Inauguration Day 1/20/2009

This is my account of my own experience of Obama's Inauguration. I stayed at my brother and his wife's house in Vienna, VA. My young nephews generously shared a bedroom while I was there so I could have my own room. By complete coincidence some friends of mine from Seattle were staying in a hotel in Vienna, VA that was only 1/2 mile from my brother's house.

I met up with my friends Beth and Barry, Beth's mother, Gratia, and their daughter B. at the Vienna Metro station. Although we all left the house very early, we didnt get downtown until around 10:30am which was too late to get anywhere in front of the Washington Monument.



The trains were running slowly because someone was pushed or fell onto the metro tracks so they had to turn the trains around before that station. That person was not seriously injured because of the quick thinking of some guy on the platform who knew that there was a space under the platform. He pushed her into the space and the train missed her. I was relived when I heard that. Click here for the story.

My brother was a couple of trains ahead of me because I wanted to wait for Barry/Beth et al and I figured I would text him and then find him once we got down there. While on the train, someone else got a text that streets were closed near the mall so we decided to get off the Metro at Foggy Bottom. Once I got out of the station, I got the text from my brother to get off the train at Foggy Bottom and head towards the WWII memorial. That was just one of many lucky occurrences that surrounded this event. I mean, I missed my brother's text but did the right thing anyways.

Once we got there, there were already too many people for me to find my brother even though he texted me his exact location. I could see where he said he was but I couldnt get over there. So I found a spot near a tree and sat down for a while. I had a pretty good view of the jumbo-tron for most of the ceremony but eventually the space in front of me filled up so I had to stand to see. It got really crowded even way back where we were. I mean crowded like you could barely move crowded. It looked like there were crowds all the way back to the Lincoln Memorial!



During the swearing in people were *very* emotional. There was lots of crying and hugging strangers and cheering. It was awesome! When Aretha came on, I yelled out "Detroit Represent!" and lots of people near me cheered and said they were from Detroit too.



After the swearing in, some people started to leave so I sat down again and watched the rest of the program. I was really happy to have found such a comfortable spot. It was a little cold but not too bad. I was only cold because I had taken off my coat to sit on it. Once it was over, I put my coat back on and was fine.

When it was time to leave, there was discussion about heading towards one of the museums to warm up but it quickly became obvious that there was NO WAY we were going to make it to one of the museums. We stood in a huge crowd that was moving towards the streets. It was remarkable because there was no pushing and no shoving even though the crowd was so dense that everyone was pressed up against everyone else. I have never been around such a mellow nice crowd except for at some Dead shows but those people were high. These folks were just plain NICE although there was some cheering and out breaks of a certain Bananarama song when the helicopter that may have contained Bush flew overhead.



Eventually we made our way back to Foggy Bottom where we ended up in a big crowd waiting to get into the station. They were limiting how many people could enter the station at one time, possibly because of the earlier incident. After around 45 minutes in yet another incredibly nice and pleasant but very dense crowd, we got into the station. I was impressed with the transit workers who were in charge. They kept making everyone repeat "when the person in front of you goes, you go" and "when the person in front of you stops, you stop" and cracking jokes so again, there was no pushing or shoving and lots of laughter. I think they took a potentially dangerous situation and made it much safer so huge props go to the Metro staff.




Eventually we got in but everyone was tired so we got on a train going the wrong way because it had seats and we just rode to Maryland and then eventually got off and got on the train in the right direction. There is nothing like a little discomfort to make one appreciate things like a seat on a warm train. People were very nice on the train too. One guy even gave us a free bumpersticker



Eventually, we made it back to Vienna. We met up with my brother then and we all went out for a very nice dinner.

I know...I know...

Yeah I know I said that I was going to blog every day in November but after a while, I found that it became a chore and since blogging is supposed to be a hobby, I decided to give myself a break. Truthfully, I still dont feel much like writing so I am just going to share some pictures instead.

This is one of my new dog Tasha. She's pretty wiggly but managed to sit still just long enough for a photo:



And of course, this is my favorite dog, Brooke:



This is one of my sister's dog, Buddy:



This is a photo of the dinner table at Thanksgiving:



And finally, this is my mother, my cousin Catherine, my cousin Anna, my Aunt Nancy, me, and my sister-in-law Katrina modeling some hats that belonged to my grandmother who died in September. She had some pretty interesting hats!

Winter Blahs

I have been pretty busy lately. Well sort of busy. Busy for a person who suffers from seasonal depression.

My depression has taken on a different form this year. I doubt it could be considered a clinical depression as I am pretty sure I dont meet the criteria for it listed in the DSM-IV. But I certainly feel a lot different than I do in the summertime.

I am not living in a dark place sitting around listening to "I am a rock" while crying big goopy tears into my bowl of oatmeal. I am not having an internal debate about how to off myself and wondering if wanting to build a garage so I can sit in my running car counts as real suicidal ideation when obviously, I have no intention of building a garage anytime soon. In fact, quite the opposite. On days when I dont have anything to do, I really have found that I have been enjoying myself and I generally feel contented with myself and my life.

No, mostly this year, I am feeling kind of low energy. If I won the lottery right now, I would probably use my millions to quit my job so I could sit around in my pajamas all day watching movies. Yeah, this year it isnt so much darkness and despair but rather just a feeling of being overwhelmed. I feel overwhelmed by work. I feel overwhelmed by school. I feel overwhelmed by all of the little chores we all need to do just to get by. Even taking a shower has become a big deal for me (but dont worry, in the interest of social harmony, I am managing to struggle through).

