Everything Changes, Everything is the Same

Wow. That's really all I can say. Wow. One Ring, her brother, and I watched the returns last night, channel surfing to find the best coverage of the election. We happened to be on Comedy Central with The Daily Show's John Stewart announced that Obama had become the 44th president of the United States. At first we thought it was a joke; surely it was far too early to find a winner. In 2000 I stayed up until 2 AM waiting to see if Gore had pulled out a win. And if I recall correctly, it was pretty late into the night in 2004 before we found out that W had been reelected. We were hosting an election party that night, and man, did that kill the evening!

But not last night. At 10:00 PM central, Obama was pronounced the winner by Stewart. We switched over to CNN to confirm the news. Within ten minutes of the polls closing in California , Sen. McCain was giving his congratulatory speech. After that, it was just a matter of watching the celebrations and wishing we were in Chicago.

I couldn't believe the vast numbers of people who poured ount onto the streets to celebrate. 125,000 in Chicago (I told One Ring that I've seen smaller music festivals!) and Times Square in New York was packed out. They were even partying in front of the White House! One Ring stood up when those shots aired and imitated one of the Obama supporters, saying, "Um, yeah. Hi. We were wondering if you could move out, like, now? January is just too far away!"

"Nah," said I. "Bush and Cheney will probably cite emergency powers and declare that their taking over for a third term. You know, for the good of the country." God, I hope not!

Today, though, I'm feeling a slight slump. I mean, yeah, Obama had a massive victory - something like a 3% win in the popular vote and 343-163 in the electoral college vote (some of the returns haven't come in yet). Yes, in January there will be some huge changes, and the hopes of many are now resting on what he can do while in office - end the war, fix the economy, save the environment, create a health care system that actually works. But for now, it's the same old, same old. Bush is still president, the economy is still collapsing, and we still have two wars going with no sign of an end. It's going to be a long wait until January.

On the personal side of life, I'm gradually feeling better following my recent cold from hell. One Ring is feeling ill, and I fear she may have picked up the same mutant virus / bacteria / hellspawn. So we've reloaded our supply of cold medicine, and hopefully she won't be down for as long as I was.

We managed to move another puppy out of our house and into foster care, leaving us with two. One Ring's parents are going to adopt one - Rorschach - so we're pretty happy. The bathroom where the puppies have been living has been almost completely destroyed, so we're looking at a pretty substantial rebuild. Not looking forward to that at all.

Work is work. Enjoying it a lot, and learning a lot about people at the same time. There are still rumblings of major changes taking place in the system, but nothing definite. We'll see. I'm not worrying about it at the present.

Okay, back to the grind. More later, hopefully.