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It started out with the election on Tuesday.

I got up early to vote, as I hate waiting in the post-work lines, and inveigled Chip to come with me and give voting a shot. It�s not that Chip is a bad citizen or anything�quite the opposite�he was raised by two great people who instilled such a sense of civic duty in him that he�d said to me the day before �If you tell my parents that I didn�t vote, they�ll kill me and then I�ll have to come back from the grave and kill you.� I refrained from mentioning that then there�d be two less Democratic votes out in the world and his parents would never let that happen. In any event, there were extenuating circumstances that led to his not voting. Quite simply, it appeared that he was not registered to vote.

Weird, since he�d voted in the last election and hadn�t moved or anything, but he�d received NO voting information, sample ballots, polling place info, nothing. Myself, having gotten all of this stuff mentioned to him the week before the election that there was a distinct possibility that he just wasn�t registered. Panicked by this, he got online and discovered that it was too late to register and that was, basically, buggered.

He decided to go down to the polling place anyway. Might as well, right?

Curiously, our neighborhood polling place had changed since the last election, and we gleaned a good idea of its new location from the voting info I�d been lucky enough to receive. I say �an idea� of the new location because Chip took me to where he thought it was only to be stymied by finding the place crawling with preschoolers most definitely not of voting age, and the fact that the address on my info was sort of wrong.

I guess technically it wasn�t wrong, but it listed the address of the high school�s gym it was located in as being on a street that the polling place�s door was decidedly not. It took some hunting to find. Finally, we just followed a guy.

I got in with no problem after flashing my sample ballot & info, but Chip had to explain the situation and ask the guy to please look for his name. Surprisingly, it was there and after that we both voted quickly and with no further problems. As we were leaving, the poll worker who found Chip�s name caught up with us outside and again asked what exactly had happened and expounded on how weird it was.

We continued talking about it as we left, and I finally decided on the most fun option�a Republican conspiracy to keep the Chipster from voting their asses out of Congress.

You see, Chip is a registered Democrat and never received any voting or initiative or polling location information, and I, trained by years of watching The X-Files and living through the Big-Brother-mindful 90�s, always decline to state a political party because it�s none of your damn business and I have no desire to be dragged to Skyland Mountain in the middle of the night by men in black and wake up two weeks later with nose cancer and no ova. Thanks.

Anyway. I�m not sure chip is of the same mind when it comes to theories as to why he got left off the voter list, but that�s my story and I�m sticking to it.

I bet you�re wondering why and how exactly I managed to bust out such a long-winded journal entry this time, and I shall tell you. Because the second part of my Civic Duty, Bitches! roll call: Jury Duty.

Unlike some people who were also on call for The Duty this week, I had to actually show up. For those of you who�ve never had the pleasure, the most appropriate comparison I can draw is that between jury duty and a flight that is half full of passengers and half full of unwitting sky divers with no equipment. The problem for everyone is that at the end of the flight, you don�t end up anywhere new and exciting, and instead of being served pretzels and Diet Coke, you�re led to a vending machine that may or may not work. Still, no matter what you lose an entire day, and you either sit there bored for hours on end or are suddenly and unexpectedly led from the room, mostly, never to return.

I would say that my damn civic duty has been fulfilled for the YEAR, but the day is only half over and they may still call my name