Inauguration celebration

We were very lucky to score inauguration tickets just about 10 days before the event. We're not really political people, but we realized that this would be a historical moment - never to happen again - and couldn't turn down the chance to witness history.

We got the tickets the old fashioned way. Yes, we wrote our Congressman, and two senators and just waited and waited and waited.

We assumed there would be no way we could snag tickets. We were told "no" several times, but finally Senator Evan Bayh's office had tickets for us. What seemed to happen was if people couldn't go to the evvent, then the staff would go further down the list to the next people on the waiting list and ultimately it got far enough down for us that we got the tickets.

We stayed in Baltimore and were in the area from Saturday until Tuesday night. We walked miles and miles in the cold and were around thousands (actually millions) of people, and were always surprised by how cheerful and happy everyone was nearby.

I'll post the inauguration pictures soon enough. But for now - here are some of the shots from this weekend. We went to the whistle stop on Saturday in Baltimore, which was just a walk from our friend's house. On Sunday, we saw the "We are One" concert on the mall. I thought it was excellent - mostly because some of my favorite performers were there - Mellencamp, Sprinsteen, etc...

All of the TV broadcasters kept talking about how frigid cold the weather was, but to be honest, it wasn't that bad for us. It was probably 30 degrees cooler in D.C. than in the Midwest. You'll notice that it was much cooler on Saturday but did "warm up" a bit on Sunday to a balmy 30 degrees.

Here's a photo of Brian on Saturday while we were walking around Baltimore before the whistle-stop. You'll notice how cold he is at this point.



Here's a photo of me at the whistle-stop on Saturday. You'll notice you can hardly see my face, and Brian points out that my "Sarah Palin" specs are even fogging up.



Now, here's a photo of us after the, "We are one" concert on Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial. You'll notice it's quite a bit warmer. You can actually see our faces!



This gives you a good sense of how long the crowd was during the concert. The concert was at the Lincoln Memorial but you can see people standing all the way back to the Washington Monument. And, yes we were all standing that close together.



Here are some "tree people" staked out on the trees at the concert.



One of my all-time favorite singers.



Here's a photo of a very cool building, but we don't know which building it actually is - nonetheless cool.



Brian got a photo of me crashing in Baltimore after a busy day on Saturday. I think I was out snoozing about 2 minutes after he took this shot.