I got up moving slowly this morning. There were things that had to be done today. All kinds of forms to get copied, holes to be punched, and a raft of rules to go over closely. And I had to go find the polling place to which I have been assigned.
Amazingly, the business centers for motels do not generally provide hole punching. Very disappointing. Do they expect business people to run around willy nilly with loose papers falling out of notebooks?
As it turns out, Cincinnati is not structured like Birmingham. It is fairly easy to navigate, but it remains an old school industrial style city. There is not a mall every mile or so. And there is not an Office Depot, Office Max or Kinkos in every neighborhood. I thought maybe I just couldn't find the malls, but the clerk at the motel desk confirmed my observation, and directed me to the downtown Kinkos, which I finally drove to around 5:00 p.m., just in time to enjoy the full drive time traffic in Cincinnati. Actually I enjoyed it. I like cities. I like the hustle and bustle, and people coming out of work, and the shops and restaurants. Cincinnati is old school, and its downtown is still vibrant. The best restaurants are there. Saks 5th Ave and Macy's are there. And fortunaely, so is Kinkos and its automatic hole puncher. There was something about the mixture of diesel fumes and the aroma of the diverse foods from the restaurants that reminded me of childhood trips to Birmingham.
This morning I found my polling place. It is the Calvary UMC on Woodburn Avenue. It is in a rather run down, lower income part of Cincinatti, way across town from my home away from home here at the Hampton. As it turns out, I will be the only outside observer at this polling place. That means I will be working hard all day. My last email from headquarters (they send them out quite often) kept using the phrase "in the event there is no inside poll worker you will have to do as many of their duties as you can legally do" or something like that. I really hope I am not the only one there. The precincts that vote there generally are heavily democratic. In Cincinnati, a Republican stronghold, that makes it a prime place for problems. Repubs would like for there to be problems, Dems would like for there not to be. I don't get anxious about many things, but to be honest, I am a tad anxious.
Doughnuts. Our leaders say we should take doughnuts to the poll workers. Apparently a good Krispy Kreme will unlock doors previously tightly shut. I don't know where I'm going to get dougnuts at 5:30 a.m. in Cincinnati. If they are as difficult to find as a hole puncher, I may not have the proper keys when I arrive. We are supposed to be at the polls by 5:45 a.m. and stay until after the poll is closed and the votes are secure. This could take a while. I hope the whole thing is called after Indiana and Kentucky, but probably not.
I didn't go to a fancy place to eat tonight. I needed to go to a place where I could spread my manuals out and read while I ate. Across the street and down three blocks is a local pizza place, Riverboat Pizza. They made the whole thing, crust and all, right there on the spot. It was full of locals, always a good sign. And the locals were right. Twelve inch pizza, almost gone. Couple of pieces left for bedtime. I'll be going to bed now. As soon as I get my stuff packed and ready to leave in the bowels of the morning. How can one man scatter so much stuff in two days? Rhetorical, no comment necessary.
more tomorrow.
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