I "early voted" today. It was a very civil process. Everybody stood in line and waited thier turn and the volenteer election officials did a great job. The early voting location is also a sherriff's office and isn't too far from the house. We had to stand in line for about 45 minutes to an hour but the weather was nice so it was no big deal. There was one guy a few people back saying that the vote didn't matter because Texas was going to vote as predicted and the guy standing next to him asked him if it didn't matter then why was he standing in line. It was a good point; it is definitely worth it to vote.
In other news I was sitting here at this computer last night and I heard something scratching around in the attic. I was assuming it was a rat and I wasn't too happy about that because even though it has to be done, I don't enjoy the rat-trap killing process since sometimes the traps don't finish them off and then I have to deal with that. Later on I went out side and found a wooden vent on the front of the house that I had screened up several years back to keep birds from nesting in it and something had torn the lower end of the screen loose. I was thinking it was probably a squirrel.
Today when I got home from voting I went up in the attic and sure enough I heard something moving around. I was holding a shop light hooked up to an extension cord and I was shining it around and trying to stir whatever it was. Then a squirrel emerged and made a break to the vent. After he took off, I left the light up there and went out and put a heavier piece of screen material over the vent. I haven't heard anything up there so I am assuming I haven't trapped any squirrels in the attic by sealing up thier entrance.
Besides that I made a big pot of soup with chicken breasts, kale, potatoes, corn, onion, carrots, cellery, jalapinos, split peas, and some spices. I used some chili powder to give it a soutwhestern type flavor and it seemed to come out alright. You can guess what is going to be on the menu for a the next few days. I used the same method that I had listed a year or so back where I started out with some carrots, onion, cellery, and kale and cooked that all pretty well and then took it all out and set it aside to cool and put in the blender and add back to the soup later on in the cooking process. After that I put the chicken breasts in. Once those were cooked I tooke them out and let them cool and dumped in all the chopped vegies. Once it came to a boil I turned it off and just let it sit and added a little sea salt, some pepper, some garlic powder, the blenderized cooked vegies I had set aside earlier, some dried onion flakes, and a good bit of chili powder. I also added the split peas that I had cooked in a separate pot and a drained can of corn. At the very end I added the deboned chicken back in and just left the pot covered for about 30 minutes with the stove turned off.
Oh yeah, after I voting and and had a celebratory Tex-Mex lunch at a local establisment, I stopped by the Dollar Floor Stoor on Mason Road. I am going to have to replace the carpet in the room here and I wanted to take a look at some of the do it yourselfer options. There was a guy there named Tony and he was very informative and polite. I pretty much made up my mind that when I do make the purchase, he has earned my business.
There you have it. Another exciting day for the history books.
America really is a great country.
