Woohoo! We got a vote-for-us leaflet through the door tonight. Not as good as canvassers, but still...it shows that someone wants our vote. But...oh dear, it's from Sinn Fein, whose candidate gave me a leaflet already! Like the last election (only less so), when SF canvassers turned up on the doorstep twice. This leaflet, however, is a new one. It assumes that we are complete fucking idiots who have no idea how to vote, and reminds us to bring our polling cards on the day (said cards arrived today) and suitable ID...before telling us that the way to elect Larry O'Toole is to write a "1" beside his name on the ballot paper. It even provides a mock ballot paper with a "1" beside his name, just to be sure we get the idea. How dumb does he think we are?!

Okay, I am in agreement with a lot of Sinn Fein's positions. But there's that whole bit where they're strongly associated (to be polite about it) with the IRA, which just sticks in my craw. I was considering giving them a preference this election; they have a good reputation for taking care of their constituents, and as I said, I stand with them on many issues. But having met Larry O'Toole (briefly, I admit), I didn't much like him. Overly genial, and a bit false-seeming. And this leaflet is for the birds! Every contact I have with SF this election causes me to slide them further down my list!

Of course, my list is rather short; my current list goes Green, Labour, Mark Harrold (Independent campaigning for more money for health services)...uh...well, that's it. I've never voted for Fianna Fail in my life, and I'm not about to start now. Fine Gael don't seem much better these days (bring back Garret FitzGerald!), and I can't abide the PDs. Which only leaves me with SF and the mystery Independent. Guess there won't be too many numbers on my ballot paper.

Well, on to other things.

My book discussion on Girlsown seems to have stalled a tad, but I just posted my summary of "Daddy-Long-Legs" and the associated questions, so I'm hoping it'll get moving again. "Daddy-Long-Legs" was a difficult book to summarise; its plot is both simple and slight, and it's almost completely told in epistolary style. The joy of it is not in a bunch of weird characters, or a complex plotline; it's in how Judy tells what's happening to her, and what she chooses to tell, in her letters to her anonymous benefactor. Despite its wibble-inducing title, this is a book that I've loved since I first read it, and wish I had first read it earlier. And I found, in thinking up the questions for it, that it was more thought-provoking (for me, anyway) than "A Sweet Girl Graduate", despite the fact that the latter has a larger plot, more complexity, and is about twice as long! (Both books are available at Project Gutenberg, by the way.)

I also recently read the sort-of-sequel to "Daddy-Long-Legs", "Dear Enemy" - also courtesy of Project Gutenberg. Having read the first, I felt the second was weaker, as Sallie's epistolary style is very similar to Judy's. I did, however, very much enjoy the detail about what an orphanage in early twentieth century America was have been like, and Sallie's efforts to change it. It's also a more preachy book than "Daddy-Long-Legs", though the preaching is fairly well hidden. I wonder if Jean Webster was herself the product of such an asylum...?

Other reading...a friend recently lent me (among many others!) a couple of Lois McMaster Bujold novels. I am hooked. I had to go to another friend, whom I see more frequently than the first, to get more - yes, we're talking feeding an addiction here! So far, I've read "Cordelia's Honour", "Barrayar", "The Warrior's Apprentice" and "The Vor Game". I still have "Borders of Infinity" and "Cetaganda", and then I'll have to bug one or both friends some more. I passed "Cordelia's Honour" on to Patrick, but he only started it last night, so I haven't heard any comments from him yet. Damn, but I like military SF.

Actually, I like military any-genre fiction, now that I come to think of it; I also love Elizabeth Moon's Paksenarrion books, and W. E. B. Griffin's mainstream "Brotherhood of War" series. Not to mention several other authors... If it has soldiers, and preferably complicated politics as well, I like it. Which is a bit strange, since I'm a pacifist who loathes politicking!

No, I didn't lose interest in my blog yet. I just got ambushed by Real Life.

Which started with arriving to my computer on Thursday and having the modem tell me it couldn't find a dial tone. So...run upstairs to fetch the computer-to-phone-socket cable that Patrick stole (we only have the one; very inconvenient), and plug things in. Still no dial tone. Bugger. After a couple of hours worrying about the phone company having cut us off (even though the bill was only a tiny bit overdue, and they don't normally cut you off until you fail to pay the second bill)...it turned out that there was something else I should have plugged in upstairs. Which I hadn't known about, and Patrick was out at the new protest (about the Garda brutality at the last one) and didn't get in till late. So I spent Thursday evening reading. "God Stalk", by P. C. Hodgell. Good book, though I get the impression the author was aiming for 3rd Omniscient POV, and missed.

