I agree with you too, and I appreciate your caution that I not get carried away.
As you say, it is possible that Murkowski will get some of those absentee ballots.
Forgot one more point: Miller is a veteran of our recent wars, and very many of the absentee ballots are military.
They’ve commenced counting the absentees and early votes, and so far Miller has gotten 318 more votes than were cast for write-ins. http://community.adn.com/adn/node/154230 Not counting the early votes for which the link does not give the raw totals (only that there were 48 more write-ins than Miller votes), Miller got 1,235 votes to 869 votes cast for write-ins. So the number of write-in votes is substantial, albeit less than what Miller has gotten.
they’ve counted about 9000 absenties and Miller has closed the gap to about 12,500.
There are still about 30,000 absenties, which should close the gap to less than 10,000.
Of the 85,000 write-ins, Lisa M. will need to win about 80,000, which is highly unlikely. keep in mind that some of the write-ins will be for Joe Miller.
http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/fate-of-alaska-race-hinges-on-write-in-1033374.html