Becca Jane St Clair

A strange thing happened to me after I voted. Someone decided to challenge my right to vote, along with many other overseas voters in NINE counties across Pennsylvania. A hearing was set for Friday (I was informed on Wednesday!). I found out the person who was challenging my vote was a prominent member of the Lancaster County Republican Committee who I had never heard of, but after locating their Facebook page, it was clear who they supported. I also verified with Lancaster County that I was registered to vote.

I posted on our facebook group for Pennsylvania Ex-pats, and a half dozen people who voted in Lancaster County replied that they had the same e-mail. One of the members passed me the email address for a lawyer within the PA branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The lawyer wrote to me and explained that they were contacting Lancaster County and informing them that if they did not withdraw the challenge, the ACLU would be stepping in and suing the county. Within an hour, I received the following:

Funny how the fear of a lawsuit made the person withdraw their challenge.

I’m glad there wasn’t a hearing because one of the questions they were poised to ask was about my ties to Lancaster…and I have none, other than some cousins and second cousins in other areas of the county. Would have been fun explaining. But, under federal law, overseas voters vote where they last held residency. For me, this is Manor Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Hopefully in four years, I don’t have any trouble.

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Pennsylvania REAAAAALY doesn’t want you to vote absentee from abroad, let me tell you. Originally, I just though it was Lancaster County being awkward, but no. It’s the whole state.

As an American abroad, my vote gets counted in the last township I physically voted in before I moved. So in 2008 when I first voted from abroad, that was my mom’s address in Lancaster County. Despite the fact that no one in my family lives at that address or in that township, that’s still where my vote goes as it’s my last address on file in PA with DMV.

As a Pennsylvanian abroad, I am restricted to Federal and State elections only. I tend not to bother with the state elections and only vote in Federal elections and I have voted in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 by absentee….OR SO I THOUGHT.

I filled out the forms from Vote From Abroad back in September to request my absentee ballot. A friend of mine in PA said that PA had a delay in preparing the ballots, so I shoudn’t worry….but then my friends who live abroad who are from PA started getting their ballots….but nothing for me.

I contacted Democrats Abroad, who told me ot contact Vote from Abroad, who gave me the contact email for Lancaster County…

Yeah. I was apparently dropped from the roles for NOT VOTING….uhm. But I voted! So there was more back and forth with them where they asked me if I was SURE I voted in 2016 and 2020. Uhm. YES. So then I got told to re-register, except that the form I had filled out said it covered registration as well as an overseas ballot request. In my reply, I said “It really is beginning to sound as though you do not want overseas voters to vote in this election”…and what do you know? I was suddenly registered!

But then….then comes the CRAZY hoops you have to go through as a PA voter to get your online ballot…which still has to be mailed back, but at least I don’t have to wait for anything to arrive in the post here.

Step One….You get an email that contains a PASSWORD for your ballot PDF and instructions on how to access the “encrypted email”
Step Two….You click on the link in the second email that leads you to the encrypted email with PDF attached.
Step Three…You use the password provided in the first email to open the PDF. Only…my PDF is 4 pages long and only contains instructions…no ballot. WHAT THE HELL PA?

Fortunately, they are on the ball with replying to email, so I sent off an email and explained that my PDF contained 4 pages of instructions and a declaration form, but no ballot…..but here’s the HILARIOUS part. They wrote back and PUT MY BALLOT AS A FILE ATTACHMENT WITH NO PASSWORD.

Uhm.

Soooooo loads of emails and instructions and they can just email me the ballot. Nice.

Anyway, I voted.

Posted it on the 16th of October, so it had plenty of time to arrive and I received an email on the 24th stating my ballot has been received.

Now, we cross our fingers.

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Around Mid-August, I noticed my hair was getting dry and brittle. At first, I chalked it up to summer because my hair also had started going blonde since we had so many bright sunny days and when we were on holiday in Austria the temperature never got below 25 during the day. But even using my aloe bar shampoo and conditioner from Foamie with my 2-3 times per week Garnier Papaya Hair Mask and Aussie leave-in conditioner it was still really dry. I went off to Boots with the intention of perusing the hair care aisle to find a product that would help my dried out hair.

