Election Central

Today was the big election day. I got David to take my morning classes so that I could just get up and watch the results pour in. Of course the internet picked today to not work very well. It would work in drips and drabs so that I could connect fine some times but other moments I'd get nothing at all. In the end the election wasn't that close so I spent most of my time looking at my brackets for mom and dad's office pools of election picking. I'm doing pretty well at about 90% correct, since both are winner take all I'm just not sure if that'll be enough to win. My apartment turned into election central in the middle of the day because some unique programs I have on my computer allow me to connect to the internet better during these problems. First, Clark came in and was looking for updates, next Steve arrived looking for Dave who apparently had some appointment with him he forgot before taking my classes, when Steve learned Dave wasn't coming he hung out to see the election results. Finally, Teddy stopped by to give me some mail that was my ballot finally arriving. Since it has to be post marked by election day, and I don't think a Chinese post mark will count, I'm just not going to send it in and I'll show it to some of my students.

This does give me hope though that my backup ballot arrived in DC and that I can send and receive mail from home. Teddy is always really on the ball about getting things done. In fact a lot of time he rushes things over to us when there is no real hurry. Dave locked himself out of his apartment the other day and when Teddy showed up to give him a spare he was out of breath like he had been running across campus. Any time you need water changed he gets some one there in about 15 minutes. I have this image of a team of people waiting by a red phone to deliver water, jumping down a fire pole before peeling out across campus. Steve thought the ballot was interesting also and wanted to borrow it some time to make a copy to show his students also. I'm not 100% sure how interested the students can be, they're unpredictable on stuff like this, but It'll be interesting showing it to them, a ballot from the worlds most famous democracy in a place where they can't vote. I liked the final part of Obama's speech about the changes in the life of the 106 year old daughter of a slave who went from not being able to vote because she was black and she was a women, to voting for the fist black president. I didn't like the speech as much as everyone else did on the whole though since I was starting to wonder if he'd go the whole time without ever mentioning Martin Luther King. I know he didn't want to fixate on it, but whatever his polices the most important part of this election was that 40 years after Dr. King was assassinated a black man can become president of the United States. He'll have huge expectations for his inaugural now, though as dad said it'll be nice to have high expectations for a change.