Obama!!!

It's not even my country, but after we turned off CNN at 3am and went to bed, the first thing I did this morning was check the news. HEEEEEE! (sounds so juvenile a squeal at such a serious thing, but, hey)

:D :D :D :D :D

I have to say, it made me all teary eyed. I was steeling myself for the usual jaded disappointment.

Man, why couldn't they have had someone like THAT all the years I was in grad school. For us, sad ol' fogeys, the first thing that happened after we settled into the PhD program back when, was watch, jaws rolling around on the floor, as Bush won over Gore (whom we thought was a sure thing back then. Brief return to the shock and disgust of 2000). Imagine a room full of radical to mildly liberal international grad students, all going, "No, he didn't just *win* did he? Is this a bad joke? Is it over yet?"

But back to today, YAY. :D :D :D

M. had mailed in his overseas ballot more than a week ago, so it wasn't so much voting, as waiting for everyone else to vote. He was so careful about not jinxing it that he wouldn't talk openly about Obama winning. (See? I didn't hurt it any!)

:D :D :D So it's a pretty darn good day.

Quotes to get me through

In my seventh year of grad school, when I was trying desperately to finish my dissertation and defend before the summer, I had this typed out and posted on my monitor, under the cartoon of the elephant pushing the bunny in a wheelbarrow, which had been the illustration on our Thank you notes after the wedding. Both of them cheered me up, even on those "writing even one sentence is good enough" days. So, it turned into my favorite quote.

From Anton Chekhov's "Lady with the Pet Dog":


"And it seemed as though in a little while a solution would be found, and a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they still had a long long way before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part was only just beginning."