By any measure Sinatra was one of the most important singers of the 20th century. We'll play classics from every era of Sinatra's career, including his early years with the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey big bands; the Concepts series at Capitol; the Rat Pack years; songs from his decades-long movie career; live performances; radio and television appearances; plus some rare finds like an unreleased theme song to "The Man with the Golden Arm," and a duet with Groucho Marx (really! and it's not horrible!).

The Voice, Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board -- whatever you call him, we'll be spinning two hours of Sinatra this afternoon. Hope you can check it out! 88.7 fm in Durham or webcast at http://wxdu.org

The embed feature is turned off in the video for some reason, so here's a link to Sittin' on a Backyard Fence.

I wanted to say something to her but after 20 years, I remember so little Chinese that I didn't know what I would say. I can barely say my own name at this point, much less have a conversation. Besides, she seemed pretty deeply involved in her studies and I didn't want to interrupt. So I ate my dinner and websurfed on my phone, and she studied, and it was a nice quiet sharing of space.

Well we were quiet, but the restaurant was noisy. So much so that I didn't notice at first when she started very softly talking to herself in Chinese. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but it has a distinctive sound (and I'm guessing an American just beginning their studies probably has a distinctive accent, which made her speech sound even more familiar to me). It looked like she was reading out loud from the book. Practicing her lessons at just above a whisper. Adorable. I didn't let on that I could hear her; just kept enjoying my dinner.

Finally it was time for me to leave. I cleared my table, stood up to go, leaned over and said "zai jian" (goodbye). She looked so surprised! She said "zai jian" back to me, and we both laughed, and then I just ... walked away. I felt like the encounter couldn't get any better than it was right then. I could have stayed and had a possibly awkward conversation, maybe interrupted study time she needed, maybe made myself late for A/V Geeks. Or I could leave it at that, preserve the moment, and give her a good story to tell when she got back to the dorm. About this crazy thing that happened and the mysterious person who sat next to her all through dinner and never let on that they spoke Chinese too. At the Q Shack of all places.

Really! Not just the sock drawer but the whole dresser. It had gotten all messy and overcrowded, to the point where the clothes I wear regularly end up sitting on top of the dresser because the drawers were full of clothes I don't wear that often. The sock drawer was especially a problem because I'm kind of into socks and have many pairs. It was getting hard to keep track of them. I sorted the clothes into four piles: 1. store for the winter, 2. give to Goodwill, 3. throw out, 4. keep in the dresser.

I didn't get rid of as much as I was expecting/hoping, but still managed to clear enough space that everything fits neatly into the dresser with room to spare. I had made a major dent in cleaning out my closet last month and now almost my clothes are organized! I can't remember the last time that was true. I still need to put away the sweaters. I used to put them in this hanging sweater thing in the closet. It was cheaply made and ended up being a hassle to deal with. I might try to find a nicer hanging thing for the closet, or I might be able to fit them all in the dresser now.

The other highlight of the weekend was a trip to Penzey's. They have a store in Raleigh now! In Cameron Village. We'd never been there before, and now that we've had to deal with their parking I know why. Still, Penzey's is worth it (though I wouldn't go back before Christmas if I could avoid it).

It's a great place to shop. Nice displays, tester jars of everything so you can sniff before buying. The back wall had all the baking spices (cinnamon, extracts etc) in a cute display like an antique kitchen. I don't know their catalog well enough to know if every single thing is in the stores, but they had every single thing we wanted and then some. We had a shopping list for Georg's brother, and we got a couple of gifts, and we went a little crazy for ourselves. And even with as much as we bought, we only duplicated one spice that we already had. Oh well, it will keep. We buy bags, put a small amount in jars and then store the rest in the freezer.

We had a nice chat with the checkout lady. She's on loan from Houston while they get the new store up and running. Coincidentally, that's the only store we'd ever been to before. When we were there for the art car weekend, Lee and Russ kindly took us. We told her that on our last trip to Houston we had made time in a busy schedule to visit Penzey's, it was the one thing off our itinerary that we had to do. She seemed to get a kick out of it. I heard her helping other customers & she seemed to know a lot about the product. We didn't need advice on what to buy -- I may have mentioned that we're kind of into cooking. Penzey's for us is like being a kid in a candy store. Much more exciting than a candy store.

