A nice quiet day of work, steady progress against some technical goals (while my teammates make steady progress in parallel).  I shouldn't say but how rare and how nice is that?  (Rare and nice :)  Meanwhile had to drop off our Volvo for repairs and rode back from the dealer in Calabasas via Old Topanga Canyon, Mulholland, Rockstore, and Decker.  Whew.  A *tough* 30 miles, I'll tell you, in the darkening cold.  I am pooped but happy.

(enough with the pithy title thing; forget it... not happening.)

So today is the one-year anniversary of the Big Day, on which we elected President Obama.  It was weird for me, I was a McCain supporter (and a Palin supporter!), and worried about Obama, but I had a sense of hope too; like maybe if everyone thought he was going to succeed, then he would.  Confidence.  But it didn't turn out that way, there was no there there, no plans, no way to deal with the huge problems which confronted him.  Popular opinion has shifted, the health care reforms have not made sense or worked out, and the economic reforms have backfired; stimulus money hasn't helped (and will hurt once inflation kicks in).  Perhaps it is too early to make a brutal summation, but the sense of hope has largely dissipated. 

I must say I am struck, as I look at pictures from a year ago, how much President Obama has aged...

On a lighter note, today Google celebrates the 20th anniversary of Wallace and Gromit.  Yay!  (That has to be one of the more complicated Google logos ever, right?) 

Unbelievable: A Connecticut woman blinded by her neighbor's chimpanzee is suing the state for $150M.  Don't get me wrong - I feel really bad for this woman, but her actions in trying to help subdue a 200lb animal were her own, and in no way was the state responsible for what happened.  Ridiculous.  Even worse, the state will probably settle out of court to save the cost of litigation. 

Our local paper The Acorn has a nice article about the upcoming 2010 Amgen Tour of California, the final stage of which is pretty much in my back yard, here in Westlake Village, Agoura Hills, and Thousand Oaks.  The pro peloton are going up Rockstore, down Decker, up Westlake, etc. - all my local trails - in a criterium format.  How cool.  Of course Amgen is headquartered in Thousand Oaks, and there is some great riding in our area, so it totally makes sense.