I had stayed up way too late the night before, trying to figure out some completely inconsequential issue with Movable Type. Too much nervous energy. So I was tired when we woke up. We had no problem getting up and getting ready, though. We got our shit together and were out the door by 7:30. I thought, damn, I wish every day was Election Day!

I started getting pumped up when we got to the Obama campaign headquarters. They were housed in a dilapidated old building that looked like it maybe had once been a diner. Campaign staff were all over the place, lugging cases of bottled water and snacks, talking on the phone, conferring solemnly over clipboards. All over the place, people were getting shit done. What made the scene inspiring was that, even though this could have been any business office on a Tuesday morning, all these people were here, not to make a buck, to turn the wheels of corporate America, but to elect a President. It wasn't capitalism at work here, but idealism.

We met up with the dispatcher, Rich, a jovial, bearded older guy, the kind of guy who has a cornball joke for every possible occasion. I kind of admire guys like that, because his brain must be a vast database of jokes, so that, no matter what you say to him, he can instantly cross-reference it with some relevant chestnut.

Nobody needed a ride at the moment, so Rich told us we could wait around there or leave and hang out elsewhere, as long as we could be reached by phone. We sat and waited for a while, but Hannah wanted to get her crochet stuff and we felt like we were kind of in the way, so we went back home. At home, we discovered that our cats had turned into a couple of domestic terrorists. They had gotten into Hannah's yarn and massacred it. It was strewn all over the living room floor in tangled clumps. Neither it, nor Hannah's reaction, were pretty sights.

We had a couple of Amazon sales, so I got that together while we waited for the call. It was an odd combination of excitement and utter boredom that would end up characterizing most of our day. Finally the call came, and we leaped into action.

Unfortunately, that first call turned into the lone downer moment of the day. Someone had come to the campaign office wanting a ride, and I'm not sure if it was Rich or the person waiting, but someone over there was real impatient. We had to drive back to the office from home, and we were at least 10-15 minutes away. Things got pretty tense. I'll leave it at that. By the time we got there, they had gotten someone else to give the person a ride.

So after that, we stayed put. I parked across the street, and we waited for the next call. It didn't take too long. Someone down the street needed a ride. The Obama Cab swung into action!

Our passenger was Carrie, a part Native American woman who had moved here recently from Oklahoma, and had lived in Alaska. She worked at a nearby Circle K. I'm pretty much useless at conversation, so I'm glad Hannah was there to talk to her. We talked mostly about health care issues from her perspective as a Native. Interesting stuff. She said she had voted in every presidential election since she was old enough to vote, and was grateful for the ride so she wouldn't have to miss this one. I thought, damn, this is exactly the kind of person I signed up to help!

I wasn't sure what to expect at the polling stations. I knew there were long lines in some states, but a lot of those didn't have early voting. As it turned out, the crowd was pretty light. Most of the people who were planning to vote in our county had already cast their votes by today. So we were in and out of there fairly quickly.

We dropped Carrie back off and went back to our parking lot across the street from the office to wait. We had brought Hannah's impossibly tangled mass of yarn, so we spent a good deal of time detangling. I got some gyros from a Greek place down the street -- expensive, but really, really good -- and we ate lunch. Spent a lot of time on our iPhones, tweeting and obsessively refreshing political blogs.

Carrie ended up being our only passenger of the day, unfortunately. Turnout wasn't all that high that day, and I think the Obama folks had more volunteers than they knew what to do with. So, after waiting about four hours, we called and said we were heading home, but that we'd still be available if things got hectic. I felt a little stymied that we couldn't do more, but I was happy we'd done something.

Later that evening, we went over to Hannah's mom's to eat food and watch election results. I'm not going to try and sum up the evening, but I tweeted the whole day pretty extensively, so if you like you can go here and work your way backward to see how the evening went.

There wasn't any doubt in my mind that Obama was going to win, but watching it unfold, following the story all the way to the moment when Obama took the stage for his victory speech, was an experience I will never forget. It was like the dark shroud that's been draped over me for the past eight years was slowly being pulled away. How do you feel, when you've felt one way for almost a decade, and suddenly you don't have to feel that way anymore? How do you know what to feel? How do you even know what it is you're feeling now?

What's it like to have a President like Obama? I couldn't tell you. Nobody could. That's what we're going to find out over the next few years, I guess. But the way I felt last night, even though I couldn't describe it in a million years, I think it looked kind of like this: