Voting Day 2026

a ballot made for children showing a race between Monkey and Robot. There is a writ-in line and a kid has written in "Gecko" and drawn a picture of one

I was correct, Saturday was the most-attended Town Meeting in a long time. I worked the polls at Voting Day, telling people how to put their ballot into the tabulator for six hours. It’s repetitive work, sort of calming really. You get to see everyone in town after a long snowy winter and while I wouldn’t call it fun exactly, I do enjoy it. My kid ballots (above) were a hit. There will be a write-up of the results in the newspaper this week because it’s that kind of town. It’s really the first election in a while where things just worked. No major “wrinkles to iron out” for next year.

I stayed to count the votes (one of the two candidates I was supporting won, the police ballot I was not supporting also won, the library budget did not pass but that was what we were hoping for) and then headed home full of free vote-counter pizza with my social batteries recharged. Already scheming for what we want to do next year. Here is a pretty small set of photos of the two days, since I was super busy.

Town Meeting Day 2026

people sitting and standing in Chandler Music Hall at Town Meeting Day

I’ve been fed up with a lot of things lately, so I’ve been working with a local group of do-gooders to try to increase participation in things like Town Meeting and various civic stuff which isn’t done by paid staff members but also has to get done by someone. Community engagement is kind of my thing, but it’s also challenging work because you get a lot of people with ideas and many fewer people who are willing to turn those ideas into action. This year’s Town Meeting, held a few days before voting day, on a weekend so that more people could attend, was (or felt like) the most well-attended Town Meeting I’ve been to since I started going to them in Randolph back in 2009. I’m not sure if that is thanks to the do-gooders or people are just mad about the police budget (too high) and the library budget (too low). At least no one was mad about the food shelf or the fire department(s) as they have been in previous years. I’ve become a person who stands up to speak, and my group of friends are the people who stand up to speak also. It’s a lot easier being activist about some things if you have a posse. It was a good day.

A new gmail address? In 2025?

In an effort to blog more and also to see if my “classic mode” of WordPress can handle emojis (update: it can’t, further update:YES IT CAN), here is a short story in bullet points and emoji.

  • I found an old copy of my college thesis on generic “he” pronouns because someone was talking about that concept on Bluesky. Was very excited how quickly I could find that document. 🥳
  • Was able to scan it (thanks, my local library!) and share it with researchers. 🤓
  • Decided to ask my alma mater if they’d like a copy for their archives 🤝
  • They said sure, there’s a self-serve digital archive tool, just use my college email address. 📥
  • I haven’t used my college email address in forever, no idea if it still works. 🧓
  • Six IT tickets to get it going again. 🎟
  • Upload thesis. Scrutinize language as to whether AI can be trained on it (probably). ⬆
  • Log in to new email account. 📧
  • SURPRISE, I HAVE ANOTHER GMAIL ADDRESS NOW 😭

wraps up VII

the front window of my reading room where you can see some ficus trees, a big bushy boston fern and some geraniums. I seem to have more plants every year.

This year I really had to hold off on writing this (though I started drafting it early) because I was still going to libraries and editing Wikipedia until the very end of 2025! I know it seems that a lot of my blogging is repeated stuff, but I am okay with that and I hope you are too. It was a weird year both for US politics reasons but also for some discombobulation reasons. The new roof on my house is glorious but was a major project at a time when I didn’t feel I had the energy for it. I’m happy to see the back of it and gearing up for 2026 house projects. Maybe a generator? Some major painting? Maybe nothing at all.

You can view past wrap-ups here: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.

It’s been a year of not owning MetaFilter and while there was a little flurry of actions-requiring-some-input when the final non-interim board took over, it’s been mostly peaceful once MeFi taxes got filed. I will probably have various changes of heart about how I view that time in my life, when I stepped in to try to save a drowning website that was once very important to me, but as of right now my thoughts are “I’m glad it worked, but that was a bad idea.”

You can find me on the same socials as last year. I’m more active on Bluesky than I was last year and it’s funny how much it’s just a different sort of place for me than Mastodon. I know some people just cross-post to both, but I mostly don’t. Still using Flickr especially for holiday and event-type stuff. MLTSHP is where I hang out still.

