I've already noticed a happy change to my own life thanks to President Obama, blessed be His name. There are only two things that really matter to an individual in their relations with government: money and freedom. I still have to take my shoes off at the airport, but am otherwise pretty much free from government-sponsored persecutions, but the government is always happy to dip into my income before I even get it into my own pockets.

On my most recent paycheck, however, I noticed that my tax rate has decreased from 17% to 13.5%. That's awesome! That equates to an extra $1,225 dollars in my pocket every year. That's 11,000 miles worth of gasoline; 2,800 McNuggets; 350 lattes; 408 max-bet pulls on the MegaBucks slots; 6 Milky Way Dark candy bars every day; 7 in-call full-release massages; 4 third-world children with a full belly every day; 612 bacon & mayonnaise sandwiches; 1 vacation to Peru.

Finally. One thousand two hundred twenty-five dollars of change I can believe in.

Back before I forgot how to love, I wrote about it. All the time. Now I can only remember what it was like, before I became an expert at effing it up. Important decisions-- I always make the wrong choice. Unfortunately, I'm great at creating moments of decision where there need not be any. The roads I take seem to always lead to the wrong place. I need GPS For Life.

Scrawled on a scrap of paper tucked away in long neglected notebook stored on a shelf in my closet, I found this one poorly formed sentence:

I want to be the one holding the door open for every happy moment you walk into.

The note isn't dated, but I believe I wrote it sometime between 2001 and 2005, when I was still optimistic about relationships, or rather, one particular relationship. That one sentence has ruined my night. I wish I had not found it.

The Cherry Blossom Festival stretched over four blocks on Pennsylvania Ave, with an entertainment stage at either end. On the J=Pop stage, at 10th St, the crowd gathered to pick a winner for the anime costume contest. I only managed to record the tail end of it, where the crowd chose Kenshin over Kakashi.