I have signed up to work at the District Returning Office on election day, which is next Monday. Our federal elections are blessedly simple affairs compared to what goes on down south: campaigns last precisely six weeks, and each elector votes for one person to represent his or her constituency (also called a riding) in the House of Commons.

My job will be to tick off the name of each voter as the District Returning Officer opens the ballots and records the votes. The ballots are serially numbered (recorded by the poll clerk as each voter is ticked off the list of electors on arrival), so I see the name and the number, and the DRO sees the number and the choice. Nobody sees both the name and the choice.

All of this is done immediately after the polls close at 8:00 p.m. (2000 hr), using printed lists and paper ballots, with rituals as strict as sterile procedure in an operating room. If it takes all night, that's what it takes. Much coffee is drunk.

Like many largely rural constituencies, the riding of Perth-Wellington is solidly Conservative. It comprises the towns, villages and farms lying between Kitchener-Waterloo and London, and Stratford (population 32,000; home of the Ontario Pork Council) is its largest community. So no Liberal, let alone Dipper (member of the New Democratic Party or NDP), need apply with any expectation of success.

Ah, Ontario. Gotta love it.

Meanwhile, in other news, nothing new. Diet firing all right: down five pounds, all of it (I'm sure) bloat. So far no mad dives into the pantry in search of anything I might devour -- the whole milk thing seems to work, at least for me. (It helps that the only immediately devourable items in the house are onions, high-fibre cereal, sealed jars of jam, and one lonely small box of shortbread.) I have had no bouts of flattening weariness since Sunday, and my wonky foot is holding up.

I must buy groceries today -- fruit, veg and toilet cleaner -- and edit the hand-outs for the choir's annual general meeting. I shall also take a substantial walk. My dance card is full.