The end to the US presidential election was met with relief in many quarters. Neither elation nor rage; just a sense that it was time for the fiasco to end.
"My manicurist is from Argentina and this was the first time she voted," said Shelly Mandell, a Los Angeles lawyer and Democrat. "She was really angry."
Ms Mandell, who spent yesterday morning in a courthouse in Santa Monica, California, speaking with other lawyers, said people had become fairly emotional about the election limbo.
"People who weren't involved in politics were really shocked to learn about the turmoil that normally goes with counting votes. They found it scary. The uncertainty had gotten really disquieting. People just wanted it to be over."
While the television stations and CNN were busy with the latest news and speculation - would Mr Gore use the word "concede"?, would Mr Bush be a legitimate president? - people in offices, at work and on the street, seemed fairly blase.
Barbara Pepe, a producer with E! Entertainment Television, was asked whether the election was a topic in her office.
"Among people here? No, nobody's talking about it," she said. "On the television, yes. Actual people? No."
A group of high school students met with US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a previously scheduled class visit. Mr Thomas assured them that the court's decision had nothing to do with partisan politics.
At the same time, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, walking down a corridor in the court building, was asked by a reporter about his sense of the public's interest.
Justice Rehnquist said that he was surprised at the level of the public's interest in the audiotapes of oral arguments that the court had allowed to be released publicly for the first time in its history.
In perhaps the only public benefit to accrue from this election, Justice Rehnquist said the court would consider allowing audio recording of future arguments in certain cases.
Reuters adds: America's newspapers yesterday criticised as confusing and potentially damaging the US Supreme Court's ruling.
As they acknowledged Mr Bush as the winner of the election and called on Mr Al Gore to concede, papers wrote that the Supreme Court's split decision late on Tuesday had injured its credibility and undermined public trust in fair elections.
USA Today said the court's ruling "read as if it came straight from the pages of Catch-22", and that its "splintered decision injured its own credibility, that of the courts generally and of the presidential election process."
The New York Times, which had endorsed Mr Gore, said the decision came at "considerable cost to the public trust and the tradition of fair elections".