What a glorious day!

... and the inauguration ain't half bad either. I live in the DC area (technically Northern Virginia, but I refused to consider myself a Virginian until it became a blue state... now its acceptable) so one might wonder why I did not join the throngs, the masses, the legion, etc of Obama's adoring public. It is the same reason I opted not to go the Beijing Olympics: people are insufferable in large numbers who believe the same thing. I would not mind dancing from four in the morning until noon in frigid late-January Washington, but to share my time and space with fanatics (and to be fair, I too am an Obama fanatic) did not strike me as a profitable use of time. But it was absolutely awe-inspiring to see DC so filled up. Good for Obama.

Of course, what really inspired this post was the knowledge that I am going to write a dynamite thesis. I had pangs of self-doubt, but after meeting with my professor on Monday that I can DO this, that I can create something scholarly that will enhance the current historiagraphy (however small) on China and Africa, and flip that around to have Nigeria initiate much of the contact between the two countries in the past fifty years. I am, in short, a pimp.