Almost Live......

ThatVisionThing
NotKING-TVille*

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Latenight Update: First Impressions, post number announcement.... here
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Hit the Vision nominating thing just before shutdown time @ 7pm and it was a madhouse....

Lots of folks heading in to vote.....but the real craziness was caused by the candidates and their surrogates/supporters swarming the place......

All the leafleting and pleading from the supporters was one thing, but what was really bizarro (and kind of fun) was running the gauntlet of folks standing in a line outside the door to get inside.....they were all candidates and they all wanted to shake your hand.....so I did.......and for just a second there I felt like I was the candidate doing the glad-handing....when I mentioned this to, I think it was Heather Harrison, her eyes came alive with lightbulb-like recognition.....

Inside the school (Charles Tupper, just a few blocks from where we live and just about smack-dab in the middle of town - now I get, maybe, why they chose it)...it was much more calm.....of course the lady at polling station in the twenties had a little difficulty finding me given that my surname is actually an almagamation that includes my screen name that always throws folks off, especially since my given name sounds like part of the last bit....so we got to chatting a little, the polling lady and me.....looking at her list we figured that at least a quarter of those eligible had voted, maybe more......she was happy to hear me tell her that there were still tons of folks outside to come.

Once I got my three little pieces of council, school board and parks board' papers I headed into the really quiet room and headed for a 'booth' (one of those little foldy cardboard things on a table - the guy beside me joked that it would be great if they had chairs so you didn't have to bend over as you poured over the lists and tried to pick out 'eight, four and four', no more/no less (that surprised me actually - if you didn't hit that exact number your ballot would be spoiled).....anyway, for a minute or two I couldn't find my scribbled list amongst the voluminous chunks of 'vote for me!' candidate literature I had amassed in the 10 minutes I had been hanging around.....in fact it go so bad that I started emptying my pockets and one of the poll watchers had to come over and ask me to put the literature away (as it could influence other folks, which was fair enough).....was almost ready to get my laptop out, which I had in my backpack because I was riding home from the lab, when I found the list folded into my BlackDog/MetaCritics video list (my best advice and most important tip I can give anyone is "never go to the video store unprepared", unless it is BlackDog of course, as the folks that work there actually know something about movies and, and this is the important part, they actually like helping people).....

As I headed out, who would be sitting on a chair right outside the door, notebook (real paper, not electronic) in hand, but FABula herself....she put the estimate at 4,500, maybe even 5,000 (go to her site for real liveblogging through the night).....most nervous looking person at the event had to be Geoff Meggs.....not sure he has made the transition from Pol to politician.....in fact looked like he was stuck in between trying to read the expression on peoples faces.....Ian Waddell was the opposite.....hardest working person there had to be Demitri Douzenis, who was a whirling dervish.....

Results, announced at the party at Science World, are supposed to come in about 10pm.......


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*With apologies to John Keister and the gang.

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