You know, every time the Chimperor opened his mouth (at his rare press conferences, when he wasn't hiding from the nation), I'd get this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. And he usually would not fail to come out with some completely inarticulate statement, or, something worse that made me wonder what horrible thing would befall us next. I mean, I was embarrassed to have the guy as my president. He couldn't think his way out of a paper bag. I would literally cringe at some of the things he said. And it made me feel like nobody was in charge. Like anything could happen at anytime and he just wouldn't care. Like Katrina.

Now, thankfully, we will have a guy up there who not only SOUNDS smart, he IS smart. He's not always going to do things I agree with, but he's certainly going to explain the reasons WHY he's doing those things, in complete sentences too. He doesn't hate our government. He's going to put our government back to work for us. He seems to care about our collective future. He's going to actually DO STUFF, not just tear stuff down.

Quite literally, I feel like a huge burden has been taken off my shoulders. All of the crises we have before us -- the economy, global warming, peak oil -- it seemed to me as if NOBODY was interested in doing anything about this. I felt so helpless, like one voice screaming in the wilderness (well, there were a lot of us screaming, but nobody seemed to be listening). I felt like our whole freaking planet was circling the drain and nobody in power gave a shit.

Today I feel like things will start moving in the right direction again. I'm just so relieved, and relaxed. Our work is by no means over-- but good things are coming. I have hope.