'these streets will make you feel brand new...'

I came home to an empty apartment tonight, at least aside from a particularly grumpy feline greeting me at the door. Last year, a year ago today, I came dashing home after closing up the library to throw on a pot of soup, get beer in the fridge, and open up my door to a cohort of dear friends. We spent the evening trading voting war stories, exalting in each other's and the world's excitement as the night wore on and Obama pulled ahead, some of us brought to tears when his meteoric rise to the White House became official.

This Election Day is different, of course, and somewhat less exciting in terms of the political world. I assume Bloomberg won handily though I have not been watching the incoming election results. I am waiting to hear about Referendum 71 in my adoptive home state of Washington, and Maine's Question 1.

I headed out a little early this morning, voted before work (still love those old voting machines we've still got here in New York, and was pleased that the little old ladies manning the sign-in table for the 77th Election District found my name with a little less prompting than usual this time around).

I came home tonight to an empty apartment and a grumpy cat, but also to a bouquet of flowers (shades of orange and pink and cream) waiting cheerily for me on the kitchen island. I came home missing an incredible man who has recently become unexpectedly central to my world after years of being somewhat peripheral, on the far side of the country, and who left for Europe today with an open-ended ticket.

But I also came home thinking how lovely it is that this man seems to have grown fond of my adoptive hometown and the small life I've built within it. This city of mine, prone to its fits of quirkiness and beauty and tolerance and frustration and violence and resiliency, has been for many years now central to me, and rediscovering it through his eyes, in all his newness to this place, has over these last weeks made me love it, and him, all the more.

And just for the record, as in years past, New York remained last year one of the most Democratic cities in the country:

NYC 2008 General Election Results
Total votes: 2,641,669
Obama/Biden: 2,073,915
McCain/Palin: 524,774
Other: 42,980