the primary reason i'm not around ...

Today (Saturday here) is Guam's primary election.

That means things are a little crazy for the newspaper. It's a ton of coverage and photos of a whole bunch of different candidates in different races.

The polls just closed about a half hour ago, and now the long process to count all the ballots begins ... or will begin in a few hours, when the first of the precincts come in.

My staff knocked out the majority of the news pages nice and early (by 6 p.m. or so), leaving just seven total pages left, one of them Sports, which is waiting on a high school volleyball game to finish up.

Of the other six, two of the pages are already in and being edited. The plan is to have just 3 pages left late, and those will be updated as late as possible in order for us to get the latest news in.

There will be some of us here though, including yours truly, who will be sticking it out until the races are called in the wee hours of the morning, so we can get that stuff up online for our readers.

That's why I'm posting now. I may update this later, depending on how much down time there is.

I've been taking some pics of us hard at work here ... OK, so far I only have us enjoying a killer dinner made by my friend J, the co-worker who left here to open his own small restaurant. But I will take more, so sometime during my lazy Sunday afternoon, I may get around to posting those.

I have this crazy day, but then Sunday should be a super lazy day, while Monday will be spent on the golf course!

Hope you all have a great Labor Day weekend.

ADDENDUM:
• The first results are only now coming in, after midnight. This will likely be a loooooooong night. But it's fun!! Heh.

ADDENDUM 2:
• We're about halfway there ... and it's 2:40 a.m. Looking more and more like 4 or 5 a.m. before I can head home to slumber.

If you feel sorry for me ... send lacivious pictures of yourself in various states on undress (ladies only please!) to dzer@teleguam.net.

Heh.

ADDENDUM 3:
• Getting closer ... 38 of 53 precincts have been reported ... and it's only 3:30 a.m. Just may be eating breakfast at some diner with the gang before heading home for that longed-for sleep.

ADDENDUM 4:
• 5 a.m. and all but 1 precinct have reported. There are still some electronic votes that need to be tallied, but those should come relatively quickly, being electronic and all. Well, at least we hope so.

---