but the one they chose seems to be working splendidly.
5. That I had the good fortune to be on the board at this time and to be able to be (a very small) part of the solution.

Election day. Finally.

I decided to do my own Ten on Tuesday list this week.

Ten Reasons to Vote Today.

1. Nifty sticker to wear on your lapel. "I voted!"
2. Cute election judges... if you are a 70+ year old male.
3. Free coffee and cookies.
4. Opportunity to see your local community center / fire hall / village hall / elementary school full of people with good intentions.
5. A chance to knit (while standing in line).
6. The only time you will see some of these names in print. County coroner? County assessor? Who are these people?
7. Polling place just might be near your LYS. Everyone who votes deserves a yarn treat.
8. Easiest way in the world to be a patriot.
9. Chance to do something that millions would [and have] die[d] for the right to do.
   
   And finally, the very best reason of all...
10. If you don't vote you lose the right to complain about your government.

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I'm sick of campaign ads, junk mail, the media buzz, and especially the recorded phone calls. Campaign signs, though, are kinda fun. I first noticed them when we were in Wyoming in June. There were campaign signs everywhere. Didn't notice [m]any in Montana, though. Later in the summer I saw them on the North Shore, plus they started to crop up here at home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               As they say in Chicago, Vote early! Vote often!                   !

Busybusybusy.

Woo boy, it is good that things have slowed down. It has been rather a frantic two weeks.

Election. I was re-elected to my seat on the county board of supervisors by a landslide of 7 votes (out of 201 total votes). Taking a page from W's book: A mandate from the people!

Administrator. The county board of supervisors completed the first step of its multi-year reorganization of county government by hiring a county administrator. We have been a $50+ million enterprise without a CEO. The final pieces of this first step were taken last weekend when the four finalists for the job came to town. On Friday night there was a reception for the candidates, their spouses, certain department heads and spouses, and county board members and spouses; this was to allow us all to meet the candidates in a quasi-informal setting. On Saturday morning most of the board and certain department heads sat in on the formal interviews, which were conducted by the three supervisors on the selection committee. At the same time the candidates who were not being interviewed right then were either completing a writing exercise, getting a tour of the county campus with the sheriff, or being informally interviewed by another group of a dozen or so department heads and union representatives. All the employees who were involved presented their opinions on the candidates to the board; then the board met on Saturday afternoon in closed session to decide which candidate we wanted to hire. Offer and acceptance were made over the weekend.

Board meeting. Board met on Tuesday evening to confirm the employment contract.

Meetings. I had seven meetings, most of them for the county, and most of which overlapped with at least one other, on Wednesday of this past week -- 8:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. Managed to attend every one long enough to do what had to be done. On Thursday I had a mere four obligations, once again mostly county, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.,  and met them all. The last one was knitting group -- perfect way to end that killer 2 days.

Taxes. Oh, yeah, our income taxes -- federal and two states -- were due on Thursday. Before I could do them I needed a place to work.

Desk before:
 

Desk ready for tax return work (those two piles are all county board stuff; tax stuff is another pile, personal stuff is a third fourth pile:

I spent 11 hours last Sunday doing the majority of the tax work, finished the rest here and there during the week, and had Smokey mail the returns on Thursday. One payment and two refunds later we are out $26, which I consider to be pin-point tax planning.

Desk today (damn!):

Sleep. I spent most of Friday sleeping. Sleep is good.

Whew.

Election results were posted at about 10:30 p.m. I squeaked past my opponent by 7 votes, 101 to 94.

There are 23 seats on the county board; 9* 14 candidates were unopposed. Of the 14* 9 seats that were up in the air, 2 went the *wrong* way, imho, and the rest are okay with me. 

