At long last, the combination of adrenaline and Red Bull that kept our beloved journalists and campaign staffers going has done all it can do. PolitickerMA has taken the day off. While Barack Obama gave a speech, his staff has made it clear that he won’t be making any staff announcements today, so we won’t know if John Kerry or Sam Power has a new job.

It’s Friday afternoon. It’s drizzly and gray outside. There is no news. All we can think about is the weekend.

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We’ve been all-election, all the time this week, but we’d like to take a break to confirm something you’ve probably noticed anecdotally.

The MBTA is more crowded than it was a year ago. From a press release touting the September ridership numbers:

Make it NINE straight months now that MBTA ridership is higher than the corresponding month in 2007[.]

That explains the jump in the number of discarded copies of the Metro littering the floor at the end of the day.

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Our night didn’t begin at the Sonia Chang-Diaz party, nor did it end there. As experienced election-night party-hoppers, Boston Daily was all dressed up and all over town. Our evening started with the hope for ice cream, and ended after watching speeches from John McCain and Barack Obama at a gay bar.

After the jump, we give you a timeline of our adventures around Boston on Election Night, and the most insightful commentary we heard all evening.

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I arrived at my polling place at about 7:15 a.m. armed with coffee and copies of the Globe and Herald. I was anticipating a wait, but I was stunned as the line was already stretched out through the parking lot, down the street and around the bend.

I haven’t been in a line that long since I was trying to score Grateful Dead tickets back in college. It was then that I realized my mistake. I should have been there much, much earlier. I teach a class at Boston University on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 8, and there was no way I was going to be able to make it through the line and get to class on time.

So, I bailed. But I’m going back. (more…)

One of the good things to come out of the Dianne Wilkerson investigation (aside from the limitless potential for Halloween costume fun) is the curtain being pulled back on the Boston Licensing Board. In the Wilkerson complaint, she allegedly said the Board does all its business with “smoke and mirrors.”

So it was only a matter of time before the Boston Licensing Board came under fire for its role in the scandal.

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In these uncertain economic times, there’s one thing in which we can take solace—booze.

But since the price of everything is skyrocketing, we often find the proverbial moths fluttering out of our wallet at the end of the evening. We then resign ourselves to a long walk home (or ask the cabbie to drop us off a few blocks away and make a run for it).

But Cantabrigians won’t have to worry about accidentally drinking their cab fare on Friday night. The Cambridge Chronicle reports that the city is offering free cab rides this Halloween.

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Many of the staffers here at Boston Daily headquarters were strolling around the office yesterday, sucking on lollipops and rubbing their sore arms after receiving a flu shot. Sadly, the Dianne Wilkerson complaint so captivated this blogger that she completely forgot about the nurse’s visit.

Today’s Globe reports that I still have the option of getting a flu shot. All I need to do is rent a Zipcar and drive to Caritas Norwood’s drive-thru flu clinic. But I’m not sure if this method is the best for me.

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If you’re anything like us, you’ve waited until the last possible second to assemble your Halloween costume. Because you’ve procrastinated, you’re finding that every retail outlet from your local Walgreens to Boston Costume is running low on the necessary items for your slapdash ensemble.

Fear not, ghouls and goblins. Boston Daily is here with some last-minute costumes that will make you the talk of the office or bar this Friday.

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We love Suffolk University/7News polls. Not only does the News Station drag the lifeless Andy Hiller out to parse the numbers on the evening news, but the institution typically asks a bizarre question of the poor suckers who pick up the phone when they call. (You may remember an August poll which asked voters what they thought about the Manny Ramirez trade.)

The latest poll has a question that’s just as unusual, but much less funny.

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We would have loved to be a fly on the wall at the meeting in which supporters of Question 2 decided to use pictures of two retired Boston cops in uniform in a pair of TV spots as the men talk about why they support repealing the criminal penalties for carrying small amounts of marijuana.

“Who’s going to care if we show the Boston police logo in our ad? These guys are retired. It’ll be totally cool.”

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