So I went into this with the belief that I was going to be bad at it. (Why, you might ask, was I giving this training in the first place? This is what happens when you miss a meeting: you get volunteered for jobs no one else wants to do. After this one I stopped asking "Am I really necessary at this meeting? Can I skip it?") And in fact, if the training had happened when it was supposed to, it probably would have been bad. Lucky for me, scheduling issues dragged on for weeks. Which gave me time to settle in at my new job, develop a little confidence in myself, and realize that just because someone told me to put all my class materials in PowerPoint didn't mean I had to actually do that.

Yes, I came this close to teaching a technical class about HTML that was entirely in PowerPoint. I shudder to think of it! Literally the evening before the first session I realized that if I had to take my own class I'd be bored stiff. I also realized that the person who told me to use PowerPoint wasn't leading the class, I was. And therefore I could change the format if I wanted. I threw out the PowerPoint and worked late writing a new presentation. This one had a very short talk at the beginning, then an actual example HTML file that I would edit on the big screen so people could see how it really works, and much more time for questions.

I think it went well. People asked really good questions, and then would say things like "Oh, I get it!" That was kind of a thrill. After the second session someone even told me that the class had been "good development" for her because she needed to learn more computer skills. Wow. I just wanted to teach people how to do this one thing (send HTML email). It never occurred to me that anyone would see it as part of their overall development. I'm glad I didn't think of it that way; that would have been way too much pressure.

So I'm not planning a career change or anything -- being able to stand in front of a room full of people and teach day after day is a skill that I'm still in awe of -- but at least I won't feel quite so nervous next time I have to lead a training session.

Now that it's too cold for salad at lunch, I'm taking leftovers to work every day, and Ms. Bento is perfect for that. I thought the containers were awfully small when I first got Ms. Bento. Now I'm surprised to discover that, when packing richer foods like leftover casseroles or chili, I don't even need all three containers! Two is a lot of food.

I always fill the containers with boiling water to preheat them, then dump out the water when my lunch is ready to pack. Yesterday I had an idea that's pretty clever, if I do say so myself: instead of emptying the bottom container, I leave the boiling water in it and pack it like that. At noon when I eat, my lunch is still really hot! I bet if I were packing hot soup, it would work the same way.

I just finished this sweater:
The photo is actually from right before I finished: you can see that only one half of the button band is done in the photo. It's a beautiful pattern with really nice fitted sleeves. I made it in a cotton from Knit Picks and I think it turned out really well. My only regret is I wish I had made it a little longer.

This is my next sweater:
The colors in the photo aren't great -- it's actually light green and purple stripes.

Compared to the orange sweater (which was sport weight yarn) it's coming together so fast. I didn't really start knitting until yesterday! It's a pattern on Ravely called "Incredible Custom Fit Raglan" -- not even really a pattern so much as guidelines for designing your own sweater. I really like that it's top-down, so I can try it on as I go and make sure I like the fit.

So, the tour of Metro stations was fun but it meant that we got to the rally about 1. Hours after the allocated space had been completely filled and we couldn't even get close. We couldn't see anything, couldn't even see if there were jumbotrons much less where. We could hear that people were talking, but couldn't tell what they were saying. I don't think we ever made it onto the actual mall. We were on one of the side streets next to the mall, packed in like sardines.

I heard that the permit said they were expecting 60,000 people, and that's what they had planned for, and they actually ended up with at least 215,000. I believe it. The part where we were fighting to move through a solid wall of people was fairly un-fun. (And the part where I got separated from our group was downright terrifying.) But when we moved back and got to a less dense area, it was pretty fun. Just watching the crowds, looking at costumes and reading people's signs. We didn't worry about missing out on the actual rally because we had set up the DVR to record in. (In fact, we're watching it right now.) Kinda like going to a Grateful Dead concert and staying in the parking lot the whole time.

