Happy New President!
I was lucky lucky lucky to be in DC for the BIG day this past week. I’m still learning to use my new (handmedown) camera and had no tickets to be anywhere special so recommend you look at others’ photos, especially this amazing “gigapan”
Here’s what we did on the day itself: along with my colleague Laurent from Paris, I camped out in our office (at 17th and Rhode Island, about half-mile north of White House) to avoid the Metro, which turned out to be very smart as the subway cars were full at the furthest out suburban stops starting at something mad like 4 am. We got up at a more normal hour, leisurely met up with 5 friends for egg sandwiches at 8:30 at a nearby breakfast place, and walked down 18th street with hundreds and then thousands of others, (check out VOA’s time lapse HD video of people swarming). We decided to stop fighting the crowds on the hill near the Washington Monument with a view of crowds and one of a jumbotron – if you look at the very bottom of picture #3 here, you’ll see the monument, we were standing inside the circle at about 3 o’clock, so just above where the shadow of the monument is in the picture). Booed Bush and Rick Warren, cheered O massively and all others with various degrees of intensity.
Following a conversation the day before in which I predicted we would have a transgender president before an openly atheist one, I was personally thrilled to hear him mention “non-believers.” After the speech, as the poem started, we started the long slow walk (took us about 90 minutes to go less than 3 miles) with the throngs, went back to Ivan’s apartment to cook some pasta and watch the lunch and parade and associated asinine commentary on various TV channels (see Jon Stewart on this) )
The crowd was so happy and peaceful (and of course so racially mixed, see John Oliver’s hysterical and yet accurate report) it was really wonderful to be there.
I managed to come down with conjunctivitis that afternoon, which put a bit of a damper on things (and mad me look like I was in a bar fight inauguration night) so I left the Wonder Ball early and spent the days since laying low and putting weird goo in my eye. But nothing dims my happiness at our new president. GOBAMA.
Happy 2009
Doing very well with my resolutions so far:
Resolve to stay in bed till noon more often and not feel guilty about it. (Useful to have the support of a partner who seems to have resolved to bring me breakfast in bed more often)
Resolve to eat fruit every day. (Sent partner back downstairs for grapefruit.)
Resolve to have no more than one basket of clean laundry at foot of bed. (Folded and put away both, for good measure).
Resolve to start a net outflow of paper from bedroom floor to recyclying bin. (But still have to look through those old mags – otherwise would have missed David Quammen’s excellent story in the April Harpers on contagious cancer in Tasmanian devils. (here, but you might need a subscription.)
Resolve not to keep partner waiting so often due to computer based activities. (oops gotta run.)
