(Not necessarily in that order):

I’ve spent the last seven days, with one brief exception, essentially doing five things:

• Working,
• Commuting,
• Sleeping,
• Eating, and
• Coughing.

I hadn’t planned on having a minor but pesky cold for the past three weeks. The rest of the ordeal was known.

When I signed up for King County Elections’ tabulation detail, I knew I’d miss the big Election Day hoopla. I’d work in the distant south-end suburbs from 6:30 in the morning to 7 at night, then go straight back by 7 the next morning. Not only would I miss the big action in person, I’d miss it by proxy–we weren’t allowed cell phones, iPods, or other potential media-receiving devices on the sprawling ballot-processing floor. I’d left a cheap FM-only radio with my stuff in the coat-check room, hoping to catch news from the outside world during a dinner break.

As it turned out, there wasn’t anything worth reporting when the dinner break came, shortly after 4 p.m. PST. The NPR airheads simply blathered tastefully about what might or might not happen within the subsequent hour.

Back inside the secure enclave of the tabulation room, the folks in charge decided to hold us for an extra hour. But they gave us tabbers an extra 15-minute break.

Two sheriff’s deputies sit guard at the only entrance to the ballot floor whenever “live” ballots are on the premises. Unlike all the rest of us on the floor, they get a laptop PC with Internet access. So it was thanks to them that, upon leaving for that extra break at 7-ish, I saw the electoral-vote headline OBAMA 200, MCCAIN 85.

We finally got out for the night just before 8. I was carpooling the long lonesome highway back into Seattle when the droning NPR voices announced Obama as the projected winner.

Our vehicle made it up to First and Pike in time to see the overflow crowds starting to form outside the Showbox’s election party. But I chose to head for the Westin Hotel, where the Democrats had their regular post-election shindig. Even before I got there, I witnessed happy shrieks and saw people hugging and fist-bumping all along Virginia Street. Inside, the size of the crowd was exceeded only by its joy. Not only had Washington voters helped Obama over the top, but Gov. Chris Gregoire was winning an unexpectedly not-close re-election campaign. The money issues for parks, transit, and the Pike Place Market were all comfortably in the “Yes” column. The only close big race in the state was Darcy Burner’s second drive to unseat U.S. Rep. Reichert on the Eastside.

I decided to spend someof my little remaining energy trekking to another election bash, at Spitfire. It was also filled close to capacity, and was also outrageously happy. I stayed there just long enough to hear Obama’s oh-so-elequent acceptance speech. During it, the previously raucous crowd stood and sat in total silence, only to wildly applaud at the end.

So that’s what it’s like to to have someone, something, to vote for, not just against.

By 10 p.m. I was already on my way home toward a waiting bed and an alarm clock set for 5 a.m.

It took six days for our county tabulation crew to work through the massive backlog of mailed-in ballots. (The ancient (1994 vintage) server hardware and MS Access database software didn’t help speedwise. The county’s got newer and faster equipment, but the feds haven’t certified it for use.)

People tell me they saw me on KOMO-TV’s election night coverage, gently pushing ballots through a scanning machine. It was one of three stations that sent camera crews to the elections complex that day.

Hundreds of us (mostly temps) worked this election, at the Renton complex and (for probably the last time) at in-person polling places. For me, it was the chance to go somewhere, do something, do it well, and get paid for it–and to apply my compulsion for geeky detail to a worthwhile cause.

As a tabulator, I had about as much to do with the election’s outcome as a stadium scoreboard operator has to do with the making of a big play. I could only properly document what had been done.

Still, there’s some sense of accomplishment in having played one small part in perhaps the most important election of our lifetimes.

Even if I didn’t get to personally witness its most exciting parts.