Mall Standing, Silver

**I wrote part of this blog yesterday and part today, so the events described herein are from Friday, January 16th.**

My alarm rang at 7:30 today, in order to make it possible for me to be at Feinstein's office when inauguration tickets were available for pickup at 9 a.m. Instead, I turned the alarm off and woke up 3 hours later, ready to take an unreasonable amount of time to get dressed and out of the house, as per usual.

I hear there is some sort of logic to the street numbering/naming system in D.C., but I have yet to be convinced. I took a wrong turn down the wrong 2nd Street (there are two different 2nd Streets within a few blocks of D.C.'s Union Station), and spent an hour and a half wandering around in the bitter cold with firefighters shaking their heads in pity as they drove by. When I finally made it to the complex of Senate offices up the hill from the Hill, one of Feinstein's several J. Crew necktie-wearing aides handed me my ticket.

It's very pretty.

As an official representative of the U.S. branch of plebes, I was given a spot in the standing-only area of the mall just beyond the reflecting pool (see map below, Silver section). I was a little disappointed, but am trying to stop being such an ingrate. People are clawing each other for tickets. It's history, right? I won't lose fingers and toes, right? Please? God?

Hey! You know what else is annoying about being the official representative of plebes everywhere? Listening to your host's drunk roommates argue in loud whispers about whether or not they should have to move the 20 friends they brought home from a party to another floor referencing you loudly all the while, and then realizing (also out loud) that you must have heard them.

Regardless, Darrell has been unfailingly kind, and took me to a bar that could have possibly been built by my imagination in a parallel universe. The owner(s) of the place basically bought out the inventory of a bankrupt sideshow and put it all over the walls - six-legged baby goats, mummified pygmy merpeople, dead things in jars - all my favorites! Then they had actual performances from various traditional sideshow attractions like the human blockhead and a real live burlesque lady! She showed us her glittery boobs!

I think when I began this blog I had imagined it being a sophisticated and nuanced reportage of the D.C./Obama/Dawn of a New Era zeitgeist, but instead I will gripe about drunk people and talk about breasts. You're welcome.