Our county has suffered with >50% turnover in supervisors every 2 years since 2002. The previous board voted to sell bonds to build a new justice center and invoked the wrath of the voters, and the Tea Partiers won 5 or so seats. I think this turnover trend is ending, thankfully; it put us 8 - 10 years behind the curve on what we should have been accomplishing to move the county forward. In this election only 5 seats turned over, and the winner of one of those had been on the board before for a couple terms. Given that it takes a good 6 - 12 months or longer to really be an effective supervisor, the experience that this new board has will be all to the good.

I am a (mostly) happy camper tonight. Very sad about the two seats that went the wrong way, but happy with most of the endings.

* Oops. Thanks for Jeff for correcting me.

I wanna be elected.

Today is (county and village) election day here in Wisconsin.

And if that song sound vaguely familiar, it might be because of this:

Election results. New Year's resolution.

Primary election results for the District 6 seat on the Polk County Board of Supervisors:

 

Can I get a w00t? Thank you :)

The real election is in April. Now to plan my campaign...

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And now for something far more interesting to y'all. On Sunday I made a New Year's resolution. 

I am going to knit four (4!) sweaters in 2010.

Just in case you cannot guess, that is a whopper of a resolution for me. The kimono sweater I just finished? Started in November, 2007. It was the first sweater I had knit for myself since... 1980.

What brought this on? You may well ask.

On Saturday and Sunday I bought two 10-skein lots of Noro Silk Garden on eBay with the intention of making a simple pullover modeled on the famous Noro Striped Scarf. I also favorite-d a whole bunch of Noro patterns, as a couple of you already noticed. I'd been thinking about a Noro striped sweater for a long time and decided on impulse to buy the yarn when I saw some that I liked on auction. Afterward I reflected that I had now accumulated the yarn and the plans/patterns for four (4!) sweaters. My next thought, only half formed, was something like, What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? And bingo! the resolution was made.

Acting on that resolution (and after realizing that the year was already 3/24 gone), Monday night I cast on for Sweater The First:

 

I am using the Incredible Custom-Fit Raglan pattern from Ravelry, but I will have to do some serious tweaking to make it fit my, er, ample self. Math is not a problem; the real potential problem is to continue to knit at the measured gauge.

The blue-gray yarn is fifteen skeins of Phildar DK 100% wool I bought from Juno a couple-three years ago during her destash; it may or may not be superwash. The yarn for the colored stripes is Valley Yarns Superwash DK, not all of which has made it onto my Ravelry stash page yet.

This plan requires that I not succumb to the siren call of cute small projects like scarves and hats and squares for somebody's afghan. Baby hats for Rwanda and socks for myself will have to be my 2010 take-along knitting; this particular sweater, knit top-down all in one piece, will quickly become too big to stuff into my emergency knitting bag. In fact, I bought the basket in the photo above specifically to hold this sweater project next to my knitting chair.

Yee-haw, I am pumped!

Panic ensues.

We at the county finance committee are in the 7th inning -- or it is the 8th? -- of the budget process. The numbers may or may not balance, depending on any number of different factors.

Last week and over the weekend there was much crunching of numbers. Rumors abounded.

Today, our finance director resigned. She is history.

There is no one else qualified to perform those duties. Finishing out the budget. Supervising the year-end close. Preparing reports required by the state.

State statutes require that we have a balanced budget by a date that is looming ever closer.

Head :: desk

This is a public service announcement.

If you should ever find yourself in a position where you have to give the prayer, or invocation, or some such thing in a public forum, and you also find yourself to be clearly at the atheistic/agnostic end of the spectrum, here is a *prayer* that might serve:

May our sense of fairness enable us to deal openly and evenhandedly with whatever comes before us.

May our consciences remind us to respect each other, both here and elsewhere.

May we be open-minded enough to recognize that an idea may be a good one even if it is different than our own.

May we remember that we are here to serve others, not our own vanity or self-interest.

May we remember that those others may be yet unborn.

May we remember that we are stewards of our public resources.

May a saving sense of humor liberate us from arrogance, pompousness, and from thinking ourselves more important than we are.

