As Congress started a dreary day of hearing objections by Republican members to all six of the states that Trump assumed he won, a process that was expected to take 18 hours or more, the Capitol was invaded by Proud Boys, QAnon following realtors, and other fanatics, after Trump urged them on during a morning rally.

Rachel and I were at home and just happened to see it all begin on C-SPAN, when there was a request for “order in the House,” followed by Nancy Pelosi being quietly escorted out of the chamber without any announced reason, and then… chaos. The horrible invasion persisted for four hours of looting and hooting, in which five people succumbed. In the evening, some, but not all of the Republican Senators who supported the objections gave way, and after voting down the Arizona objection, Biden and Harris’ electors were duly certified by a stone faced Mike Pence and a happy bunch of Democrats.

It was perhaps appropriate that the day before, I crashed Rachel’s car into a mega-truck parked on Magnolia Avenue across from Emporio Rulli. I think it was exhaustion, wine, or espresso taken during the agonizing weeks since November 3rd, when we had nothing on the media besides political craziness, and nothing on the COVID-19 front besides skyrocketing case counts stemming from the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. New case counts in Marin County went from 9 on October 15 to 172 today. What a dreadful and dire situation.

Now it’s nearly time for Biden to take office, and the vaccine rollout, broken as it is, is actually happening.