My lizard brain this morning is still pretty hysterical, but it's a happy kind of hysterical. I was up until 1:30 am last night, but set my alarm for 6 this morning so I could go out and get a New York Times before they were all gone. In the end, I woke up at 5, listened to the radio for a bit while I lounged in bed, then went out at 5:30 in search of a Times. I bought the only two copies they had at my local Walgreens—one for me and one for my wife, who asked me to get her one, too—then I went over to Randall's, my local 24-hour supermarket, and bought one there, too, to wrap in plastic and keep in the closet with my copy of the Times from September 12, 2001.
It's windy and overcast in Austin this morning, which is actually a lot like the weather in Michigan 28 years ago, the day after Ronald Reagan was elected. I still remember very distinctly my feeling of disbelief that day as I walked the streets of Ann Arbor in the chill, November gloom, just thinking over and over again, "Ronald Reagan just got elected president. How did that happen?" I really felt that I was sleeping through some kind of weird, slow-motion nightmare, and that any moment I'd wake up and it would turn out that Carter was still president and Reagan was still just a B-list actor. Today, under a similarly gloomy sky, I feel the mirror image of that disbelief—something giddier and happier, but no less surreal. My brother Mike in LA just sent me an e-mail that said "Pinch me," and that sort of sums up how I feel, too. This is too good to be true, right? Please let me know I'm not actually dreaming.
I took the day off work so I could enjoy this. But right now, I'm going back to bed.
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