I can barely remember what I did this year which wasn’t “get a new roof” because that was such a big deal and I wasn’t blogging much so I check my calendar and my texts. I edit these posts in raw HTML like some sort of dinosaur. I think it’s good to know the old ways. Thanks for reading.

my year in cities and towns, 2025

bed at my sister's place which is a nice antique bed with a tall stack of seven pillows on it.

What even is a hotel anyhow? I was talking to a friend and saying that in some way I’ve “retired from public life” meaning that I do talks locally but I do not hit the librarian circuit anymore. It’s been pretty good. I gave one online talk which I really enjoyed and a few more which I liked. I’d like to do more of that sort of thing. I miss seeing as many people, but I do not miss airports, hotels, and trying to find something to eat in some new location at 9 pm. One of my goals was to see my sister more. I did that and it was time well spent. Four trips down to MA, two of them were last month. Did not make it to Westport but there’s still time. Got some home improvement stuff done and that’s made staying here at home even nicer than it was before. I’ll keep counting the places just because I love my routine, but I’ll feel okay if there aren’t many of them.

Past years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 2007, 2006, 2005.

all is blogs

a napkin showing the four people with December 6th birthdays.

I laughed when I looked back at this blog and saw me talking about domains because that’s still what’s going on! Just in the past week I moved one domain to a new registrar and got all the fiddly email forwarding working (phew!) and also set up a new domain and hosting for the local historical society (mostly good, go see) and then realized I was neglecting my own blogs so I decided I’d say hello. Recent news:

– We have snow-that-staying here in Randolph and I’m so far mostly enjoying it. Can’t really tell how much my new roof is changing things, but it sure was nice to not be worried about the rain anymore.
– I have one of those old cars where the check engine light is on all the time now, but nothing is really wrong with it. This is my dad’s old car, so nothing surprising there but I’ve been involved in an ongoing “I know that’s true, but my car should be old enough that it doesn’t matter in order to pass inspection” back-and-forths with the State of Vermont who can’t explain why “the computer” won’t pass it. I feel driving an uninspected car is just one more rungs on the ladder to being a true Vermonter.
– Halloween and Thanksgiving and JIMSMAS were a good time. Solstice Bonfire is coming up.

Maybe that’s it. Hanukkah starts tomorrow. I should buy candles.

How I fucked up Virgo Month of Leisure this year

My house, a blue two-story dumb house with a shiny new green roof
After a difficult May when I endured a whole bunch of house maladies that just broke me, I decided to finally invest in a new roof. My old one was slate, not really well-maintained. These are roofs which “last 100 years!” as so many people told me but mine was at least 120 and not looking great. More to the point, slate roofs are “old technology” and it’s harder and harder to find people to work on them. After calling, no shit, fifteen different people to get a leak fixed, I made a choice to move on.

I got some bids in May, signed a contract in June and after a few reasonable delays (my foreman got kidney stones!) the massive dumpster was delivered August 28th and the crew got to work on September 2nd. I went to Massachusetts to Kate’s for the duration because the crew nominally started at 7 am and I preferably start at 10 am. All of this to say that I forgot that the Virgo Month of Leisure was even a thing until today. Ha!

I had a nice time at Kate’s, and a very nice birthday on Friday. Drove home on Saturday with a blinking D light on my dashboard and a very sketchy-feeling transmission (when it rains it pours, also it was pouring!) and when I spotted the Hartford Green roof as I drove up the road to my house I nearly gasped. It’s lovely and so solid-seeming. And while it’s true that it makes the rest of my house look a little more shabby by comparison, I am fine with it. Today, I can relax. Tomorrow, maybe not so much.

The Virgo Month of Leisure is my own personal holiday to remind myself to take a freaking break once in a while. These annual blog posts always seem to be morning-after-quarterbackingly explaining why I need it. Yes, a whole month.

ETA: the car thing, based on diagnostic codes, shouldn’t be a disaster. I know for some people “Oh no car troubles!” can be a bigger deal so I wanted to clarify.