The irony of the Dick Van Dyke show: A show about a group of writers writing a show for variety show actor who is, in fact, the real writer writing the show for the group of actors playing his own writers.
Six o’clock came way too early this morning. I was pretty tired as I pulled myself out of bed. Dominica and Liesl were already awake (but planning on returning to bed shortly) so at least I did not have to wake them from my alarm. I got up and brushed my teeth, got dressed and drove Ramona down to the Peekskill Metro North station so that she could catch the morning commuter train into the city.
It was extremely cold this morning and the car was covered in ice so it took a little bit of work to get the windows cleared off enough to drive. After dropping off Ramona I came back home and headed on down to the basement so that I could get to work. I had run down and checked emails and made sure that I was signed on and everything before I left so that I could be on as quickly as possible. It ended up being a really slow early morning and very few people actually needed me. My favourite kind of early morning shift.
So today is the historic inauguration of Barrack Obama. I believe that this is the first presidential inauguration that will be covered by SGL. The inauguration of President Bush, eight years ago today, fell just a week or two before SGL started saving posts. Prior to that point the blog was updated regularly but the old posts were deleted instead of archiving them (not very smart, I admit, but originally there wasn’t any plan for SGL to be a blog and it just sort of developed over six months or so of use.) So while information about the last inauguration may have been posted it was lost a very long time ago.
The term “historic” is of course completely overused. Obama is our first “black” president using the completely inappropriate and racist usage of black that we were taught we could never use when we were children – why the media is allowed to get away with it now I have no idea. He is also our forty-fourth “white” president under the same logic. So he is our first black and white president which is, at least, definitely a first. Of more importance, he is the first president to be from a major urban area since Theodore Roosevelt which was quite a while ago. Rural America has had a pretty dominate presence in the executive office during the twentieth century which seems strangely inappropriate as America has moved so predominately towards urbanization in the past century.
As expected, as always happens with the election of a Democrat, the US stock market took a major hit and actually dropped below the 8,000 mark. The stock market always reacts negatively on the day of a Democratic inauguration but generally performs better during the tenure than with a Republican. It’s a paradoxical market reaction and completely predictable.
America’s third car maker (if you can call them American as they have been German for quite some time now), Chrysler, had a major stake sold to Italian car maker Fiat today with long term plans for complete takeover. Fiat is not well known to American consumers but they are a major player in the global automotive scene and have some really interesting cars over the years including some really nice convertables available in America in the late 1970s. My friend Steve has one.
Today was very busy at the office. I was hoping to take tomorrow to go into Warren but I had a server turned over to me today that is high priority so I am taking care of that tomorrow instead. I am going to go in to Warren on Thursday instead.
After work, I took care of Liesl and Oreo for a little while while Dominica went grocery shopping to stock up for the week. I was hoping to play some Oblivion but there was no opportunity so I just watched an episode of Knight Rider (the new one.) Liesl seems to like that show. It helps her to relax.