Gratitude Monday: ready to exercise my civic duty

Whee dawgies—Friday was quite the…slice, wasn’t it? And so far it’s lasted clean through the weekend, what with dramatic announcements, conflicting medical “updates” and staged photos purporting to show Cadet Bonespurs at the helm despite falling victim (with a slew of co-morbidities he and his medical staff deny) to the hoax virus. And then there was the drive-by. 

But this is Gratitude Monday, so here’s what I’m thankful for: 

Friday I hauled my butt out to Fairfax County Government Center and registered to vote. You’ll recall that my clever plan to get a Virginia driver’s license so I’d be automatically registered (and also, you know, be a legal driver) came to naught because this former capital of the Confederacy refused to accept my utility bills as proof of residency because my first name on them is three letters different from my name on my passport.

(Don’t even get me started on the SSN requirement.)

And now I’m scheduled to be a supplicant again in…December.

So, my only alternative was registering the old-fashioned way. I could have filled out the form and mailed it in; you’re in as long as your application is postmarked by 13 October. But I have no confidence in the USPS getting a first-class letter 13 miles across NoVa in a week’s time. Ergo the trip.

Well, sportsfans, it took me an hour all told: 20 minutes to drive over; 20 minutes to have the woman at the voter registration office enter my details into the computer; 20 minutes to drive home. It takes a week to percolate all the way through the system. But starting next Monday, when the satellite voting station opens here in the People’s Republic, I can take a good book, stand in line and vote to remove Bonespurs and all his ilk from office. And that’s my gratitude for today.

Also—at the FCGC (currently the only place open in the county for early voting), the line to cast ballots snaked out around the parking lot, back and forth a couple of times. I wanted to walk past all of them, applauding.

This is how we take them out; with the vote. God bless America.