vote? check.

i went down to alief and voted this afternoon. why back in alief, you ask? well, when i updated my driver’s license address i checked for my voter registration address to be updated. i got something in the mail that looked like a voter registration card and i guess i assumed it was. but it wasn’t. it was a voter registration address confirmation card. i never sent it back in. so my voting location was still at my old address. so i left work early and went down to the southwest side of houston. the voting process was fast and relatively painless. but the important thing is that now i’ve got the right to complain for the next four years. 😉
on the way to vote, i made the decision to finally drive by the old house on belle glen. i didn’t stop or anything. i really didn’t get to analyze it much. it had a much better paint job that matches the brick better. it looked like they’d tinted all the windows. and they’d painted over all the glass in the doors and windows on the wall of the garage. there were a couple of cars in the driveway, one of which was either a police or security vehicle. it makes me smile to think those punk kids next store door (assuming the family still lives there) are having to live next to some kind of authority figure now. overall, the whole experience didn’t really affect me much — it all seemed sort of curious and surreal.
when i got home, i called the houston police department records division about my license plate. i wanted to make sure it wasn’t still listed as stolen in their system. i gave the plate info, then the incident number, and the officer looked it up and said the plate had been reported as stolen in january 2007 (which it was), recovered in march 2007, stored in property, and then destroyed in july 2007. and at that point it was made available as a plate choice again. the thing is, i was never contacted or anything to let me know it was recovered. i wish i could have picked it up. that way i’d have one to keep in my house. oh well. at least it appears i don’t have to worry about being pulled over by gunpoint and dropped to the ground and handcuffed because my motorcycle plate shows up as stolen.