Life of Brian: Obama Day of Service and a very pleasant surprise.... - Day 3

Today I joined fellow Obama California volunteers to help out in the Washington DC Emery Eduction Center school in answer to President-elect Obama's call for a day of service to honor Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. The picture above is from our painting exploits. Yes, this class now has the coolest painted lockers in all of ... the 3rd floor of the school, or at least in the top 10!

Now the really amazing part of today - through a series of fortunate events and connections to Obama volunteering, I actually was given a.... Are you ready for this? I was actually given a ticket to the inauguration! Unbelievable, eh? Yes - I was truly stunned and incredibly grateful. I will be standing in the blue area which is part of the restricted front standing area ticketed access. I can honestly say that so many people I worked with during the Obama campaign deserve to be here - but I will be there for all of you in spririt (Lance, Cathy, Don, and many, many more). I am still in shock frankly that this happened! Following are pics of the packet: invitation letter, program, Obama and Biden pics and the actual ticket:




Of course that was the topper for the day (month and year)! Today like yesterday, my roomates split to do more touring of DC via car and taxi so we tried to synch up after my volunteer work in the morning at the school. Enroute to trying to meet them I did serious damage at an Obama store at Union Station to chip away at Debbie's Obama souvenir haul from yesterday. It was insanely busy so that I had to wait in line to loop around to select things enroute to the cash register. I was able to purchase some very nice souvenirs and just in time - an upscale event was about to cause the lock down of Union Station. That also caused a giant influx of people to flood the station as I tried to leave. As predicted my cell didn't work, but it also actually crashed & locked up. It took multiple resets and blocks of walking away from the throng before it worked again and I could try to reach Lorraine and the gang.


They were heading for the Washington monument via taxi so I tried it via foot (a several mile hike from Union Station that gave me a great view of many things in DC - the capital, the White House, judicial buildings, etc.). Unfortunately it took so long to reach the monument (with intermittent cell coverage all the way) that by the time I got there the gang was ready to leave and was just exiting via taxi to an area about half way from where I had just hiked in. I was dog tired, but still jazzed from having scored a ticket so I walked back and finally met up with them after about 4 hours of non-stop walking.


We met up at TGIF as my feet celebrated finally sitting down while the rest of me enjoyed a Cosmo & Long Island Iced Tea! We took the metro back to Ruth's place and tonight she tried to plot out tomorrow's game plan since getting to the inauguration will not be trivial with all of the crowds and metro and street closings. I enter in a different area because (did I mention this already) I HAVE A TICKET!!!!!! We are going to get up at 6 AM Tuesday and try to fight our way down to the noon event. My brain cannot quite wrap around actually being there (I got teary during part of the concert). I really find this whole thing sureal. I keep trying to realize its really happening and that Obama is actually our President and that our 8 year national nightmare is coming to an end (with an incredible amount of work to do to dig us out of course).

On a lighter note, Debbie and I continued our souvenir throw down! Today I bought more, but I am still far under her running total - however she said that the tickets make me the winner hands down. I am inclined to agree (assuming I survive the night in the condo now hosting 8 people - all drooling over the ticket). In case anything "suspicious" happens I want this blog to be entered into evidence! Oh yes, just for the record this is today's Obama gift hunting bounty:



Good night all! Its going to be beyond isane tomorrow... I hope you all are able to watch this amazing moment of history in the making and celebrate your butts off with friends and loved ones!