Charles Worthington is a brand that I have used in the past – mostly when travelling as their travel sized containers are more like foil packets that can squish as they get empty – so when I saw they had developed a line of products designed for peri- and menopausal hair, I decided to check out the shampoo, conditioner, and hair mask (no link for the mask! Sorry!).

They claim that their products reduce 90% of breakage that occurs during peri- and menopause as the products contain Hyaluronic Acid that will “deeply hydrate and condition hair with a lightweight, non-greasy formula to deliver stronger hair that looks and feels healthy.” So I gave it a go.

On the days that I only used the shampoo and conditioner, my hair definitely felt a little softer and less brittle. I noticed less hair coming out on the hair brush, which I thought was amazing since I have such thin hair to begin with! The mask…not so much. The mask left my hair feeling dryer than just using the conditioner and I also felt that I couldn’t go multiple days between washing my hair like I usually did.

The two bottles plus hair mask lasted 6 weeks, and cost £21 at Boots during a 3 for 2 sale.

Will I buy it again? I’m wavering between probably not and maybe. I think the shampoo and conditioner could be great products to use when my hair is feeling dryer than normal or if perimenopause makes my hair situation even worse. But I won’t buy the mask again, as I think I get better moisture out of the Garnier mask (and it certainly is better value).

I’m writing this in September and saving it for Blogvember content, so I’ll update this post with how my hair feels going back to my bar products!

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Welcome to Blogvember, where I plan on blogging at least every other day in an effort to get blogging again, since I haven’t really blogged since 2020 and WOW a lot has happened in four years!

This post has been pre-written, since at the time of publication, I’m on a train somewhere between Wuppertal and Brussels, on my way home from Dresden, where I participated in the Dresden Marathon (I ran the quarter). I’m sure there will be an entry about that at some point this month.

Anyway, if you’re still around….thanks!! I appreciate the support.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission.

For full Copyright and Disclaimer, please read http://www.blog.beccajanestclair.com/copyright/

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It’s been a hot minute since I blogged anything at all, and for that I don’t really have any excuse other than I have been using facebook more and more to post updates over the years and hardly anyone actually reads this blog anyway, so part of me felt what was the point?

But anyway.

I was going to sign myself up for NaNoWriMo again this year. I will be away at the beginning of the month, but I was confident that I could catch myself up easily and make it to the end of the month. The last time I did a proper NaNo was in 2018, where I wrote my Star Trek TNG Picard/Crusher epic story, Milestones. I wrote Milestones as a 40-chapter epic (over 165k words!) to celebrate my 40th birthday in 2019. I wrote it during November 2018, and published chapter one in the last week of November, with a chapter per week going up until my 40th birthday with chapter 40. It was amazing. I had such great time participating, but I didn’t participate in future years because I completely lost my writing mojo during the pandemic and still haven’t entirely found it. I actually stopped writing TNG fanfic during the pandemic, leaving a few stories unfinished and even my switch to Harry Potter (Snupin) hasn’t been prolific. I have a few in-progress stories there that haven’t been updated in almost a year or more, too.

But I thought this year would be my year. I would commit to writing something. But….then the people who created NaNoWriMo have decided to issue a statement saying that they will allow people to use AI to create their novels and this doesn’t sit right with me or really, most of my author friends. You see, we work HARD for our writing. AI jumping in has really ruined people’s careers, especially for those who relied on writing articles (usually without credit but with PAYMENT) for websites, journals, and magazines. but now many places have either turned to AI or turned to asking for volunteers to do it for the exposure/experience. I don’t think AI has any place in novel writing, especially not in a “competition” Ok, NaNo isn’t really a competition, but you get my drift.

So I won’t be doing NaNo. I will pick a different month where I will sit down and commit myself to daily writing until I have something.

In previous years, I’ve also participated in NaBloPoMo, but even that leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It’s also too late for me to organize myself for flufftober as I’m away at the end of the month. So…Blogvember. Maybe.

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