exit polls

I saw a guy standing on the non-sidewalk side of the road at the polling place (this is a road internal to the multi-school campus here in town) when I was pushing A. in the stroller to go vote. On the way back out, I crossed the road early to get back to the van, so I could ask him what he was doing. He said he was doing exit polling. I told him how I voted, including on the questions.

I'm sure he's a very nice young man, but the only people he is collecting how-you-voted info from are people who go out of their way to go up to him and ask what he's doing. Granted, there was probably another person on the other side of the polls, and we live in one small town, in one small state. But still. I'd had a list of reasons why exit polls were often not too accurate; here's yet another one to add to it. I'm pretty sure that voters who are willing to track down the exit pollster and give him (her, them) the info are _not_ representative.

iPad small child durability

I hesitate to do this, because the next thing that happens is one of them stops working for obvious or not-so-obvious reasons.

However, I have to rate the iPad High for small child durability. The screen cleans up well, even after being lollipopped (defined as a small child working on a lollipop then using the screen and getting it really, really sticky). The iPad survives drops from small child height remarkably well. I'm horrified each and every time, but the device seems magnificently indifferent. Finally, they tolerate being walked on by a small child weighing a little under 30 pounds. I really try to stop this from happening (and the larger child hasn't done it). But it _has_ happened, again, with no obvious negative consequences.

I wouldn't recommend doing any of these things to your iPad. I hope your parenting skills are such that small children in your vicinity would never even get close to doing these things to your iPad. Nevertheless, I'm very pleased that the iPads have survived my very slacker parenting style.

Predicting the Unpredictable

T. feels very strongly about certain things. I anticipate more of these than R. does; however, I anticipate ones that never happen, so it isn't completely clear which of us is better at predicting what really winds up happening.

This morning, R. took T. to the polls (which apparently went okay), and then to drop off the van at the garage down the street for an oil change. They walked home -- they got home, which is perhaps a third of a mile -- but T. was Unhappy. After it became abundantly clear that no one was going to settle this while at the house, I grabbed my wallet and keys and put on my new Uggs (love the new Uggs -- much better than walking out of the house in slippers. People don't have weird grins on their faces around me quite as much.) and started back to the garage with T. We talked. When we got there, I explained that the van was at the car doctor. The mechanic said it would take about an hour, but T. did not want to leave: not to go home, not to walk the additional tiny distance to the Children's Museum (I chose my house here Very, Very Carefully). So he stood in the doorway between the cashier/minimalist store and the garage bays and watched the van. He couldn't see much, and when the mechanic pushed the button so the van went up in the air, he freaked out. He calmed down tho while I talked to him about it. The oil change took much less than an hour, and the guy running the place offered T. a lollipop, which definitely helped.

Eventually, the van came back down. The power steering fluid was checked and topped up (it's been making some noise lately, and R. forgot to mention it in the chaos of dropping the van off). And then it was a simple matter of getting T. in the van and back home. He's willing and able to seatbelt himself in, now, which is amazingly wonderful, but he was a little too preoccupied with something else to manage today.

Later in the day, I brought the armchair that had been in Seattle for years down into the living room. I haven't been able to sit in the rocking chair without my head hurting or feeling queasy and I'm sick of waiting for that to end (if, indeed, it ever does). I was a little worried T. would freak out about the furniture being rearranged, but no: he just monopolized the chair for an hour while he did Disney Puzzle Books on the iPad.

R. was surprised about van dropoff being an issue; I saw that as a rookie error. But I was terrified of what was going to happen with the chair adjustment. Nothing.

I guess we're even.