November cometh early

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So I finally received my absentee ballot for all the good that it will do to cast a vote in MA since it's already a pretty solid Kerry state. I've stopped really caring who wins anymore as it seems like a circus without much point. I'll vote, but with an air of the resigned to the cold truth that it doesn't really matter.

After some confusion over the burial arrangements for HB, we've settled on driving him up to Tampere ourselves to have him cremated. Monday evening when Jarkko came home he said he had talked to the people at the Vet's office who said it might take up to three weeks to get his ashes back at which point I started crying as it had been a long and difficult day cleaning the house and I had felt awful leaving him on the floor of the room where he died. Three weeks just seemed horribly long for him to be in cold storage among strangers. Jarkko called them back and asked them to keep the body while we figured out what we wanted to do. I would still like to bury him properly, but he's big which presents too many logistical problems and many of the pet cemeteries don't accept such large dogs unless they're already cremated, so cremation it will have to be. At least we'll be personally taking him up there. I can't figure out why it's so far away or why they make so few trips to Helsinki when 1/5 of the country lives here and not in Tampere. We'll get his ashes back in a few days and then we'll decide what we'll do with them.