I felt like this morning that I was back on track after a good night’s sleep in my own bed. Time change has me back in the familiar routine of 9:45p and 7:15a dog outings, followed by a 5k run. The next steps will be adding back in the swimming and blogging aspects of a traditional Mike morning. This, of course, will all quickly change again with our trip to Kauai at the end of the month. I will continue this report after a quick trip to the Center for Sight and the removal of my eyelid stitches. I should then have time to cast my vote on this election day.

My stitches are the dissolvable kind, so they only got a trimming and I have to continue applying ointment for another 10-days. My regular glasses pretty much hide the bruising and stitch line that will eventually be disguised under the folds of my eyes. I did then have time to vote but it took about an hour due to the heavy turnout. Election officials were encouraged. Florida does not use digital ballots, so I felt like I was taking a college admission test in trying to fill within the lines. The finished ballot is then run through a scanner that I assume counts the vote. In Oregon, it was all done through the mail. Texas, Indiana, and Illinois where I did my voting through the years were all hand-marked paper. I undoubtedly set-back the state of Florida many decades with my lack of knowledge about the area politics. One guy exited by the waiting line with beard growth and claimed to be clean shaven when he arrived. 

The extra time in line prevented me from saying farewell to my wife’s two remaining friends. They were off to Punta Gorda for lunch and then to the airport. It was apparently 34-years all four of them had gotten together as a group. I stayed clear as much as possible even though I had worked with all of them from time-to-time many years ago when they were on the agency side. We joked last night about a Coca-Cola negotiation that they put me through when I was with the Ft. Wayne radio station group. Management had forced me to raise the rates through the roof since we “owned” the teen market, their primary demo target, and they succeeded in making me quite uncomfortable, bringing in the client to literally plead with me. We had them over a barrel (of Coke). It was the first time that I met my future wife. We were both married to other people at the time. Oh, the Good Old Days. “Things go Better with Coke.”