THE END GAME: GOBAMA!

11/3/08, 5:00 p.m.: I'm leaving work, driving home. Four people (one of them was a child or just an extremely short person) are holding "HONK FOR OBAMA" signs on a median strip, bundled up against the cold. Lots of resultant honking, but my horn's broken - something I wasn't aware of - so I roll down my window and do a sort of Arsenio-style fist pumping thing, shouting "OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA!" One dude on the strip gets a huge smile on his face, looks right at me, and starts chanting with me! Awesome!

11/4/08 6:30 a.m.: Getting ready to leave to vote, I notice that Alecia has written "OBAMA 2008" in huge red Sharpie across our calendar.

11/4/08 7:33 a.m.: So voting was a straight cinch. Got to my polling place at 7:50 and there were maybe 30 people already in line, mostly senior citizens. No-one talking politics, nobody forcing literature. Area's semi rural so maybe no surprise on the numbers. (We vote at the Monroe Township building in Selinsgrove, PA.) I was the only non-white face or so I thought - until a few minutes after the doors opened when I saw another black person leaving. Hilarity: overheard lots of bitching about how long the wait was, how ridiculous it was. While to yours truly - who waited 3-4 hours four years ago to vote for Kerry - this wait seemed eminently reasonable. No hassle when the older ladies who run the voter rolls checked me off, spent only a minute in the voting booth, then had to feed the ballot into some machine and I was outta there. Forty people in line when I returned to my car - including lots of indians and hispanics. Struck up a conversation with a teacher who swore, adamantly that if McCain won she would never vote again for anybody ever. "I mean, you have to be brainless to vote for that guy," she said. "And don't get me started on Palin." It feels good to be done; now to keep my fingers crossed for Obama.

11/4/08 8:30 a.m.: Someone has taken maybe 30 Obama/Biden signs and fashioned them into an outward-expanding "V" on a berm adjacent to an exit ramp near the entrance to Harrisburg.

Also, my waiting-in-line-to-vote Ipod soundtrack:

Animal Collective "Brother Sport (live on NPR)" - twice
Deerhunter "Cryptograms"
Aquarelle "In Florence" (the first few minutes, then got drawn into conversations)