Politics and yarn

Went out for a rather casual dinner last night after work with a friend. Good food, good wine, good company. The kind of thing that life is all about.

It being a schoolnight, though, I was in my pajamas (or Thundercats tshirt, in my case) at 11pm. I flicked off the light, and lay there in the dark. I turned and twisted and tried to get comfy and settle down, but after about 10 minutes of being a complete fidget, I gave up. 11.30pm last night found me propped up in bed...casting on.

Yup, there's no cure for having busy fingers and a busy head like starting a new lace project! I broke out the baggies of Sirdar blur, and cast on. It's a rather nice yarn to knit with. It's a mohair/acrylic blend, so it's soft and silky, but if you need to frog a few lines you don't need a vodka and a vallium to get through it.

Knitting, to me, is incredibly theraputic. Ok, so I only got through the garter stitch lines that comprise the wrap set up, but by the end, I was feeling relaxed and calm enough to settle down for the night. Counting stitches is far superior to counting sheep, in my experience.

Today is voting day in Ireland. It's a general election, as opposed to just local election. I didn't get to vote in the last one, as I wasn't on the register. I was deleted off it. Apparently students don't bother or need to bother with pesky things like politics. I moved to Dublin nearly 3 years ago, and was again deleted at some point during this time. The difference being that I was well aware of their crap admin, and sent in my paperwork in November, so a polling card came for me last week.
(It's not just me. 100,000 people were "accidently" deleted off the register last year. Sounds a bit too like dimpled chads for my liking.)

This evening, I shall be exercising my constitutional right, and doing some ticking of boxes. Me, I'll be voting for who I consider to be the lesser of several dozen charlatans. I'm hoping for balance, in the end. I'd like to see people in charge who have the best interests of their constituents in mind, and not just their golf/rugby/chess buddies. Someone who can balance environmental and social causes, and not run the country into the ground financially at the same time. Someone who realises that total seperation of church and state is the way forward, and is not just "anti-Christian".

A very tall order, I realise, but I live in hope.

Some days, hope is all we have.