So everyone and their cousin is blogging right now. Just to say, “Hey, this amazing, historic, awesome thing happened!”

Why not me, too?

Yesterday morning, I took advantage of our state’s voters rights laws and voted before going to work. We were in line for about 35 minutes before getting into the polling place, and ten another 10 to 15 before casting our vote. We saw neighbors, friends, first-time voters, and people who had probably been voting for over 50 years. No one made a fuss over the wait. People knew they would have to wait, and so they brought books, magazines, iPods, … children. And the elections judges did their best to help, by walking the line and getting non-registered voters registered before they got into the building, encouraging people to wait, giving them advice on slower poll times if they didn’t want to wait, and helping people get everything they needed to be able to register to vote (like the roommates in front of us, who hadn’t gotten MN driver’s licenses yet and who ended up with detailed directions on where they can get their license quickly so they could come back and vote).

I was voter number 351 at our polling place. Not bad for the first hour and twenty minutes that the polls were open (that’s over 4 voters per minute).

When we were done, it was a quick walk home, with a greater spring in our step than when we left the house at 7:15. We were excited, and who wouldn’t be? It was the first vote so-enthusiastically for someone I’ve ever made.

At work, I wore my “I voted” sticker with pride. And managed to keep myself from checking the news sites online, barely.

Once I got home, I did check. I pulled up Google News on my iPod. And kept it up all night. But I didn’t watch the TV coverage. As much as I wanted to hope for a win for Obama, I couldn’t face hours of talking heads. I coudln’t face the kind of coverage we had 4 years ago, and eight. I couldn’t stand the thought that, even after watching and waiting and sitting through all that, we might not end up knowing who our next president will be until weeks from now.

So instead, I watched Good Eats with my wife. I reloaded the Google News page at commercial breaks, updated the wife on just the bare minimum, the electoral votes (since that’s really all that counts, right?). Then we retired upstairs to read and waste some time watching videos. When I normally would have been fast asleep I coouldn’t even lay down. I was so wound up. I kept checking Google News, until miraculously the electoral count hit 300 votes. Even then, I was scared. I couldn’t believe it. Not all states had reported yet, and some states (ours included) didn’t even have half of their precincts’ results.

But soon CNN.com called it. And MSNBC.com. Google News listed others but I was too excited to sift through them all. I hit Fox News, justto see if the right-wing juggernaut of a station would concede defeat. The closest they had got was to say that Biden had been relected, but “may not serve”.

It was like a switch had been flipped. All of a sudden I was almost too tired to sit up straight. I could finally relax and go to sleep.

And you know what was even better, waking up this morning and finding out that it was still true.

We have elected our first mixed-race president, the youngest president in decades, a president that has awakened the hopes and dreams of people all across this country, people of all races and all sections of society. I could say that I was too excited for words. But clearly I’m not.

I’m just… happy.

(photo via The Big Picture – Boston.com)