My sign was a big hit. Not only did lots of people comment on it, but it was an invaluable tool to help our group stay together when the crowding was the worst. Georg took photos of me with each side:

Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo have good photo collections of costumes and signs. My favorite was one I didn't see on their sites: a guy dressed like Hitler standing on a crate. He was one of the first things I saw when we got to the rally. This sea of people, and whoa, there's Hitler! Holding a sign that said "No, I'm Hitler."

We left before the rally was over and didn't have any trouble getting on a train to go back to Chevy Chase. At first I was wishing we'd left early in the morning so we could have gotten close enough to see the actual rally. But as Georg pointed out, if we had gotten on the Metro at 9 instead of 11, we probably could have gotten a decent place on the mall. But, if we'd done that we would have been trapped behind 215,000 people all trying to exit at the same time. I heard that later in the afternoon it was as difficult to get on the Metro heading out of the city, as it had been to head towards the rally in the morning. Since we had to drive home last night after the rally, it's really good that we didn't get trapped in the middle of it.

See you there!

In other election news, my barrettes arrived! They're super cute. A little bigger than I had expected -- that just makes them easier for the voters to see! The only drawback is, every time I remove the "VOTE" one, it catches my hair & pulls one or two out. Ouch! I just have to make an extra effort to put them in correctly and not have to adjust them. I guess considering all the painful things I don't do for my appearance, this isn't so bad.

We went to A/V Geeks tonight at Fullsteam Brewery. Really fun. The theme was alcohol. My favorite was a 1970s movie where they got several volunteers to drive an obstacle course three times at the Catamount stock car track: sober, tipsy and super drunk. Drunk driving has never been so funny.

We broke into small groups to practice using the scanner. I was intimidated beforehand but it's really not hard. There's a little red crosshair that you hold over the barcode until it beeps. I guess if I'd worked retail in the past 15 years I would have done it already. They tried to make it relatively foolproof -- for instance it won't allow you to scan the same ATV twice.

The funny part was my small group. It was me, a guy and an older woman. We each took turns scanning a sample ballot and then we took turns starting up the scanner. When it was my turn, the older woman kept trying to yank it out of my hand -- I mean she literally grabbed my hand and tried to take the scanner from me. I didn't say anything, just didn't let her take it until I was done. While she took her turn I chatted with the guy. He's an ... I forget the term but he's an emergency judge. If someone's sick he fills in for them; otherwise he acts as a runner, delivering supplies to precincts throughout the day.

I thought this was really interesting so I was asking him a bunch of questions. Suddenly the older lady shouted at us, "I need help and you're standing there talking!" We were so taken aback we had a hard time not laughing. We thought she was reading the instructions aloud to herself, but apparently she was asking us for help. Without looking at us or phrasing anything as a question. Clearly we were remiss.

He apologized, which I thought was pretty generous of him. She just kept ranting about how we were supposed to help her and we were just talking. Then he said "Is that my job, to make sure you're doing okay? I'm sorry, I didn't realize that." The amazing thing was how even and pleasant he sounded. He really sounded like he was apologizing. But she took it at face value -- accepted his apology even.

I kept my mouth shut until after the session, then went up to him and congratulated him for handling that so well. He said he felt like he was being incredibly snarky! He must just be a super nice person. Even when he's trying to be sarcastic, it comes out kind and sincere. Not me -- if I tried to cut someone down, believe me, they'd know. Anyway we had a good laugh about it, and it wasn't until after he'd left that I realized I never even got his name. Oh well, maybe I'll see him at training again in 2012.

He looked super fit -- lean like a runner or cyclist -- and was wearing one of those shiny exercise shirts. Maybe he had just finished a 40 mile ride or something. I'm still in awe.

Whatever! That's neither here nor there. The point is that to be an election official we have to take an oath. And part of the oath is that we will not reveal what happens inside the voting enclosure. I'm not sure whether that means the little booths where people are actually voting, or the entire room. To be safe I assume the latter. And I'm about to break that oath.