The protest that evening went off well; was everything a model protest should be, in fact. Well-behaved protestors, polite Gardai...all good. Quite a relief, really. The whole situation is mostly blowing over as far as the media are concerned, though it was mentioned on the news this morning that about 30 official complaints about last Monday have been received by the Garda Complaints Board. They're still waiting to see if any more come in, before they start dealing with them, I think.

So then I had two days' worth of e-mail to catch up on on Friday; I get an average of about 200 e-mails a day. This is what happens when you subscribe to about eight mailing lists, two of which are rather high traffic. And since I discovered the joys of instant messaging chats...well, my e-mail reading has become less efficient, as I read and chat simultaneously. But hey, it's fun!

(Plus I left work late on Friday, and then the bus was very late, and I was extremely hot and bothered by the time I got home, about three-quarters of an hour later than normal.)

Saturday was occupied by such mundanities as sleeping late, constructing potato salad, doing the laundry, and going shopping for the week's groceries. Followed up by writing a second legend of Heramacles and my character history, both for my LARP group. Sent them, along with the first legend, to the plot team, so with any luck they'll be approved soon and go up on the website (www.armengar.org).

Then we were supposed to be going out to Aidan's for the night, but that all went splat; he came out to his family this week, and his brother is giving him hassle, I gather. Anyway, he felt it best not to fill the house with his friends, so we just went to the pub, which was all fun anyway. It was extremely amusing at training yesterday to have Tom asking us what he'd been doing the night before, as he couldn't remember how he'd ended up with footprints on his t-shirt! (He'd felt it good to lie flat on his back in the beer garden.)

Training was going very well (playing chasing with swords is fun), until the park keepers interfered again. I swear, I think they put a new guy on duty ever week, and none of them ever talk to one another. Because every single week we get hassled by a park keeper we've never seen before. This one was edgy because of last Monday, and basically said we couldn't hit each other with rubber swords until we produced written permission to do so. Never mind that we applied for a permit and the officials basically said, "yeah, we know all about you, you don't need a piece of paper, it's all good". But of course, they haven't passed that down to the park keepers, and we have no way of proving it. So we're going to have to get the piece of paper. Not that it'll be hard; it's just a nuisance.

So we quit the strenuous stuff and went in-character instead. Continued last week's Volksraad and discussed the whole will-we won't-we join the Lions thing. And what about Sionna's mercenary. It all ended in tears, until we got distracted by someone murdering one of our scouts outside the walls. (Yes, I'm being vague and confusing. I can't be bothered going into detail tonight.)

Out drinking again after training, and despite all our good intentions about getting the last bus, well, it didn't happen. For a change. Ah well, who needs sleep anyway?!

This election (to change the subject utterly!) is very boring. Elections were far more fun in my young day (and now I feel old, saying that when I'm only 32). There's no viciousness, no back-biting, no sniping any more. The main parties are hardly doing more than poking apathetically at one another ("you're a bit crap, really, you know"). And no-one's listening to the smaller parties. And whatever happened to canvassing? So far we've had three parties shove leaflets through the letter-box (and the election is on Friday!), and no-one at all ring the doorbell to talk to us. What's that all about?

Not to mention the two candidates in this constituency who apparently don't want our vote at all, since they haven't bothered to put any posters up. The Green Party guy finally got his posters up yesterday. The Progressive Democrat woman hasn't done so yet, and as for the second Independent...for all I know, he could be campaigning for citizens' rights for Purple People Eaters! It's only because I bothered to check out at the ireland.com website who my candidates are that I know those latter two even exist!

God be with the days when every single candidate had posters up and arrived on your doorstep to harangue you. Elections are supposed to be fun, dammit! This one is rather less interesting than watching baked beans go cold.

And the latest opinion polls are predicting a Fianna Fail landslide; they'll probably be able to form a majority government. Despite the fact that, according to those same polls, the majority of voters would prefer a coalition government. Something's screwy there...