I had planned on waiting until after work to vote, thinking there would be long lines that would make me late. But I managed to leave my apartment earlier than expected, so I walked the two blocks to my polling place and voted before going to work. Here’s an interesting note: MyPollingPlace.com returns the wrong location when an address in my district is entered. It didn’t matter since I had the correct one on my registration acknowledgement notice, but it surprised me.

When I arrived, lines were short but chaotic. Nobody seemed to know which line they were supposed to be waiting in - there was one line for an information table, and maybe half a dozen for the different district tables, and that many again for the different district booths. I waited in the first line to find out which booth I needed to vote at, then waited in a second line to sign in and get my voter card, and then a third line in front of the booth itself. New York uses these ancient pull-lever machines. The interface isn’t going to win any usability awards, but it’s relatively self-explanatory and satisfyingly mechanical.

I’ve talked about Kerry before, and my feelings for him haven’t changed. I do disagree with a number of his views and I find his convenient faith distasteful, but I campaigned for him when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and he was running for senator in Massachusetts and I’d much rather have four years of him than another four of Bush. I have no qualms about pulling the Kerry lever, even if I would have preferred to be pulling one for Dean.

Because one pumpkin is never enough, over the weekend we had FreshDirect deliver two more, which we carved. And thus I present the Pikmin Pumpkin! Note that several stages in the life of a pikmin are represented, including a sprout pikmin, a leaf pikmin, and a flower pikmin. You can also tell that one of them is a yellow pikmin, because he has ears.

There was also a surprise on Halloween morning. It seems that Halloween was feeling a little left out, since Christmas has Santa and Easter has the Easter bunny, so an entity calling itself Ralph the Werewolf decided to step up and leave us cauldrons full of goodies. There might be something better than waking up to a bunch of Halloween candy and a variety of toys (including a screaming plush spider, a Gloomy Bear, and a mini Living Dead Doll), but I’m not sure what it is.