Inauguration Day

Tuesday morning, we woke up at 6:30am in order to get into town and hopefully to the National Mall. We got a ride down to near the Howard U metro stop, after which the roads were blocked off to vehicular traffic.

The metro, as expected, was packed shoulder to shoulder. It also moved at a snail's pace, likely due to a build up of trains in the center of the city. We were able to take it to Chinatown, however, and squeezed out into a moving sea of people trying to leave the station. Many were exclaiming about the mass of bodies and took pictures for proof.

We knew that a large area around the Mall was to be closed off after a certain capacity was met. I had seen the barriers and fences queued up the day before. After we got out of the station, the next hour or so was a process of moving toward openings in the gate, coming across metal barriers and commandeered metro buses helping police to block off streets. We tried down near 3rd, were shuffled off toward 8th, and tried 14th, all unsuccessful. Masses were moving seemingly in all directions, all with separate motives and locational goals. Crowds were huge just to get into parade-viewing areas, and no areas to get into the Mall were found.

Things were looking pretty grim when we heard that the opening near 18th might still be open. We hurried best we could, and crowds got thicker, which seemed to be a good sign. Before too long, we moved past Constitution Ave and were suddenly on the Mall. No security, and no big hassle (especially if we had known to look toward 18th first).



We situated ourselves just to the north of the Washington Monument, in good view of a jumbotron. Inauguration didn't officially commence for an hour after that, so we were golden.



The inauguration itself was pretty sweet. Cold, though. Good vibes all around, excepting moderate to loud booing every time Bush or wheelchair-bound Cheney appeared on the screen. Lots of excitement.



President-elect Obama constitutionally became President Obama at noon, even if he didn't get sworn in until five minutes afterwards. His speech was good, but I didn't think anything too exciting. I kept listening for a resonating sound bite, but it certainly wasn't apparent in real time. It felt good, though, and made me a little optimistic that things might actually be different.



And, after a little longer, the whole thing was over and crowds began to disperse. Or, rather, like the Antarctic ice shelf breaking up into Rhode Island-sized chunks, the inconceivably large crowd started to break into more manageable groups of tens of thousands.



I took that moment to show some state pride and weather resistance.



Amanda and I headed into Georgetown to try to find a bar where we could watch the parade. Thankfully, we got to one in time for the last two seats at the bar before even standing room was eaten up. Unfortunately, Sen. Kennedy apparently suffered a seizure at the inaugural lunch, setting the schedule back at least an hour. We stuck around to see the Obamas in their motorcade going down the street surrounded by security and the ten or so minutes where Mr. and Mrs. got out to walk and wave. I read afterwards that Obama was wearing light bullet resistant clothing under his suit.

Before too long, we were both cold and tired, so headed back home. A nap was in order.

And now he's president. Get to work!

Looming Inauguration

So, as many people know, President-elect Obama will be dropping the hyphen on Tuesday. That means that lots of things are going on in DC. And things are noticeably different since last I was here in the beginning of December.

For one, the metros are packed, as estimates state that DC's population has quadrupled for this period. Two million are expected Tuesday on the National Mall.

Yesterday was the Inaugural Concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Even getting on the metro out in Silver Spring, it was obvious how many more people were there than usual, and that impression only increased after getting downtown.



Everyone wants pictures with the guy.

I got there a few minutes before it was supposed to start, wading through crowds and eventually situating myself between the Washington Monument and WWII Memorial, within distant view of Lincoln across the Reflecting Pool. Also right near two Jumbotrons.





Crowds everywhere. I haven't seen any numbers about how many people may have been there, but I'll say lots (UPDATE: I'm seeing 500,000 as a number).

And a surprise! Both Obama and Biden were there with their families, and both gave short speeches. I count that as seeing him talk.

As for the show, it was surprisingly good. Highlights included the Boss and his gospel choir, Jamie Foxx's spot-on impersonation of Obama, Tom Hanks performing Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait", the Shakira/Usher/Stevie Wonder rendition of Stevie's "Higher Ground", the Cheryl Crow/Herbie Hancock/will.i.am take on Bob Marley's "One Love" with a little of Black Eyed Peas's "Where Is the Love?" thrown in, a wizened and energetic 98 year-old (and still avowed small-c communist) Pete Seeger leading everyone in "This Land Is Your Land" (including the touchy verses usually omitted) and seeing Steve Carell, Jack Black, and Kal Penn having to act serious.

U2 was the only group (besides Stevie) that played their own songs. They played "City of Blinding Lights", which Obama used as one of his songs during the campaign, and "Pride (In the Name of Love)", which was written (obviously, now that it was pointed out to me) in honor of MLKII. During the music, Bono took some time to say what an honor it was for four little guys from Dublin to be playing for the president-elect.

During the latter song, Bono took a breath to point to similarities between different movements, with each iteration receiving a big cheer: "Not just an American dream -- also an Irish dream, a European dream, African dream, Israeli dream...and also a Palestinian dream. A state!" He took his time, especially catching his breath after Israel statement...I'd like to call it a hesitation, but I can't imagine he didn't know exactly what he was going to say ahead of time. Not that people should care much what Bono has to say, but I thought it was interesting and a little ballsy.



