I hope you all survived Halloween last night (nobody rang our bell, but it’s not light enough out yet to see if any tricksters were about). Like me, I’m sure you’ll start your day with an early morning mass (just in case you were wondering, yes, it is, indeed, a Holy Day of Obligation – though if it had fallen on Saturday or Monday, the obligation to attend mass would have been abrogated – but only in the US, so no loopholes for you foreigners). The lo-cal weather dork just expressed amazement that “just like that” it goes from October to November. Yep. That’s amazing alright. So, yeah, it’s November now, which means election day is almost here. A week from today, if my calculations are accurate (next Tuesday is either Election Day or the Rapture; I need to crunch the numbers one more time).

This my first (Election Day; we’ve had two raptures so far) where I live now, and, what with it being a strictly local election and what with me not knowing any of the players, I’m not sure I’ll even vote. If not, it’ll be the first one I’ve missed in longer than I can remember. Since I voted for Truman or something.

The political signs are out in force, of course, for exciting races like Town Council and Village Supervisor and stuff like that. There’s some woman named Erin Gall who’s running for some sort of Judgeship – State Supreme Court, I think. She’s not bad looking – in a Michele Bachmann crazy-eyes kinda way. She has tons of very large signs around with her picture on it (“Gall for Justice”), so I assumed she’s gots lots of money behind her, and is therefore a f*cking Republican. Just looked her up, and on her Facebook page she “likes” our teabagger, anti-Planned Parenthood abortion crusading Congressbitch, so I reckon I was right about that. Reason enough to go and vote against her, I guess. Too bad, nice Irish girl and all. The odd thing is that she appears to be running for a seat that’s in a different county than where I live. Must be one of those odd gerrymandering things.

It’s not in my district, but I’ve seen signs imploring me to vote for “Pigula for Highway Superintendent.” Now him, I’d vote for, just ‘cuz I respect him for getting through life with a name like Pigula. It conjures up an image of some insane, syphilitic, porcine-looking Roman emperor (no doubt played by Clint Howard in the movie version).

I suppose I should get more interested and involved in the little pissant Town politics. It’s really the only thing you have a prayer of influencing with your vote, and it would probably be good to get out there and schmooze with the local yokel power brokers, in case I ever want to put up a pole barn or get them to plow my street first or something.

In much more important news, though, is the start of basketball season, with SU opening up in an exhibition game against Cal State LA tonight. They’re coached by an SU alum, so we do them a favor and let them come across the country and lose to us in a meaningless game. Because what’s more exciting for a kid from LA than a November trip to Upstate NY?

As usual, there are high expectations for the hoops team this year, which ordinarily means I need to prepare for severe disappointment come March. Hopefully they’ll at least be fun to watch between now and then. Otherwise, it’ll get awfully cold and dark awfully quick around here.

Speaking of getting cold and dark quickly, enjoy the last week of Daylight Saving Time ‘cuz come next weekend we go back to Standard Time, which means that on Sunday night the sun will set before 5:00, and it only gets worse from there.

Sometimes I wish I could just hibernate.