For the first time since I became eligible to vote in 1984, I'm not going to the polls on election day. But it's not because I don't care. Instead, it's because I voted early.

Some people have said I'll be missing out on a community event by not voting at my local polling place on election day, but when I voted at the Zeidler Municipal Building, I had about the same amount of conversation I usually do at the polls -- which is to say, very little -- and it took me a total of, perhaps, eight minutes.

I'm not antisocial, but I typically vote before work and so most people look tired. They clutch coffee mugs or exchange a few words with a spouse or a friend, but people generally aren't chatting away.

At least not like I remember my fellow voters doing around dinner time on election day 1992, when I waited in a long line on Hackett and Belleview to vote (later that night Bruce Springsteen told me -- and the thousands of others at the Bradley Center -- that Bill Clinton had won).

I vote a lot. I won't say I vote every single a ballot is printed for my ward, but pretty darn close. I vote in primaries, I vote for alderpeople and mayor and for school board and county supervisors and governor and the rest.

I'm not sad today that I won't stand shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors for, potentially, hours on end. I saw them at the park on the Fourth of July and for the Easter Egg Hunt, at the annual Trick or Treat and after-party, at the neighborhood association meeting in my backyard in August ... you get the idea.

The only thing I think I'm really missing out on is all that free stuff I could have gotten if I'd thought to keep my "I Voted" sticker I got nearly a month ago.