Another first for me today: I took the first subway of the morning home, at around 4am. We got home in plenty of time to watch CNN call the election for Obama at 5am. I knew it was coming, but still I was surprised how emotional it made me to actually hear it.
I barely made it through McCain’s concession speech before I fell asleep. Still, this was the closest thing to an all-nighter I’ve pulled in quite a while.
It was a long evening. We arrived at the Democrats Anonymous Abroad party around 7pm to have dinner with friends. There was an, um, interesting program of live music on offer, but by around 10pm or so we were all itching to re-glue ourselves to a TV, even though we knew it would still be hours before any news came in. We moved upstairs to the bar area and found some prime seats in front of the big projection screen showing CNN. Thanks to my new toy (which I will tell you more about later) I was even able to get online and chat with friends and family back in the US, to find out what they were hearing on their end.
In the hours before the polls started closing, we entertained ourselves by watching a little Nailin Paylin and making up election night drinking games.
The crowd cheered each state as it was called for Obama, and for Democratic House and Senate members who were declared winners. It was especially satisfying to see Elizabeth Dole go down, after having seen this. Unfortunately Al Franken’s race was still too close to call.
Not everyone managed to stay up as long as we did.
What an amazing day! I could never have slept through it! 🙂
The best part of the night, other than when CNN called it, was the acceptance speech (presumably at 5:00am your time–you might have been better off going to sleep and just getting up at 4:00am to see the returns come in). It was just a really uplifting evening. We both got a little misty-eyed when he came out with his family.
Yeah, I really wish we had seen the acceptance speech live. It wasn’t the same as a repeat.
I fell asleep at 10:30pm Eastern time…so good for you staying awake all night! And true…watching a repeat of the acceptance speech on YouTube could not have been nearly as sweet as watching it live.
My Wife and I just went out to breakfast and everybody we talked with was smiling and happy, (3 folks told us they have been happy since Tue night)and the background chatter was louder than normal.
It’s weird how everything has changed, it’s like the communal mood is lighter. I never would have guessed this mood change would happen, but I like it!