Election Night

First, an observation: I noticed that candidates for local political offices here in Texas had TV commercials that featured many more horses, barns, and saddles than I ever saw elsewhere. Those things sort of seemed to be the equivalent of the generic kitchen table scenes. Go figure.

Anyway, so, wow. Dallas county went blue, but Tarrant County (where Fort Worth is) went overwhelmingly red. Our house, however, is blue as blue could be.

So we were elated last night, to put it mildly.

We have a friend who did some work for the Obama campaign and she invited us to the Democratic Party victory celebration at a downtown hotel. First, we all went to dinner. Dinner mostly involved a lot of checking of the iphones and watching various news and polling sites fail to load because of all the traffic they were getting.

We arrived at the hotel around 8pm, just as most of the polls were closing on the east coast. Here are a few pictures (taken by our friends) in the hotel lobby:The Dems had rented a big hotel ballroom and set up several big TV screens. The room was PACKED with people of all different shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. There were lots of little American flags, Obama t-shirts, TV cameras, and local political candidates.

Here are a few pictures (taken by our friends) from inside the ballroom:The first few states to be called went for McCain, but as news from the Northeast came in, the spirit of celebration grew. Obama took Pennsylvania, and then Ohio. We waited some more, waving our flags, checking the maps, watching all the different TVs. It got hot in the ballroom from all the people crammed in there, so some of us went down to the lobby to get some air. We were getting tired, but as we returned to the ballroom, there was a real air of history, hope, and, yes, some anxiety and disbelief.

Shortly before the polls on the West Coast closed, Virginia was called for Obama. Doing some quick math, we realized that California, Oregon, and Washington alone would put him over the top. At that point, CNN put up a second-by-second countdown to the polls closing in the West. The whole room counted down, shouting out each number. As soon the polls closed, CNN called the election for Obama.I feel like I can't even begin to describe how crazy the room went: there was laughing, crying, hugging dancing, shouting, screaming. We all hugged each other over and over; strangers smiled at each other, noting the tears in everyone's eyes.

I cried. I can't believe it; I couldn't ever believe it all along. It just seemed too impossible, too good to be true, too good for us, too different from all that came before. All the big problems and great challenges still remain, but it really, really does feel like a brand new day.

We raced home, listening to McCain's speech on the radio, and then catching Obama on TV as we made it home in time.

That speech was amazing: full of beautiful sentences, heartfelt emotion, and honest truths. Oh, how we've missed all that.

I teared up again this morning while driving to work when they played excerpts from last night. And then I came home, and Mike and I watched the speech again.

Dear Obama: Please don't let us down. We believe. We need you. We are ready.