THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

With the aches and pains of butts, guts and guns finally a distant memory, I ventured back to the gym this morning for my first ever yoga class. And I loved it! It was so nice to just stretch and feel like my body was having good things done to it without having to sweat or feel on the verge of passing out. I feel much more limber and loose now and can't wait to go again.

NatGeo is just across the road from the gym and I had a nice lunch with Cindy after my class. She's started doing her Big Sister volunteering, which I think is amazing. Her little sister is from Central America - maybe El Salvador? - and is in 6th grade, so she's about 11.

Her living conditions sound awful - she and her sister sleep on the floor of their bedroom because her mother can't afford beds and her mother and two younger siblings sleep together on the sofa in the sitting room, while they rent out the second bedroom in the small flat.

Cindy's having quite a few problems with the mother, who keeps asking her to buy things for Catherine (Cindy's little sister) and the rest of the family, so Cindy's having to work out ways to say no and to empower the mother to find schemes to help her, rather than just giving her handouts that Cindy can't afford.

I'm so sad that Obama's grandmother, Toot, died today - on the eve of the election.

She sounds like an incredible woman, who helped bring up Barack and instill in him many of the values and qualities he's looking to bring to the White House.

It's so sad that she didn't get to see whether he won the election and I only hope that, when he suspended his campaign a while ago to go and visit her in Hawaii one last time, he was able to take down the guard he has up in public, when he remains cautious about believing the 100+ polls that say he's going to win the election, and told her that it's in the bag and that he is going to make history as the first African American president of the States.

It's SO exciting that the election is finally here and Maxy says there's no way Obama can lose, that it's generally thought that the Bradley Effect has been overstated and early voting numbers are looking good. But I think everyone's still incredibly nervous and tense, excited to see whether Obama can take as many swing states as the polls would have us believe he could, but worried that this is how everyone was feeling in 2000, before Bush 'beat' Gore.

I say everyone, but I didn't follow the 2000 election. Or the 2004 one, really - this is the first time I've really been excited by politics and invested in a candidate because I believe in their policies and ways of doing things and I think it's the same for a lot of people this year, which is testament to the sheer force of Obama's excellence: it can't be ignored.