Yesterday was the first time I voted, ever.

As a Jehovah's Witness growing up, we didn't vote for religious reasons. Since my separation from JWs happened so slowly, it took me awhile to reevaluate that belief. I finally came to a point where I decided to vote, but since I had never done so, I didn't realize I had to register ahead of time. Yesterday crept up on me without me noticing... and I realized that since moving we hadn't re-registered to vote. I did a bunch of searching around online and found a number to call, found out where our local polling place was and how to vote with a provisional ballot.

It was really scary actually, I was totally afraid I would mark the wrong thing or do something wrong that would invalidate my vote and never know. Jenn was there and she helped me through the process. :) I threw my vote away on Kucinich (ugly and totally not electable, but I like the things he has to say), made some hopefully good judgements on the props, turned in my ballot and got my "I voted" sticker which I wore proudly.

The weirdest part of the story is that when Jenn and I went out to a nice Italian (read as: snooty Italian) restaurant for our anniversary, the guy sitting at the table next to us actually made fun of my sticker. "Sir! Did you vote today?!" It was very weird and I wasn't sure he was actually making fun of me at first, but sure enough he was. I have no problems with situations like that though, confidence is not something I'm lacking in, so I told him very politely told him that I did, in fact, vote today. He replied that he's not allowed to vote in this country, in an accent I could not place and then went back to trying to impress his date (who was dressed head to toe in black just like the man).

The whole place was very weird, a strange part of LA that doesn't really mesh with my preferred slice of LA. Nonetheless, we enjoyed ourselves a great deal and had a wonderful anniversary. :)