Oh well. I guess it is a pretty normal state of mind for winter in Michigan. In two days though, it will be Groundhog's Day. All I can say is that little bugger had better NOT see his darn shadow this year!

New Year's Sillyness

I had a nice New Year's Eve. I went to my friend Heather's house for a small dinner party. It was delicious. All I can say is that it is good to go to dinner parties at the home of people who watch The Food Network. Bam!

This is a little meme I got from last year. A year in review sort of. It is the first sentence of the month. I like to think of it as an excercise in how very boring I am. Clearly first lines arent my strong point when it comes to writing :)

January - My big five day celebration of laziness and sloth has come to an end.

Febuary - My friend Kate takes pretty good pictures.

March - I haven’t really felt much like writing much lately. I don’t know why.

April - I had some very minor surgery on Friday to remove an abscess from my leg.

May - I had a mouse living in my kitchen.

June - If you had a neighborhood with a lot of teenagers causing a lot of trouble, what would you do?

July - My internet connection went down on Friday.

August - Whew. It is HOT! It is supposed to be 98F today.

September - I am going on vacation for a while so I don’t know how often I will get to post to the blog.

October - I just wanted to mention that I have placed a button near the bottom of this page to make it easier to subscribe to this blog using a favorite RSS feed reader, bloglines.

November - My friend Henry sent me this picture he drew recently.

December - It wasnt until after I took this silly test that I realized that I already knew I could pass eighth grade math because I already passed eighth grade math.

The Thanksgiving Report

It pretty much went well this year although I had *another* pie incident. I told my mother that she would have to give me complete pie autonomy if she wished me to cut the pie and to her credit, she did just that. This year however, my cousin swooped in and decided that I wasnt cutting the pie correctly. I just let her take over though so it was no big deal. Later, when I was describing this all to a friend, she said “I don’t understand, how can you cut a pie wrong”. My only answer was that obviously I am not the one to ask. Maybe next year I will take a video of me cutting pie and take a video of my mother or cousin cutting pie and then post them online to invite the internet to compare our techniques and perhaps give me some pie cutting tips ;)

Otherwise, it was a fabulous dinner. There were 22 people there and we all manged to sit together at the same very long table. That was interesting. After dinner and after dessert, we had a bonfire outside. It was a shame that I had to work on Friday because I was having fun sitting outside around the fire but I guess that is life.

Gearing up for the holiday

Thanksgiving dinner is going to be at my parents house again this year. My mother always gets really stressed out when she hosts and I think that is going to be especially so this year because there are going to be 22 people there (and five dogs*). So I have a plan:

1. I am going to go to my sister’s house early in the day because she is having before-dinner drinks over there. We are going to give our three dogs a very long walk so they will be good and tired before the excitement of the turkey dinner and all of the people.
   
   
2. I have bought 15 bottles of wine and 4 bottles of Asti (my mother’s particular favorite holiday drink). After my sister’s thing and as soon as I arrive at my parents’ house, I am going to uncork some wine and then I will do my best to make sure my mother’s glass is kept filled up. Some people get mean when they get drunk but luckily for me, my mother gets NICE when she gets a bit tipsy. What the heck, I’ll make sure to have a couple of glasses of wine too just so that we are all on the same page.
   
   
3. As soon as dinner is over, I am going to get up and start clearing the table and getting the coffee and pie ready. My sister is also going to take this approach and most likely our sister-in-law and brother will also help us - my sister-in-law because she is helpful and my brother because my sister and I have always made it clear to him that if she and I have to help after parties, he has to too. Consequently, he has not grown up to be the kind of guy who would go watch football (or whatever) after dinner while the women-folk get to clean up the great meal that they cooked. I hope my sister-in-law appreciates it *snort*
   
   
4. I have to work on Friday so I have a perfect excuse to leave early.
   

*Which reminds me of last year. Some of the neighbor dogs had come over and someone let them into the house by mistake which got all of the other dogs really excited. So there were seven or eight dogs running through the house and barking as some of tried to shoo them outside. My Dad was standing in the living room with his glass of bourbon talking to my cousin. He says to my cousin: You know what? I don’t even own a dog!

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone!

Easter Sunday

My family is Russian Orthodox which meant that we had the big Easter thing to today instead of last week. When I was a kid, I hated it. I wanted nothing more than to be as much a part of the main stream culture as I could be and celebrating Easter on the "wrong day" was just something I didnt like. I didnt like how my family celebrated easter differently than other cultures either. Other kids got candy and goodies in their easter baskets. Our easter baskets consisted of keilbasa, butter shaped like a lamb, home made easter bread (Pascha Bread), ham, salt, honey, pascha cheese (cream cheese with sugar and some other stuff added), horseradish, and hard boiled eggs.

But now that I am an adult, I have to say that I love most of the things about myself that are different from the mainstream. I love that I call my grandmother "Baba." I love that everyone in my family are serious connaisseurs of horseradish and that even I (the world's worst gardener) have a whole horseradish patch in my yard that I planted after Easter last year. I love that Easter is on a different day. And I *really* love that darn Easter basket. Because there is nothing quite so yummy as Pascha Bread with butter and honey sitting on your plate next to some keilbasa and horseradish that is so strong it stings your eyes and makes you go HOLY JESUS!!! whenever you eat it.

So what does that all mean. I dont know other than that an athiest can apparently still appreciate Easter Sunday.

Christ has risen y'all

Indeed he do.

Good Friday Chocolate Bunny Blogging