UPDATED: Inauguration Woo!

Well, today I went to the Inauguration.  It lived up to the flighty temptress that Dumbledore spoke of in Half Blood Prince.  Assuming said flighty temptress kicks you out of bed at 3:30 in the morning and keeps you in the freezing cold on hard plastic for 8 hours.  Which sounds like something a flighty temptress would do.

I’m not sure anyone will check for this tonight, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to update fully tomorrow when I have any energy.  Today included waking up at said ungodly hour (though I have 24 ungodly hours in a day), walking 6 miles, freezing my butt off, and then a meeting at 8 PM.  Thus my capacity for thought is relatively low.  I will update tomorrow, so if you are reading this, check back then.

UPDATE!!: Okay.  Back for round two and updating on Jason’s day, but I know he will forgive me.  So, the Inauguration.

In numbers:

Hours of sleep: ~5.5 minus a number of interruptions of people talking loudly in the hallway.

Miles walked: 6, because all metros in the vicinity were closed, which required some crafty navigation.

Hours spent on cold, hard, metal-ish plastic: 8

Degrees Fahrenheit: 26-40, with winds ~15 MPH, aka not weather you want to sit in for a long time.

Number of people in attendance: Approximately 1 million

Amazing Beyonce moments: Infinite.  She was beautiful and clearly the most popular person there.

Number of Sesame Street characters: 2, The Count and Rosita.

Friends: 8, including and limited to Eleanor, Lizzy, Rachel, Lindsay, Nia, Elena, Dan, and Emily.

In other terms:

Good moments:

-Cuddle party in which I fell asleep leaning against my friend Lizzy for 5-10 minutes.

-Laughing because as the politicians walked onto the Capitol stage where they’d be sitting, they didn’t seem to know that everything they said was being caught by the cameras and blasted over the jumbotrons.  I was hoping someone would say something inappropriate, but the funniest things were “I’ve had this coat for a really long time,” “How’s it hangin?” and “PEEEETER!!!”  But we fancied a variety of other situations involving sexual scandals that never came to fruition.

-Obama’s speech mentioning three of my priority issues: the environment, women’s rights, gay marriage.

-Finally sitting down on the metro after being uncomfortable for what seemed like an eternity, and the feeling returning to my toes.

Less good moments:

-Being cold for a really long time.

-Getting yelled at by a lady who couldn’t mind her own business and decided that my friends and I, as well as the 30 or so other people sitting near us, had sat long enough and demanded that we stand up.  She said we were preventing people from navigating the crowd on their way to the bathroom. In actuality I found that trying to squeeze through the more-densely packed standing people reminded me of going through a birth canal, compared to immobile sitting people who were more spread out.  I never actually went through the birth canal, because I was a caesarian section, but I can imagine.

-The amount of Christianity featured in the ceremony.  My preferences, in order, of religion in government is as follows: none, all represented equally, everything else.  Is it okay that Obama is Christian and that our country has a Christian religious tradition and there was a Christian song?  Sure.  But need there be speeches who focus on our blessed country, from only a Christian perspective?  I think not.  Should there be any celebration of religious diversity or even mention of other religion? If there’s going to be any religion, I think so.  If I were Muslim or Jewish or Hindi I would feel left out, and in some cases targeted.

I will pop off the soapbox in one second, but I want to say one more thing.  I think Christianity’s place in yesterday’s ceremony in itself is not good, but in conjunction with the religion’s part in preventing the three things I care about most (the environment, women, gay people) because of its place in government makes it really bad, to me.  Don’t deny evolution.  Don’t deny rights to women and gay people.  If you want to sing about God on Inauguration Day, and that’s the end of “His” influence on your politics, go ahead.  But when your religion affects my body and my world and my friends’ rights to marry, you’re not doing the job I voted you in to do.  Not to say that Obama’s hiding behind religion, but some of his peers do, and it’s not fair.
All puns aside, I may be preaching to the choir.  But I don’t feel right not bringing up my misgivings with yesterday.

 

The day was great, though.  I liked Obama’s speech, I liked being a part of a crowd made up of hundreds of thousands of equally uncomfortable people, all waiting for the same thing to happen, flags at the ready.  I liked Beyonce and the Clintons and the Baby ‘Bamas and Michelle.  It was a good day to be going to college in D.C.

And today was much colder than yesterday, so I’m counting my blessings, har har.

And I survived my first week of classes, as you may have noticed.

Successful endeavors abound.

-Rachael