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I heard somewhere there’s an election on today! Well, thanks to my recent citizenship, I received a mail-in ballot so I am pretty sure the rumours are correct. Odd that I haven’t seen anything on TV :-)

I filled my card in a couple of weeks ago but Teri will take it to the polling station with her today. Not that I think my vote will count for much – don’t need to count the votes to know that my Presidential candidate certainly didn’t win. I did vote yes on a couple of state Propositions, be interesting to see if they pass. Locally, a friend of the family is standing for a position against an incompetent incumbent who has run a pretty negative campaign; hopefully he will win.

Not sure what channel to watch the events unfold on. Usually Keith Olberman is my choice for these things but I can’t take his over-the-top pro-Obama stance so will look elsewhere, maybe CNN is the best of a bad bunch? BBC America is covering it but I don’t have that here in the apartment.

Or you can watch it all unfold in this widget, handily supplied by Google.

Every year, the fair city of Brawley has it’s annual Cattle Call week. Most people know it (if they know it at all) for the rodeo that takes place on the final weekend but the festivities start today with the Chili Cook Off which this year includes an entry from the local mortuary called “Dead Man’s Chili”.

Being out of town all week I pretty much miss the pre-rodeo events such as the beef cook-off and the cowboy poetry. Things like the Mariachi festival I am not so sad about.

Next Saturday morning it’s the Parade at which Teri announces and I try to assist. Maybe this year I’ll capture some highlights on the Flip, maybe not. A couple of times I’ve tried to get the SCMM MINI club to enter into the parade and have a line of MINIs (several other car clubs take part) but it clashes with an annual event so there has never been any interest. Plus I think many of the people there think it’s a bit too hicks ville out here for them.

Rodeo starts Saturday afternoon, repeat showing in the evening and, if we go at all, we go to the final performance on Sunday afternoon. For a city slicker like myself, these events really are something you can’t see anywhere else, true Americana, if you like. So if you find yourself in the neighbourhood, come over for a steak and watch some bull riding.

One of the items in the meaty stack of mail delivered whilst on the cruise was an invitation from the INS to have a chat about my US citizenship application aka ‘the interview’. Scheduled for October 10th I had plenty of time to study the question bank, but this weekend I got another letter saying that ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’ my interview had been canceled. The letter says they will be in touch should they reschedule.

Arrived back from Alaska in the wee hours of the morning after a long day’s traveling (though nothing compared to my Dad’s). No near-naked girls to report this time, instead a broken water heater leaking into the garage; just never possible to ease back into reality it seems. Hopefully the plumber man will return to install the new heater any moment, he needs to as we have piles of laundry like you wouldn’t believe.

Obviously there will be more Alaska posts to come. Right now I am sorting through 896 pictures to come up with those worth keeping. I’ll post some here but you’ll need to check out my flickr page to see them all.

Toodles for now.

Finally managed to get my application sent and received by the INS/USCIS and have a receipt notice. The notice lists my priority date as April 9th, but the online case tracking system lists it as April 16th. A quick look at the current priority dates being processed shows San Diego is working on September 12 2006 so it looks like there is a 7-8 month turnaround time right now. Plenty of time to learn my US history…