My copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas arrived today and the timing couldn’t have been better as it was my goal to ignore the election taking place as much as I possibly could. Anne and I got to sleep in today as I had the day off from work due to the election, but we were up and at the polls shortly after 11AM. The line for our district was practically nothing so it didn’t take long to get in, cast our votes, and get back out again. From there we picked up my and Courtney’s Adderall prescriptions from the clinic and then we headed over to Meijers to have the pharmacy fill them. They were pretty busy and it was going to take a half-hour so we wandered around the store for a bit. Being November 2nd they already had a good start on all the Christmas stuff and I’ve been feeling anticipation for the season building already so we wasted most of our time allowing me to drool over all the decorations I can’t afford to purchase right now. They had a plethora of those inflatable light up figures that have become so popular the last couple of years including one four-foot Christmas tree with lights that actually light up that would’ve been perfect for the balcony of our apartment. Time flies when you’re looking at stuff you can’t buy and before we knew it our prescriptions were ready so we grabbed them, a gallon of milk, and a couple of lotto tickets and headed home where I was pleased as punch to find that GTA had arrived.

I can sum up my experience with the game so far in one word: Wow! The amount of stuff they crammed into this game in terms of side-missions and mini-games is simply stunning. You can spend hours doing all manner of things without advancing the story line an inch. In your house you can sit and play old-school video games. Down the street in the bar you can play arcade machines or challenge someone to a game a pool including putting a wager on the outcome. You can go to the local gym and work out for awhile. You can jack various vehicles and take on side-missions including the classic police car, ambulance, and fire truck missions, but with even more options including pimp missions. You can go to the club and dance with a mini-game that’s a lot like those popular rhythm games such as Dance Dance Revolution. You can waste money on a haircut or tattoos or buy yourself some new clothes. The list goes on and on. I played the game for most of the afternoon and evening and I’ve barely scratched the surface on what you can do with it. Word has it that the mini-games grow in number as you reach other cities.

So that’s what I did all day rather than pay attention to how the election is going. Since I started writing this entry I’ve had a half-dozen people contact me via IM to tell me how sick they are with worrying about how the results appear to be going, but I’m doing OK by ignoring it all. As I said to them, the way I look at it is simple: I’ve put forth my arguments as to how things should be and I’ve done my duty in casting my vote and there really isn’t anything else I can do at the moment to change the outcome so there’s no point in making myself sick worrying about it. Rather than spend my day off making myself miserable, I spent it running a couple of errands and then playing my new game the rest of the day. Now I’m about to go to bed and I’ll sleep fine and in the morning maybe we’ll know who won. Regardless of how things turn out, though, I’ll keep moving forward and hope for the best.

With any luck I’ll wake up to find out I won the lottery and I’ll be too happy to let whatever goes on in the election upset me too much.