Por éso estamos como estamos en este país...

Of course I voted. Yes, dressed "like that"... after having possibly run one of the miles in under... insert embarrassingly high number of minutes here:

At 5:50 this afternoon I was the 46th voter at my polling place. All day. I'm so glad CA spent the money to run this election now instead of saving those two uncontested Assembly seats and two confoundingly similar measures dealing with eminent domain (which I've always confused with Westward Expansion and/or colonialism - will google it later) and putting the whole enchilada on the ballot in the next major election. Karl had gone in quite a bit earlier and was number 44. He'd seen our neighbor (45) as he was leaving.

I walked out of the church gym, having abandoned the mental rant against my pinche non-voting fellow citizens in favor of the Things to Do litany. I was on "Oh, shit! Call Little Maya and order tamales for Thurs...10 chicken...see if they have them de piña...probably no pork..." when a man got out of the red Toyota parked behind me. "Excuse me, would you like to buy any tamales?" I flashed back to two weeks ago, when I was asked,

"Would you ever buy tamales from those people who come around sellin' 'em from their cars?" I knew my answer would profoundly influence him. "Absolutely."

So today I made the arrangements to place the order. "Actually, yes...los necesito para jueves, pasado mañana...como 10 de pollo, 10 de queso, 10 de...¿de piña tiene Ud.?"

After the deal went down, I told Gustavo that he wouldn't find many likely clients at the polling place and launched into a bit of a tirade about people not voting. He looked a little sheepish, "Yo no voté hoy...y no creo que voy a votar...hay como, ¿qué? 2 candidatos que se lanzaron por una formality y algo que tiene que ver con las rentas, ¿no? Pues, casi no vale la pena...¿no?"

Heh. I hope he didn't think I included him in "este país de pendejos"...

I don't think so, though, because he gave me a sample of the queso con chile.