I always work the registration table. Where people walk up, state their name and address, I look them up in a book, if they're in there they sign a form, then take the form to the ballot table and turn it in for a ballot. This means that hundreds of people walk up to me and use my pen. On election day it's just them signing, I don't have to write anything. During early voting, because anyone can go to any voting location, there's a notation the poll worker has to make on the form. This means that I am sharing a pen with hundreds of people.

Which didn't bother me, until one day during early voting two years ago when a man walked up to my station, pulled a (clearly used) hankie out of his pocket, blew his nose loudly, picked up my pen and signed his name.

I was cool about it. I didn't recoil in horror or anything. Just sat there until he walked away, then grabbed the pen and ran to the back where I knew there was a bottle of hand sanitizer. Coated the pen and my hands with it. It got me to thinking though. That guy with the used hankie, his behavior disgusted me but in a way he was doing me a favor. Because it was obvious he was sick. How many sick people were coming in to vote, breathing on me and using my pen, and I had no idea?

I think of that moment as the beginning of the mild germ phobia I experience now. I never touch the door handle of a public bathroom with my bare hand. If someone uses my pen at work I clean it with hand sanitizer as soon as they walk away. If I'm near someone who's coughing or sounds sick, I try not to touch anything near them, and if I have to then I take care not to touch my face until I can wash my hands. I wash my hands kind of all the time. And I get flu shots now, which I never bothered with before.

It takes 2 weeks for a flu shot to be effective. I got mine early last week so I'd be protected by election day. I was super tired that night and my arm was sore for a couple of days. No other symptoms. And the guy at CVS did such a good job with the shot that I literally didn't know he had done it until it was over. I didn't feel the needle go in at all. Word to the wise, CVS on Hillsborough Rd. is the place to go for a painless flu shot!

I did get horribly sick right after the 2008 election, but I don't think it was the flu. It was a hacking cough so intense that I spent a day literally unable to talk. Georg and I communicated via online chat that day, because every time I tried to talk it would set off another coughing fit. It was kind of comical, the two of us sitting there with our laptops typing to each other. I wasn't surprised that I got sick that year: what with the campaign I'd been under such intense stress. It was no wonder I got rundown, and then got sick as soon as I allowed myself to stop. This year it's much less stress. Just the one day, plus training, plus I've been putting in some extra hours at work to "bank" against the time off. I think it's much more likely that I'll be able to avoid getting sick this time.

The hand scanners at the ballot table are here to stay, apparently. They're used to make sure each voter gets the right ballot. I signed up for equipment training just in case I end up at the ballot table on the 2nd. At the request of my chief judge I'm already scheduled to do exceptions training, which means being able to help people who have a problem, are in the wrong place, need to use a provisional ballot, etc.

I have to admit I'm a little nervous about working the exceptions table. There's so much more responsibility, so many possible situations to deal with. At past election days, my job has always been so easy! I'd sit there saying "Please state your name and address. Thank you for voting!" all day long. On the other hand, it's nice to know that my chief judge thinks I can handle it.

There was also a disquieting rumor: someone at training said that she had also gone to a "poll watcher training" sponsored by the Republican party. She said the poll watcher training said that when the voter states their name and address out loud, which they are required by law to do, we the poll workers are required by law to repeat their name and address out loud. According to Mike Ashe this is not true. I hope there aren't any confrontations between poll workers and misinformed observers. They're not supposed to interfere with poll workers or with the voting process, they can't even hover behind us while we're working. I'm sure it will be fine.

Every year they encourage us to wear patriotic clothing (non partisan of course). I've never done it because everything suitable that I've ever seen was horrible kitch. Yesterday I finally found something patriotic, cute and non-tacky to wear: vintage barrettes from the 70s! I found them on Etsy: one has a flag design and one says "VOTE". They shipped today so I'll be sure to have them in time for election day. Yay!

I have to say, being a poll worker is such a great experience. It's fun, you get to meet your neighbors, you get to promote democracy, and work with nice people, and you get paid! It's the total package.