Feeling almost normal today. Still a bit congested, and woke up this morning with a nasty cough – the cold finally dropped out of my head and down into my lungs – but on a whole I’m feeling much better. God, I hate being sick. I’m happy now to be up and around and drinking coffee and doing client work again. (I’m just looking forward now to being able to taste things normally again.. I couldn’t taste anything yesterday, with all the gunk in my nose, and now everything just tastes weird.)

So.. don’t you just think that Bush can’t wait to get on that helicopter, go home, and finally be rid of this job?

I thought the speech Obama gave was excellent, but what most struck me were the points he made that extended beyond even the commanding rhetoric that Obama is known well to muster in his speeches. It wasn’t just talk; there was something else there. He gets it. He understands full well that his job now is not simply to get the economy growing again, but to prepare the American people for a society-shifting event that will last long after his tenure expires. The bank failures of the fall was just the start, and not nearly the end; Obama fully grasps that his challenge now is to build a national ethos that can persevere beyond the deaths of Circuit City, suburban housing, mass motoring, cheap gas and artificial abundance – an American purpose that rediscovers hope as a handmade thing, and not (as Jim Kunstler puts it) a consumer product.

It’ll be a long road for us all. But I’m confident that our new president enters office fully prepared to take the first steps.