Areas of Unrest

7 March 2000 - In Which I Apparently Become Invisible But Cook Well

QOTD: "In the future, though we will know more about right- and left-brain thinking, our thinking will continue to be predominantly middlebrow." - Jane Wagner

Reading: Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter

Listening to: Pink Martini, Sympathique

I've had weird things happen two days in a row, things that made me wonder if I had suddenly become invisible. Monday's fiasco was actually in the making for a while. About a month ago, I had filled out the registration form for a conference I'm participating in and had my secretary send it (along with a check request for the conference fee) to our disbursements department. I was mildly surprised when I got email from the organizer telling me that my name wasn't on the early registration list as I had allowed plenty of time. I had Debra doublecheck and she confirmed that she'd sent it along on February 7th. Friday I got another email saying that my name wasn't on the final registration list. Debra checked Monday morning and the disbursements folks insist they never got the entire envelope (which also included some petty cash forms, only one of which was mine). I was able to fax in my registration so it's not a real problem, but this is the first time in over 14 years that I've had something get lost in interoffice mail.

This morning was far stranger. I had a 9 a.m. meeting in Azusa, which is roughly an hour away, so I figured it made sense to vote before driving out there. I couldn't find the sample ballot, and if I thought hard I didn't actually remember having gotten it, but I figured it was just buried amidst the general clutter of non-urgent mail. I got to the polling place (which is more or less right across the street) about 7:15 a.m.. And they couldn't find my name on the roles. Now, if I had just moved, this would be far more plausible, but I've been registered to vote at this address since November of 1998 and, in fact, voted here the last two elections (which were basically school board stuff - in April and in June). They had me fill out a provisional ballot, using my car registration as proof of address, and suggested I call the registrar of voters. I drove off to my meeting, which was routine enough, although it took me nearly as long to drive under half a mile to the freeway as to drive the 36 miles to Azusa. After my meeting, I drove to my office and called the registrar of voters. Which entailed about 45 minutes of phone death, what with people calling to find their polling places. When I got through, they searched but couldn't find any record of my voter registration. Of course, my voter registration card was sitting somewhere in my living room through all of this, so I didn't know my voter ID number. The clerk who I was talking to kept insisting that it was impossible for me to have voted from this address previously and not been on the roles now and that I must have moved or hallucinated the whole thing or something. She finally suggested that I call back tomorrow when they'd be less busy.

What I suspect is that somebody just above or below me on the rolls moved and they deleted the wrong entry in the computer files. (Of course they claim this is impossible, but I've already been through having the electric company shut off my power accidentally when an upstairs neighbor moved, which the electric company insisted was impossible.) I'm sure it can be straightened out easily - worst comes to worst, I just have to fill out a new voter registration form. But what disturbs me is that this could easily happen to people who are less persistent than I am and turn them off voting forever. I was very assertive, asking the precinct workers what to do and making them look up their procedures. I was worried about how long the process would take so I wouldn't be surprised if someone else (say, someone who actually cared if they got to work late) would have just left and not bothered with the provisional ballot.

On an entirely different subject, it seems that there is nothing like stocking up on groceries to make me have to take last minute business trips. In the meantime, I've had a couple of remarkably successful cooking experiments. The first involved marinating an ahi steak in fat-free mango salad dressing and broiling it briefly. I served this with bulgur pilaf and steamed asparagus. Then, a moment of inspiration led me to a wonderful stir-fry tonight. The combination of asparagus, shitake mushrooms, ginger, surimi, and soba was inspired. Notice the theme? I hope the rest of the asparagus keeps for the couple of days that I'll be out of town.