Oiled

I usually snicker, just a bit, when I read about well-oiled processes. That's because my experiences with such processes are usually not all that well-oiled. They may be better than others, they may be better than I expected, but they're rarely as good as the articles and writeups make them sound. My wife likes to say 'There's a reason that they wrote that article -- its because (whatever they were talking about) is unusual.' You don't see articles about houses with indoor plumbing, or telephones, or a color television -- thats pretty common. You read about the lavish salle de bains, the nano-sized implantable telephone and internet browser, the HD3D telecube. They're not common, so people write about them. See them in person? Not too often. Not in my circles, anyway.

Well, I just encountered one. I just got back from ma,ing calls for Obama at a local supporter's home. My daughter said that she went outside to practice color guard, and coming back in, she said 'hey, nice door hanger'. What? So I went and looked -- there was a BIG nicely laid out Obama flyer, and on the back it had preprinted information on voting -- reassuring you that you COULD vote with outstanding parking tickets, or even if you'd been arrested in the past, and with a sticker showing exactly where we would vote, and what the hours there were. They had a team stop by the house yesterday, and apparently another team come through today.

Well-oiled, indeed.