May we grow our own integrity though these actions.

May we be as good in our hearts and actions as we have always wanted to be.

This month it was my turn to give the prayer at the beginning of the county board meeting. While I can respect the tradition of asking for wisdom in such a circumstance, there was no way I was going to invoke God-Jesus-Buddha-Allah myself. So I googled "prayer -god" and eventually found something -- I think it was a Unitarian prayer -- that I could use. (I tweaked it considerably.) That prayer seems to have been based on a prayer (#496 in the Unitarian hymnal by the Rev. Dr. Harry Meserve:

"From arrogance, pompousness, and from thinking ourselves more important than we are, may some saving sense of humor liberate us. For allowing ourselves to ridicule the faith of others, may we be forgiven. . . ."

Apparently my *prayer* was heard because I got several compliments on it. Today I ran into a friend who had come to the meeting to hear what would transpire on a certain issue of local import; he asked for the prayer because he finds himself in a similar situation.

That made me think there may be others like us. If so, here ya go -- use it, change it, personalize it with my blessing.

Bear feet.

Our senior dog, Bear, is 14. That's 98 or so in human years. Or is that in dog years? In any case, she is an old dog. In the past couple years she has had an increasingly hard time going up and down stairs. She no longer enjoyed going for a walk. It was impossible for her to jump into the car unaided.

We first thought her problems were caused by arthritis, but months of glucosamine chondritin and Rimadyl, the doggie-friendly equivalent of ibuprofen, did not noticeably improve her mobility. Her back legs have gotten weaker. The muscle tone is poor. Poor thing -- her back legs would slide out from under her when she moved or turned too quickly, and often she could not get back up immediately by herself. We also have to lift her back end into the car when she goes somewhere with us.

Today the remedy arrived in the mail from eBay.

Behold!

The booties are intended for winter use protect a dog's pads from snow or frostbite, but they also have rubber soles with tiny treads that grip the ground -- thus, no slipping. They also have little zippers up the front and a long Velcro strap that wraps around Bear's dainty ankles to keep the booties on.

She walked a little gingerly when we first put them on and was clearly a bit confused about the strange *things*  back there. But she adjusted to them within minutes. I think she can tell that her back feet are more secure now. 

I confess I was a little apprehensive of her ability to adjust to booties. A number of years ago she was with me when I visited a friend who happened to be in the midst of mass producing sewn fleece dog booties. We put a set of four on Bear's feet to see what she thought of them, and it was clear she wanted no part of those weird foot things. Apparently these are okay with her, though.

We hope these improve her quality of life. She seems happy in every other way, so we thought that if we could solve the slipping and falling problem, we could postpone any difficult decisions for a long time. I'll keep you posted on her progress.

Budget.

We (the finance committee of the county board of supervisors) did eventually balance the county budget, although not without a fair amount of pain. And it won't be over until the November 12 meeting where the entire board votes on the budget, i.e, when 18 other supervisors get their chance to twiddle and tweak. I won't go into everything we had to cut because county business is not the focus of this blog. This blog is all about the knitting. And the people.

Welcome to our last budget meeting!

Here is Gary, who chairs the committee:

That is the look of a man who is tired. Very, very tired.

Here is Tonya, the county's finance director:

I suspect that her expression is the result of some incredibly stupid comment that one of us made. She has a formidable task: educating us about government accounting, ensuring we don't stray from the published agenda and possibly violate the open meetings law, AND making sure we don't attempt to do something really stupid with the budget, like throwing in a line item for expensively catered meals at all budget committee meetings. Stuff like that.

Mick is the senior member of the committee:

Mick apparently does not care to pose for photos. He also has rather less patience than others with a certain member of the finance committee who thinks everything should be photographed and blogged about.

Brian, on the other hand, is always ready for fun:

The other Brian on the committee was absent from this meeting.

