"Early votes cause early headaches" and "Not made in Hollywood"

• Your early vote has been locked away in a safe place, but so was your 401 K! - It's a good thing all the crooked "behind the scenes" antics of voting in Chicago are finally being dealt with after years of problems! But seriously, in a city like Chicago where "Bozo the Clown", Al Capone and Dick Hertz are still able to make a restaurant reservation and are eligible to vote, what else would you expect? Like other states, Illinois has thrown it's proverbial "hat in the ring" to allow busy and/or lazy people like me a chance to cast a vote early. You would think this is a good thing considering that turnout for early votes was a record three times more than expected. In other words folks, people are taking things seriously... that was until the local news leaked a big secret today. If you think your early vote was in a secure place until Tuesday, it may not be. All early votes are being held on USB memory sticks and will be "locked in a safe place" until Tuesday where each will be uploaded into a mainframe and tabulated. The only problem is that while reporters on the beat were covering this event, word accidentally leaked of where these votes are being kept, in a warehouse in Chicago. While the address was never given, I suspect people in that area recognized the building on TV. You'll be happy to know that this "top secret" area is being watched around the clock by a lonely security guard who raised his right hand and promised to keep this secret. Going one step farther, a representative held a conference today with the media informing everyone that the information was "somewhere on the same floor" that he was speaking as all the cameras rolled. Remember how easy it was for George Costanza to convince a guard at the bank that he needed to relaz in a comfy chair on Seinfeld? If anyone has half a brain, they should be relocating all these things someplace else even as I write this. Note to the PD: this time use an unmarked truck and by the way, those vans following you with the satellite dishes on top and station logo on the side are probably not someone's "tricked out party van" It may be the news!
• Where there's smoke, it may not be a fire but something worse! I take it that we're all safe and sound and escaped danger on Wednesday morning. While most of the U.S. was asleep, I woke up early for a cup of Celestial Seasonings Orange tea and peeked out the window as the sun rose above the horizon and shined a light on things. The sky was cloudless except for what appeared to be a vapor trail from a plane leaving Midway Airport. but this was a bit odd. A vapor trail always is widest near the skyline and narrows the higher it reaches. This was opposite meaning, something crashed. I found out later that day it was no big thing...only an asteroid! It had exploded over Colorado after entering the atmosphere at more than 17, 000 MPH. When it exploded, fragments of the thing rained down to Indiana in a matter of minutes. Pretty cool. While everything burned and nothing actually hit the ground, it's always nice to know that our government really sees no reason to tell us about these things until AFTER they happen. In other words, while Robert Duvall may have saved everyone in Deep Impact , don't count on such a thing in real life. More photos from the other day can be found on google using Wednesday's date, "meteor" and "Colorado" as keywords!