One Day in the Near Future

President-elect Barack Obama held his first press conference today on the economy. It was actually a little weird to watch him acting so ... presidential. I kept on expecting people to start chanting "Fired up, Ready to Go!" Something different, but in a good way.

In any case, my dear Aunt Jini sent me a chain-mail today. While, as some might know, this is not particularly newsworthy it did seem timely and topical, and I thought that I would like to share:

One sunny day in January, 2009 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush." The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here." The old man said, "Okay", and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush." The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here." The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush." The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"

The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."

OH - BAH - MA!

Usually, I try to curb my enthusiasm for Barack Obama on this blog by keeping most of my gushing to my barackobama.com blog, but I have to mention the local campaign stumping that Obama did throughout Oregon. He swept through Portland, Salem and Eugene on Friday, ending with a late night rally at McArthur Court at the University of Oregon.

I managed to squeeze into the tightly packed rally in Eugene (10,000 in the building, and almost that many couldn't get in), and I was overjoyed to hear him speak. He's just so inspiring. I already wrote about it here, so I'll avoid repeating myself any further, but I did manage to find a short video where you can see where I was standing. The footage was shot from across the court, but when it zooms in you can spot me to the bottom right of the frame. I'm the guy in the green shirt who keeps on raising my arms to form the 'O' sign like I was at a football game or something. It was a whole lot of fun.

It was only after I visited family in Corvallis that I realized that Obama had dropped by my hometown too. He made a quick stop (well, as quick as a three bus entourage guarded by the Secret Service can be) at American Dream Pizza in downtown Corvallis. He said, "There’s something very metaphorical going on here," of the locally owned business. They are my absolute favorite restaurant, and I was amazed to hear that he went there. If only I could have been there when it happened. The local newspaper went nuts over the incident, and you can read more about it here.