The show lasted for about two hours, which was just about enough for me. It wasn't as cold yesterday as it had been before, but I'm still glad that I was competently bundled.



The mass of people leaving was pretty staggering, but surprisingly just walking to Metro Center was enough to avoid most of the crowd. The metro was full, sure, but no worse than I had seen during rush hour.

The rest of the day consisted of football and eating. And that was that.

Laying low today, getting some work done, and craziness tomorrow.

Settled

And I made it down to DC. Things are crazy here, lots of people running around.

Backing up, I had a great birthday with the family and Amanda around. Unfortunately, she was only up for Wednesday morning through Friday afternoon, but we made the most of our time. We went sledding a couple of times and skating downtown once, both of which I haven't done probably since high school. We also saw Doubt, which was pretty sweet. Other than that, the days were pretty calm and spent with the family. We made a carrot cake for my birthday that was delicious but mysteriously deflated in the middle. Good times.



Saturday was some family skating, something not done in many years, especially since Jay hasn't had a winter for a couple. Martin was down from the hut, so there was a little yurt get-together with Emily around too. I got coffee with him and Molly on Monday too, which was the last time I'll see him for a while. Funny, considering spending the entire summer with him in China, then him being one of the few friends still around in Brunswick for much of the fall.

Sunday the family took advantage of cheap Maine rates at Sugarloaf to get in a day of skiing. Driving up took forever, as it was snowing, but that helped keep the lines to a bare minimum and still gave us a good amount of time. The conditions there were one of the best I've had, with plenty of packed powder and little to no grooming of the newly-fallen powder above that. Also it wasn't too cold or windy, which is always a nice change. That might be the only time that I get to go downhill skiing this winter, so it was a great day to go.

Monday night, Jay had the great idea to go smelting, which he had done once with a friend. The two of us and Lauren headed to Bowdoinham with plenty of booze and ipod juice to keep us going. The first couple of hours we had no bites, so the booze and music came in especially handy. Finally, and randomly, I pulled up two in quick succession, and they kept coming after that.



I think we ended up with 17 or so, no paltry catch. We battered and friend some up right there. Lemon pepper made them quite good.

I made sure to get a good amount of xc skiing in, going with Jay on Tuesday and Wednesday. The first time was especially good, probably the best conditions that I'd ever had.



Tuesday was also a last Joshua's and enjoyment of their popcorn.

Getting ready to leave was a little strange. I've been used to just throwing anything I could possibly want into the minivan and drive two hours away, so needing to fit everything into one bag was a challenge not seen since studying in Spain. It was made more a mental task in planning since one of my alloted bags was my guitar. And clothes space was at a premium since I decided early on that my speakers were also coming in the bag. It worked, eventually, although there were some shirts and books sharing room with my guitar, and the bag was stretching at the seams.



It was also hard to leave Maine, since it would be a little more than a simple two hour bus ride away, and I don't foresee getting regular breaks in order to make the jaunt. It's been nice having the whole family together for several months. And it's been nice to have kitties jump on me and make me sneeze.

But I wanted to get down before inauguration, and traveling closer to the weekend would have been a mess. Thursday the 15th, therefore, was go time.

Traveling all day Thursday, I opted for the hallowed Boltbus from Boston onward, and I have to say I was pretty impressed. They know what they're doing by having wireless and AC power on board. I can personally say that the 9+ hours spent in their buses went by much faster by being able to watch movies on my latop, especially movies that I've had for months/years and never gotten around to watching.

On the list were Солярис (Solaris, 1972), which I think I had heard about through my aesthetics class. It was pretty sweet, very Russian. There's a remake with George Clooney from 2002, which I've also heard is good. The second was Hotel Rwanda, which for whatever reason I never got around to seeing back when everyone else did. I even saw Paul Rusesabagina when he spoke at Tufts a couple years ago, having not seen the movie. In hindsight, I think I would have gotten a little more out of it. But, with that said, it was good stuff. Two cheery movies for the bus ride.

While changing buses in NYC, 30+ police cars raced up 34th. Confused pedestrians couldn't cross the street for minutes as the squad cars and other emergency vehicles tore by. I still don't know what exactly they were doing, but it did prompt me to look up NYC news and read about the plane that successfully water ditched in the Hudson. I changed buses around 5pm, so it would have been a little late for that incident, but maybe they were still related somehow. But yeah, I don't think I've seen that many police cars together since Blues Brothers.

Amanda picked me up from the stop in DC, and we got back to her family's house in good time. I even got some of the unpacking in the basement out of the way so that my nice clothes wouldn't be any more wrinkled than they had to be. I'm glad that I didn't go lightly on packing warm clothes from Maine.

Friday I had an interview at CSIS for an internship, so we'll see how that goes. Afterwards I walked to Georgetown to pick Amanda up from work, and we went home to get some stuff done and wait for her friend to come for dinner.

