About 4:30 p.m. on election day, November 6th, the lights came back on at Simple Justice World Headquarters.  The ambient room temperature went from a nippy 37º to a balmy 54º in just a few hours, after which we peeled off layers of warm clothing.  The television glowed and we stayed up late enough to watch Karl Rove embarrass himself. 

I didn’t learn that the president was re-elected until this morning.  As far as I can tell, there is a direct correlation between this and my power returning. He owes me. 

More importantly, I hear that Mark Bennett received more than one million 1,326,526 votes for seat seven on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Even substracting my votes, that’s over 479 thousand an awful lot of votes, and that’s huge. Congratulations, brother. Killer Keller was re-elected to the all-Republican court. Sorry, Texas, but you get what you deserve.

It felt nearly miraculous to feel normal.  We checked on our friends to make sure they have power and heat (they did), and started thinking about what was needed for the clean-up, whether FEMA disaster relief would be available to us (don’t feel badly; we laughed too) or whether insurance or any other source would cover damage or loss.  It isn’t likely.

Already, the vultures are coming around looking to do post-Sandy repairs and clean-up at a mere triple the price of their services before the storm, when they were begging for work. While many have proven themselves to be good neighbors and friends during the storm, there are some nice folks on Long Island who just can’t resist the urge to take advantage of others.  No surprise there.

There was no ability to do work over the past 8 days, and so there is substantial catch-up to be done. A nor’easter is supposed to hit tonight, and I’m scheduled to fly out of town on Thursday. We’ll see whether that happens.

Thank you for your kind words and wishes during the past week. It certainly brought warmth to an otherwise very cold existence.  Now that the heat is on, I’m determined to return to as much normalcy as the situation permits, and plan to get back to writing about things that matter.  But please know how much I appreciate the support.