Deb works in Tonya's department and has the unenviable job of taking the minutes of our meetings. She tackles this with a great deal of animation. Here is a typical Deb pose:

Last but not least, yours truly:

Here we are in action:

That is another board member in the peanut gallery. He -- and the chief deputy sheriff, who took this last photo -- stayed through the whole meeting. Maybe to be sure we didn't screw up royally. Hard to say, really. Once again, Tonya is trying to explain something to us. Imagine a thought bubble above her head: "Okay, one more time, in words of one syllable..."

There you have it. County government at its finest.

 

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the Dells I go.

Recovery from the ankle break continues apace. On Thursday (yesterday) I had a follow-up appointment with the ortho doc. He took off the soft cast, inspected the surgical incision, and pronounced it good. Yay! Smokey happened to be sitting in a position where he got a good look at it and he concurred; back in his days as a public health nurse he got to see a lot of incisions and wounds and to change their dressings and administer various kinds of therapy, so his opinion counts.

I have a new cast now, a *real* cast, the kind with fiberglass, and, most importantly, the kind that people can sign. Our first stop (after the bathroom) after the clinic appointment yesterday was at Office Max to buy a pack of multi-colored Sharpies for that very purpose.

Did you know that casts now come in a variety of colors? I didn't know that, either. We spotted, on the cast cart, red, fluorescent pink, yellow, lime green, kelly green, blue, and perhaps a few others. What did I choose? Boring off-white, but only because (wait for it)

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it glows in the dark! My inner 8-yo is apparently alive and well :-) Sorry, no photo, it's still daylight here.

Anyone who has been reading this blog for 2 years (you poor things!) may remember that I happen to have some glow-in-the-dark yarn. I do believe that that yarn, in combination with some superwash something-or-other from the stash, will make a dandy, Halloween-appropriate toe cozy.

In the meantime, though, my toes have been saved from the chilly temps by the generous and sweeter-than-springtime Cathy-Cate.

Before:                                                               After:
(please note the painted-on Betadine tan)

               

* * * * *

So, what's all this about The Dells, Kat™?

For those of you who are not familiar with the Upper Midwest, Wisconsin Dells is the convention and conference center of Wisconsin. Tourism has been a mainstay there for 150 years, according to their website, primarily because of the scenic beauty of that part of the Wisconsin River. Here's the Wikipedia photo of the Dells of the Wisconsin River:

In the last 25(?) or so years, though, it has become known more for man-made attractions, in particular, indoor waterparks. It's a bit like Las Vegas without the gambling or shows, Las Vegas as designed by small-town Midwesterners.

The city proper has a truly amazing assortment of cheesy attractions. There is a life-size replica of the White House sitting haphardardly upside-down, supposedly after some catastrophe; for a admission fee you can go inside. There is a 50-foot tall replica of the Trojan Horse; I suppose you can go up into it after paying the admission fee, although I have a hard time seeing the attraction. I also seem to remember a huge rocket ship that promised some kind of thrill and other attractions promising a various and sundry assortment of doubtful excitements.

Because of the indoor waterparks attached to hotels, The Dells has become a family weekend getaway place for many Midwesterners. It also hosts lots of conferences, with the attraction of You can bring the family! There's fun for everyone! And thus, the Wisconsin Counties Association is holding their annual conference there this year, and I and 10 other members of the county board, along with assorted family members, are going.

Here's what, among other things, we will be doing:

I'm riding down in the county Impala with two other board members -- plenty of room for my wheelchair -- and my roommate, the only other female board member attending from Polk County, offered to wheel me anywhere I needed to go. So I am going.

You may or may not remember this vital mathematical equation:
           4 hour car ride + 2.5 days of lectures/speakers/seminars = LOTS OF KNITTING TIME!

Creativity.

This is what I have been doing, except with a highlighter and Excel instead of a fountain pen and a calculator. Oh, and the numbers I am working with are in the thousands, not millions like in the illustration.