Saturday I listened in on another conference call with her dad, this time for an infrastructure development group. Interesting stuff. At night I went out with Dupont and a bunch of other Tufts people down for the weekend. Got a glimpse of what grad students look like down here.

Today Amanda's working all day again, but I'm going to try to get into the city for the inaugural concert and will probably be watching football later in the day.

So, in conclusion, DC is good, and I think I'm going to be enjoying my time here.

Holidays and Sich

And we're into 2009.

We ended up having Christmas at home for a change, which was nice in a relaxing way. We're usually driving within a day of Christmas on either side down to relatives in MA and CT, so it was a relieving change of pace just to stay in Brunswick. Unfortunately, the reason for the change of plans was that grandparents weren't feeling well and weren't up to entertaining guests, but yeah. Instead, the week consisted of nuclear family. That, and far-flung friends, cookies, guitar, Joshua's, xc skiing, LL Beans and other shopping, my final acquisition of flannel-lined pants, and such.

Brunswick got a huge blizzard on Sunday the 21st. We had been at the Syphers' for our annual Christmas get-together, and I had to drive us home by interpolating the road between telephone polls and street signs, sometimes with my head out the window to try to see more than five feet in front of me. The minivan got stuck a couple times on our road and did not make it up the hill. We abandoned it for the night and trudged home in high spirits.

I saw Emmy on the 22nd for the first time in...a while. Seems to be doing pretty well out west in TFA.

Christmas Eve we made fondue for the first time in a while, which we used to do this season more frequently. We went to the evening service at church, which was the first time I'd been there in probably close to a year. Things look the same, and the music was great, as always. Corinne was around for only a couple days too, so a bunch of us hung out at her house later in the evening. Pat got up a few days earlier, Glenn was in town for a few days, Peter was up from Portland, and others. I got back home late and thought about how anticipatory this night was when I was younger and how great the Christmas tree looks in the stairwell.

We had to get up at a reasonable hour in order to do presents before a brunch with relatives in Yarmouth. Gifts were exchanged, paper was torn, kitties were buried, good times were had by all. Brunch was delicious too. The rest of the day was pretty sedated, as Christmas should be, then we had dinner at the Fitzgeralds'. I also got to try out their hot tub for the first time, which was great. It reminded me of wading in hot springs in Iceland while a winter storm brewed overhead.

Although the snow started to dissipate after a few days, it was a very white Christmas. It would have been disappointing otherwise.

We ended up going down to Reading on Friday just for the night to see my grandmother, who is doing well. Back up to Maine Saturday evening in time for a late-night yurt party at Martin's. Elizabeth was back from Russia for a little while, so it was good to see her. Get-together at the former governor's house on Sunday. Finished up the endnotes project on the 29th (minus a little emergency fixing on the other side of the calendar bump).

New Years Eve Jay and I made chili and had a handful of people over for dinner, which worked out really well. We all then piled into the silver bullet to head down to Portland to Peter's new apartment for a jolly ol' time. The tv wasn't working, but someone (probably somewhat arbitrarily) counted down to midnight and champagne made its way around the rooms, so that was fine by me. We all crashed and were awoken finally by people making a big pile of scrambled eggs and bacon. The leftover cornbread from the night before was pretty tasty too. The rest of the day was pretty low-key, as I suppose the day often is. I may have watched Tron, or something equally as exciting (who knew the Dude is in that?).

The family headed down to CT on Friday the 2nd since my grandparents were feeling better and it was one of the few time periods that would still work out. We had a really nice time, spending a good amount at my uncle's for a change, enjoying his new HD setup with I Am Legend, Spider-Man 3, Goodfellas, and the requisite spirits. We were only down until Sunday before heading back up to Maine, stopping to see my aunt and uncle outside of Boston for an hour or so.

Since then, I've basically just been trying to do some work stuff, chilling at Little Dog most of yesterday before bringing Johanna to her lesson and playing some trios with her and Dave. Dave also gave me the name of a group he used to play with in DC, so I'll have to look into that once I get settled. And my birthday is coming up on the 8th!

Amanda's coming early tomorrow morning, which is great. She managed to get a few days off in between training and normal scheduling for the cafe job that she recently acquired for the time before abroad. The snow is a little scarce right now, but we're supposed to be getting several inches tomorrow. It shouldn't affect travel plans.

Glenn left the 28th, Martin headed up north for the hut job on the 29th, Corinne the 1st, and Patrick had to report back the 4th. It was good to see people while there were here, and now people are scattered across the world again. It will become increasingly rare for lots of people to be back home at the same time, even for holidays.

The tentative plan is still to be in DC before inauguration. Staying with Amanda's family will help to minimize the money bleeding out of me in the absence of any significant incoming revenue. It will be helpful to be on the ground again for the foreseeable future, and I'm looking forward to finding stuff that will help to fill the time and the resume, even if not the bank quite yet. We'll see.