three things make a post

• I worked the election on Tuesday. It was surprisingly slow for an election that had three taxes on it, although only one of them was new. The school renewal (for the county level special ed which everyone uses) passed; but the other two (a delayed increase in the local fire authority, and a county-wide "mental health initiative") did not. They did, however, pass overall. I did not work the pollbook very much, which was odd -- usually I get put down there and never move, but they've been training new people for it. The biggest problem I (and the election chairs) have with the new people is that they write long notes like "added 10 absentee ballots", "3:42 voter counts match at 334", rather than "+10 AV", "3:42, voter count 334, matched". When I started doing the pollbook, I was told to keep it short, as longer phrases mean it takes longer to find the information, and really aren't necessary. But I wasn't in charge of that. The county got new machines, pretty much like the old ones, just less temperamental (age may have had something to do with that, as the old ones were at least 15 years old) and much better with user feedback - voters get a chime and a splash screen when their ballot is counted, and an actual human-readable explanation for why when it's not (the old one used to throw a code on a small LCD screen). Still using a scannable paper ballot (I don't expect the county to ever go away from that, as the Board of Elections wants human recountable elections).
• The "building issue" for which they cancelled band last week was a small flood in the equipment and ensemble rooms, due to the water main break. After the water main was fixed, customers were to flush their systems by running water through all faucets. When the staff went around the building turning off the faucets, they missed one. In the art room sink with the "underperforming drain". Eventually, the sink overflowed and the water began to run into the rooms beneath it. Fortunately, the music library did not get wet. That would have been very bad. DC finally got the HS bari player he's been recruiting since she played in a honors band he directed. She's not as good as I would have expected from all the hype. She gets most of the notes, true, and sightreads better than I do (I'm not very good at it); but has no sense of style; her volume goes from medium loud to very loud; and everything is heavy, even in places where we're supposed to be light and bouncy. I guess I've been spoiled by the HS bari sax players my kids have played with - three of them have toured internationally with Blue Lake or other honors bands, and none of them have been bad. (Somebody tried to tell me that it's hard to teach musical style to high-schoolers, and I said "My school band director managed to teach style to farm kids in a broke school district in the late 1970s. A musically prominent HS in a shrinking but still well-funded suburban school district should be able to do it.")
• I put out the heated birdbath yesterday - it probably should have gone out on Tuesday, but I was gone all day. The winter birds have been showing up - I saw a Northern Flicker the other day, and the chickadees and winter sparrows are here. The blackbirds are gone, as are the smaller summer sparrows. Haven't seen a junco yet, though. One of the cranes has taken to standing in the pond. I still have one garden to cut back, but it's been too cold (or wet) for me to work in the garden. They tell us it will be in the upper 40s next week, so I'll probably layer up then.