We need to cut the 2009 proposed $22 million county budget by $3 million in order to conform with the state-imposed cap on property tax levy increase. So far, I have come up with cuts totaling $1.8 million. And I am not happy with some of the stuff I had to cut. That's life, I guess.

Now I am off to the finance committee meeting. We members have all been sharpening our pencils and scratching our heads in preparation for this meeting. I'm pretty sure we all have come up with many of the same cuts as I did. Let's just hope that the other four members of the committee found ways to cut a different $1.2 million. Creativity: it's not just for creating any more.

Random Wednesday.

* The spring peepers woke up today. Smokey said he listened for them yesterday, and they weren't peeping.  But tonight, as we drove to the barbecue place in the next town north, we heard them. And stopped to roll down our windows and listen. Such a glorious sound. Ahhhhh. It was nice of them to wait to come out of hibernation until I truly had a day off.

* Monday was my last day at work. I left at 5:05, stopped at Best Buy to compare cameras, and headed for the Great North. Home by 9pm, in bed by 10. Ahhhhh. Life is good.

* Tuesday was the all-day organizational meeting of the new county board, of which I am 1/23rd. Good meeting, got acquainted with some of the supervisors whom I didn't know, and got myself elected to the finance committee, which was what I wanted. I won't be writing much, if at all, about the board here. It is not appropriate. But I'm thinking I might start a second blog for that topic; time will tell.

* I did knit during the meeting, although not all the time. The project of choice was a sock, but, less than optimally, I was at the turning of the heel. It is a short-row heel, which I have never managed to pull off correctly before, so why I thought I could do it while in a meeting that demanded some attention is a mystery for the universe. I knit half the heel, frogged it, knit it halfway again, frogged it, tried one more time. It wasn't too bad that time so I kept going. After finishing it and knitting a few more rows I inspected it at the end of the meeting and decided that I shall frog it one last time and reknit it, this time when there are absolutely no distractions. And it shall be perfecto. It is a gift for another, after all.

* Wednesday, my first real day off: got up at 8:30, made coffee, caught up (sort of) on e-mail and online stuff, then got sleepy again. Back to bed for a... six-hour nap! I hope to cut back on the nap time a little tomorrow.

* I just flipped a hornet off my hand. Where did he come from? No idea, but he ain't gonna live to see the sunrise.

* My house is a total disaster. Every horizontal surface, including most of the floors, is covered with stuff, and there is a suspicious odor of dog and/or cat *accident*. Must attack all of that, one area at a time.

* The Mason-Dixon dog blanket (scroll down for a photo) is suddenly three-quarters done. How did that happen? I never knit on it for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time, and not very often at that. Oh, yeah, now I remember: we knitters are taking over the world, one stitch at a time.

Election day: the day after.

Well, it's official. Here are the election results from the county website:

 

That's me in the upper right corner. I'm happy it's official but very sad that my friend and mentor, Jeff, (next one to the left) was defeated. I just found out yesterday about the write-in campaign against him, which was launched/registered last Friday. Damn. But there is always 2010.

It was a beautiful day for a drive north to my little village to vote. All that snow yesterday was slowly melting under the bright sun. I voted, then went out to lunch (the best pulled pork sandwich I may ever have eaten) with Smokey befor e heading back to the office.

Here's what it's like in a rural election. The election judges:

 

I was offered coffee and cookies after voting.

I spotted knitting the wild...

 

being done by another election judge:

 

This is Mary, whom I know through a now-defunct book group. She is knitting Packer and Vikings mittens to sell at the Relay for Life in June. Tragically, she is knitting these mittens from acrylic. They may be cute and washable and Packer-y/Viking-y but they ain't gonna be very warm.

(I am pretty sure that is not a hand-knit sweater she is wearing. Although the more I look at the photo the more admiring I am of it; it looks very warm and cozy and pretty, all at the same time.)

