The past weeks have, again, accelerated. I know that I should have written all about election day, and the day after—but I didn’t. It’s been a busy time.

Belatedly, though, I will note that on election day I:

- first tutored at Duke Ellington (no students, but I got the crossword done…)
- had coffee at Baked and Wired, chatting with the Baked Girls. (Nathan falls into this category too… I don’t think I’ve told him that yet.)
- then C picked me up to go drive around North Virginia for a while. The idea? To find some polling places for him to photograph, and me to make whatever notes I felt like making. The method? Cross a bridge from DC to Rosslyn and get lost. The theory? After getting lost, something interesting will happen. The outcome? Didn’t find the polling places, but instead found an “Oriental Supermarket” that, among other things, sold Milo. So I’ve had a week of excellent chocolate milk… and now the Milo is all gone.
- Back to C’s place before heading toward Meg’s for the special election edition meeting of the Baked and Wired Knitting Society… except then Meg had to cancel at the last minute.
- Impromptu invitation (after assurances that I would not be intruding) to the house of one of C’s friends. Me, glued to CNN and MSNBC electoral maps for 4 hours.
- Obama! Obama!
- Joining the spontaneous crowd gathered outside the White House between midnight and 2.30am. Wow.

I slept in the next morning. You’re shocked.

Since then, there’s been more stuff to get done. I presented papers at two conferences last weekend. I feel like I am living in the aftermath of Friday, when I flew to New Hampshire and back on the same day, in order to present a paper at the Milton conference at the lovely St Anselm’s College. The day itself was a little hellish—I got up at 3am to get the shuttle to BWI airport and didn’t get back home until midnight. Still, I met some lovely people, including a Benedictine monk who was knitting a brightly coloured hat.

Oh, and knitting has been treating me very nicely. Such fun! Such madness! Let’s have a caucus race!

This week has been a bit of a marathon. I’m still going to work for another hour or so tonight… of that’s the plan. If sleep takes over, I won’t object…

As a form of training…it is important that the poet develop a strong bond with life, to be able to observe and able to choose his subject matter. …Afterwards, he can abstract things by abstracting coincidences, and symbolize them. This time of observation (for a poet) is an elementary process akin to learning reading and writing.

—Saadi Youssef