Election day

Yesterday (Tuesday) late in the afternoon close to closing time for the Canadian consulate in Guadalajara, we got a call. They said that our voting packages had come in. I was surprised because they said that they were only going to send the applications on Monday; however, I think that they must have faxed the applications; courier would be slower than that. The information said that the ballots had to reach Ottawa before October 14th. However, on the phone, they said that we had to get in and complete the ballots before noon today. We left right after breakfast as I wanted to be back in order to go to my Spanish conversation class at 11:30. Of course, we knew how to get there having just gone there last Friday. It took about 50 minutes driving as there was some fairly heavy traffic going in to the city.

I had expected to see the usual ballot with the candidates in the riding listed with the places to put the X. Not so. These were really write-in ballots. There was just one slot and you had to write in the name of the candidate you wished to vote for. This was a problem because we had not looked up to see all the names of the candidates! This reduced the choices considerably! However, we can say that we went to some effort and expense to do our civic duty. There was not too much traffic on the way home and the entire trip was completed in just about 2 hours and I had plenty of time to get to my class.

Tomorrow, my sister RoseMary and her husband Larry arrive for 9 days. This will be the first time that they have travelled outside Canada and the US, although they did do an Alaskan cruise last year. However, unlike Sarah Palin, they do not claim to have seen or learned a lot about Russia as a result of being in Alaska.