I also found out yesterday that the all-day organizational meeting for the new Board is... April 15. Sheesh, I'm going to have to miss all the fire drills and hijinks that happen here in the office that day. Probably miss the party, too. Oh, well, such is the burden of power ;-)

Election day.

Remember this photo?

Those were my papers registering to run for a seat on the 23-member Board of Supervisors in Polk County, Wisconsin. Today is election day for all local non-partisan (hah!) local offices in Wisconsin. I am taking a half day off work to go vote for myself. So that I will have at least one vote in my column.

Smokey has made himself a Minnesota resident so that our Minneapolis house can be legitimately homesteaded and we save a few bucks on the property taxes. Andrew is in the jungles of Chiapas and can't even file an absentee ballot because he is out of range of the postal service. Matthew is living and working in Minneapolis and has declared his intent to be a Minnesota resident. Good for them; Smokey and Matthew can vote for Al Franken for Senate in November. My only regret about not living in Minnesota any more is that I can't vote for Al.

But I have this horrible dread, rooted in a junior-high fear of rejection and isolation and embarrassment, that the election results will come out and no one will have voted for me. Even though I know at least ten people who will because they are personal friends. So I am driving 150 miles round trip and taking a half day away from the Form 1040s just to assuage my fears. It is not necessary to be fully grown up and rational to hold public office. Just look at our elected representatives in Washington.

Ahem.

I am unopposed for this seat, as far as I know. It is possible someone has registered as a write-in candidate in the week and a half since I last spoke with the county clerk. However, I am operating on the assumption that, come Wednesday, I will be the supervisor-elect from District 6 of Polk County.

Since there was no compelling need to campaign, I didn't. The reason I decided to run was because no one else had registered to run when there were only two weeks left until the January 2 deadline. A couple people already on the Board and whom I respect had been nagging urging me for several years to run, and this was clearly the time. But I did think that, since I am a relative newcomer to the area, I should introduce myself to the voters. It seemed disrespectful not to. (When I voiced this reasoning to the county clerk, she was speechless. She finally said, "It's been a long, long time since I have heard that kind of thing expressed here." Can you see why I felt that I should run?*)

So.

I wrote a flyer, stuck in a couple pictures of myself, and  printed them out (after a few glitches), and distributed them with address stickers to a few friends who had volunteered to help.

Thank FSM for good friends. Where would we be without them?

My pal Colleen, the county librarian, and her friend Alan helped me fold and address and stamp several hundred. Here is Alan, hard at work. Colleen was busy at the copier so she missed the photo op.

The big question in my mind, though, is not whether  the county should build that new highway department equipment facility or how we can provide needed services without taxing people out of their homes or how we can deal with the fact that, although we are officially a rural county, we must compete with the Twin Cities for talent in terms of salaries and benefits. No, the real question in my mind, is this: can I knit during the Board meetings?

Random Wednesday.

It's the first week of February, ergo, I am wearing my CPA green eyeshade once again. The people I work with tell me that it is a mixed blessing to see me again every year. They very kindly say it is good to have me back, but it also makes it officially Busy Season. Ouch.

* * * * *

Andrew's laptop. Tell us what you really think, Andrew.

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Does Your English Cut the Mustard?

Not quite as well-educated as I thunk:

Your English Skills:

Vocabulary: 100% Grammar: 80% Punctuation: 80% Spelling: 60%

Thanks to Cursing Mama for the link. And thank FSM for spell-check.

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The dog blanket that Amy asked me to knit for the Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary has been my mindless knitting since I finished the preemie caps. An unexpected benefit of the Mason-Dixon ballband dishcloth pattern as interpreted in double-stranded acrylic is that the resulting objet d'knit is thick and squishy, just like a cushion. Perfect for a pooch's nap.

When finished it will be ~30" square; it's about half done now. Smokey has remarked that our dogs each need a blanket like that. To paraphrase EZ the Great, another opportunity to do more of our favorite hobby.

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