so nice to not feel dread or dispair

After the election, that is. So unlike the last two presidential elections. Hooray! It was so exciting to go vote, though my vote did not so much matter in terms of our state's electoral votes. I had some small hope that Kansas might Barack the boat and go in slight favor of Obama, but my hopes were way off. Stupid KAKE 10 gave me false hope for a bit: The first time local news came on after I turned on the tv, Susan and whoever reported and had a corresponding graphic giving Obama 72% and McCain 28%. I promptly let out a "Holy shit!" I calmed myself a bit by acknowledging that only 1% of precincts were reporting, but Holy shit! 72% for Obama! Only to have such excitement dashed when at the end of their reporting on local races, Susan and whoever came back to tell me, "Correction: We had our graphics switched. That's 72% for McCain and 28% for Obama."

The evening was only full of good news for the presidential race, and it was so exciting to watch this time. Unfortunately I was in the bathroom when it was announced that McCain had called Obama to concede, so I kind of missed the big moment, but oh well. McCain's concession speech brought tears to my eyes. There was the guy I respected back in 2003. I have long wished McCain had won the Republican nomination in 2000. I think the Republicans still would have won over Gore, but I believe we would have had a much better past eight years. As long as he hadn't found some other wack job to be his running mate... That aside, anyone think there's any chance of McCain being awarded a cabinet position?

Though it's been difficult to think much about anything besides the election and my strong, strong hope that Obama would win, in other news, I've had a couple of recent food successes. One: At an open house of a downtown business a while back, I sampled a very tasty mango curry dip. I bought a packet of the dry mix. This week I mixed it up to use — instead of a dip — as a spread, and have been eating turkey breast, alfalfa sprouts, and mango curry spread wraps for lunches. Two: I used a cup of my ill-fated pumpkin puree (I can copy the tale of that from a comment I left on someone else's blog if anyone's interested) to make penne with fresh pumpkin white wine cream sauce. I read a few recipes for cream sauces and merged a few to come up with this one. It was a tasty success.

Look, ma, no cats.