It’s not going to be an easy road. Obama inherited a great big mess, and it is going to take some time to straighten it all out. I feel optimistic, though - and for the first time in a long time, I might add.

Wow. Just wow.

Obama even took VA, which thrills me beyond expectation. I hoped, but I didn’t really expect it. NC was close, too. Too close to really call yet, but I’m hopeful that Obama will prevail there, too.

The journey is just beginning. And I am looking forward to it.

There was a slow down right at the beginning, at our polling location, because it took them a little bit to get the electronic machines up and running. Bbut they were prepared because this year Virginia is starting to phase back in the paper ballots, so there was a choice at each polling location. As it turned out, the paper ballot route was also faster this morning. After checking in, they were sending people to another line if they wanted to use the electronic machines — but if you wanted a paper ballot, there was no more waiting. Just walk up, get a ballot and walk to the partitioned table, fill it out and then take it to the tabulating machine thing. It was very quick.

Something else I noticed during my hour in line - people were in very good spirits. No one seemed to mind being in line waiting. It was very upbeat; I loved it.

Anyway, I am very happy to have done my civic duty. Now I, along with the rest of the nation — actually the rest of the world — I await the outcome.

If you haven’t voted and you are a registered voter, please vote. I cannot stress enough the importance of this election.

Could Virginia and North Carolina actually cross over to the blue side of the fence? Could it really happen? I grew up in North Carolina and it has always been easily red. I live in Virginia now and it’s voted red for many decades as well. Both states are a toss up this time around. I admit that is really neat. It would be so gratifying to actually have the state in which I live go to the person I voted for. That’s never happened before. According to 270towin.com, Virginia has voted Republican for the last 10 presidential elections with North Carolina voting Republican for 9 out of the last 10 (Carter got North Carolina back in 1976).

And for a bit of humor check this out. Thanks to my good friend Donna for helping me to laugh at a train wreck. Laughter is good medicine. Make sure you click all around that page for the greatest effect. And have your computers volume turned up a bit.

I worked an extra long day yesterday, so I didn’t have as much wind-down time as I normally get before heading off to bed. In one of my dreams, I am at the office and it’s like I live there. I go up to my desk and see that someone has switched out my nice 22 inch wide screen LCD monitor with a tiny crappy CRT. I could barely see anything on the screen.

So I start looking everywhere for my monitor. I enlist the IT department to help me find my monitor. I am freaking out because I can’t do my job with the tiny crappy CRT. On nearly everyone else’s desk there are 2 wide screen LCD monitors - but none of them are mine! There are even extra ones just sitting around, but there are weird things wrong with them, like they are sticky or strangely bulky or something. None of them are right. It never occurs to me or anyone else in the dream that maybe everyone doesn’t need 2 monitors or anything.

In the dream I was quite stressed out by the whole situation. When I woke up, though, and remembered it, I just started chuckling.

The reunion was kind of a surreal experience, truthfully. I remembered a few people and a few people remembered me and it was nice to see that we all had grown up.  There were actually 2 events, one Friday night that we didn’t go to (we opted to hang with a couple dear friends instead) and then the main event on Saturday night.

The event was held at a hotel and there was another reunion being held in the banquet room next door (a 40 year reunion!). They all seemed to be early birds. Our party was still going long after they cleared out. I encountered a couple of the 40 year folk when I went back to my room to get something. The couple had not seen one another since high school and - amazingly - they seemed to remember one another. They were having a little political discussion - she was pro Obama and he McCain. He actually said that he felt his precious Second Amendment would be in danger if a Democrat got elected. Please. I don’t see how anyone with brain could honestly think that, but there you go. He also spouted off some conspiracy theories regarding Waco… Yeah, ok, back away slowly…

Before the reunion, we drove around town just looking to see how everything had changed. It has been almost 13 years since we have lived there and we really didn’t even remember where everything was anymore. That was kind of fun. We ventured down town and drove by the Sawtooth Center and Old Salem, we also found SECCA and took a look around and also went to Reynolda Village.  We even drove by a couple places I used to work that are no longer in business - Rainbow News & Cafe and South By Southwest.  It was a fun trip through a previous life.

Now back to normal, everyday life.

Well, I’ve had my new Instinct for 3 days now and so far I love it. The interface is really cool, it is all touch screen. You get a QWERTY keyboard that comes up on the touch screen whenever you click a field that requires input - and I like the Instinct’s keyboard better than the iPhone’s. Also, like the iPhone, the web on the Instinct looks like the web. The browser navigaton isn’t as cool as the iPhone’s, but you do get the images and layout and zoom in and scroll around the page and such.

I also really like the Navigation feature. It talks to you and tells you where to go and how to get there as well as shows you on a 3D style map. I’m told that while the iPhone also has Navigation, it doesn’t actually tell you the directions, only shows you. If that is the case, I’d say the Instinct wins there, too. It also comes with an extra battery, which is pretty cool, so even though the battery isn’t as long lived as the iPhone, the extra one does compensate for that and it comes with a charging case as well so the extra battery can always be charging while you’re using the phone. Oh and it’s stereo bluetooth too (I would imagine the iPhone is as well, but I don’t know), so I can listen to my tunes via bluetooth.

There are also a few things I’d like to see improved upon. For instance, I’d like the option to show my wallpaper all the time and just bring up the applications when I wanted to with the hot keys. Or, an option to get rid of the “Favorites” screen. Also, not everything has been intuitive, like actually answering a call took a couple of incoming calls for me to figure out. Maybe, just maybe, I should read the manual. I don’t usually do that. Also, the web browser could use a bit of improvement. Navigating a web page is much cooler on the iPhone. I don’t normally do a lot of web surfing on my phone anyway, but hopefully Samsung will improve it with the next generation phone.

All in all, I’m impressed with the Instinct. Hopefully I’ll continue to be.

In our previous painting adventures we have used Behr from Home Depot and Easy Living from Sears, neither of which we really liked.  Both of those brands end up being a lot of work with a fair amount of frustration thrown in (Behr being the least frustrating of the two).  Between the paint fumes and having to use multiple coats to get a good look, we both end up in a rotten mood by the time the job is done. It’s too much of a headache - literally and figuratively.

This time we decided to give Sherwin Williams Harmony paint a try.  I’ve been wanting to try it because I get really bad headaches from paint and this stuff gets really good reviews and it is low odor, no VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) paint. It (like other Sherwin Williams paint) is kind of expensive as compared to Behr and Sears, though, and we both wondered if it would be worth it.  I’m here to say - Oh.My.Gawd. is it worth it!  This stuff goes on like a dream, the color is rich and what little fumes it has fade quickly.  Also, since it is a no VOC paint, I have not had any headaches at all.  We even painted with the window’s closed one day and it was not a problem at all. I’m definitely sold on this paint.

So, now that we have finished the kitchen and livingroom, it’s time to start picking out colors for the bedrooms and bathrooms. Decisions, decisions…