Flying for the first time since July, to Chicago.
To vote. In the Serbian parliamentary elections. Lily Lynch has a good writeup of why these are really really really really important.
There are no absentee ballots in Serbia: if you are away from home you either have to haul your behind back, or register to vote abroad. The number of Serbs in Denver being too small to open a polling place there — not that there would be one even if there were more of us, as the soon-to-be former Serbian kakistocracy has been doing its best to suppress the diaspora vote — we did a nick-of-time registration to the one place they had to open up. [Note: But no, it was in fact more complicated than that. We first naively registered to vote in Denver, well ahead of the registration deadline, thinking that the powers that be would, in case there wasn’t a polling place there, re-route us to the closes city automatically like we heard they did in years past. Then we learned that there was no law requiring them to do so. Fearing shenanigans, my wife and I sent a second registration, for Chicago, skipping Denver altogether. And a good thing we did, because my father-in-law, visiting from Serbia, never submitted the re-registration my wife dutifully prepared for him, and learned that his request to vote in Denver was denied, end of story. This all happened a few weeks ago. For those whose jobs, finances and/or child care responsibilities don’t allow for last-minute plane tickets: tough luck. Draw your own conclusions about what the implications are for Serbian democracy. ]
Another cute way to take away people’s right to vote was to have the polling places open at the same time as they are in Serbia. Which is to say, they opened at midnight central, and will close at 1pm. Or maybe 2pm, since today was the end of daylight savings torture in most of the world. I am guessing here, because the official certificate of registration to the Chicago consulate my wife and I received never specified the time. In prior elections, this was 8am to 8pm local time, so those used to voting that way are in for a surprise if they show up in the late afternoon.
Only, this obvious ploy to rig the vote was publicized so heavily that it made people who otherwise may not have voted so pissed off that they registered and started queuing well before midnight. I keep getting videos of long lines in DC, Chicago, etc.
Anyway, it was a 6am flight in — the one I am on now — and a 9pm flight back, with a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago in between. First class for both of us, thanks to the free upgrade from status I earned at my previous job and hope never to have again. The night before, we were privileged to a) witness a Nuggets nail-biter (against the Pelicans, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the season but oh well), and b) participate in the 4th quarter timeout show, wherein the Nuggets mascot Rocky threw a half-court shot behind his back and right into the net, earning us $200 (!?) most of which we will donate. [Note: I would like to think that this was the turning point in the match. The Nuggets were 19 points behind at the start of the quarter. Some of the home crowd was booing. Then Rocky made the shot, the energy changed, and they came back to win in overtime. If you have access to the video via the NBA app you can see for yourself and check if my intuition is correct. ] Which is a long-winded way to say: helluva weekend.