Thank You Philadelphia (and Detroit, and Milwaukee, and Atlanta, and ...)

This isn't a political blog, and I don't want to make it one. But I breathed a huge sigh of relief today when we learned that Joe Biden had officially been declared the president-elect. I had been glued to CNN every hour that I wasn't working or sleeping since election day, watching the mail-in vote whittle away at Trump's election day leads, hanging on the analysis of where the votes were coming from and how many ballots were left to count, and becoming much more familiar with the various CNN anchors than I had ever had need to before (I think I like Tapper the best, Cuomo the least, but based on their time slots I suspect I may not be the first to put them in that order). I tuned in this morning with my first cup of coffee in hand just in time to hear the announcement that enough votes had finally come in in Pennsylvania to call the election in Biden's favor, and shed tears listening to stories of what it meant for our national nightmare of the last four years to be coming to an end. Listening to Biden's victory speech tonight gave me hope that we can begin to rebuild what was lost in norms and institutions, and I am comfortable with a divided government that requires compromise at this moment. There is a lot of work to do that should not be partisan in nature.

I will post more soon about how the rest of our lives are going, but I wanted to take a moment to mark what feels like a significant turning point for our nation, and for my personal sense of wellbeing.