The places I’ve been and things I’ve seen there.
We got home earlier than expected, at about four or so. I have been doing some yardwork, and am heading up to see Will at the farm. I will stay there tonight, and we will catch up on our math and physics work, on which we are extremely behind. I may also bring the LC(A) to show off. Will has told people about it, but I don’t think they’ve ever actually seen it in the flesh (plastic?).
Our first Frisbee game is on Thursday.
Shawarma is probably one of the best foods there is. I had a fabulous chickens shawarma sandwich. We are staying at my aunt and uncle’s apartment now. We walked around for a bit before coming here, as we had been in the car for about an hour from New Jersey.
This morning, before we left, we visited my great-grandmother at the nursing home she is in. It was very nice in some ways, and not nice at all in some other ways. It made me think a lot about how I want to be treated and live when I am that age, and how I want to cope as my parents get towards that age. I think that it is weird that in America we pay people to live with and take care of our old people, rather than just doing it ourselves. If everyone was in a better position to take care of their relatives as they aged, we wouldn’t need to spend so much money on those institutions. Ideally, the government would provide money to anyone who is taking care of relatives to help them cope, but until we are in a position to have that sort of health care infrastructure, we will have to deal with these not-so-friendly institutions. This particular one is rather nice, but it is still an institution, with all of the benefits and pitfalls that implies. It is a tricky situation.
I am glad that my relatives are being well taken care of, but I wish it was a little more personal, and I wish I saw them more often.
I am in New Jersey right now at my grandmother’s house, having just come from Long Island from another family member’s house following the graveside service, which we were unable to get to, as it was at ten-thirty this morning. We didn’t want to catch all of the rush hour traffic, so we left at about ten and got in at one-thirty. We were there until about eight. There was a very nice evening service at about seven.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, I spent a lot of time with a lot of different people. Some of them I knew and had seen recently (in exemplum my grandfather [most recently sighted at my aunt's wedding in L.A.]). Some of them I knew and had not seen for a long time (in exemplum my grandfather’s cousin, the widow of the deceased [most recently sighted at her apartment several years ago]). Some of them I had never met before in my life (in exemplum her sister). Anyway, I had a really good time, or as much of a good time as one should have at a post-funeral Shiva session.
Everyone has their own way of mourning. Some people cry a lot, some people are solid and stoic and then cry a lot in private, some are solid and stoic and never cry. Some are somewhere in between, defying categorization. It is weird. It is hard to predict how people will act. I try not to stop trying though, because I think that if you just sit back and accept the way people feel, it can be easy to get caught up in emotions and not understand what’s actually happening around you. It is important to be sympathetic and comforting while still trying to understand your feelings.
The Webcomics Weekend was a huge success, at least for the two hours I was there. I met a lot of awesome people, including Ryan North, David Malki, Joey Comeau, and Emily Horne. I bought two shirts, the first for me and the second for a friend who couldn’t come but is a die hard Dinosaur Comics fan. Also I got a gigantic pastrami sandwich on an onion bagel at the restaurant at Eastworks, which lasted me the rest of the day.
We didn’t do so well at Harmony Sweeps. We didn’t place or get Audience Favorite (we did both last year), but the groups that did were fabulous. I didn’t feel that disappointed, because I had a really great time, heard some really good music, and got a chance to perform with some really fun people.
Also, I had a singularly AWESOME experience after the show. A bunch of girls came up to the group, and asked for our AUTOGRAPHS! And they wanted pictures with us! It was SO COOL! I have NEVER given an autograph before, and I enjoyed it so much. They said that they were part of a high school choir as well, and they wanted us to come see their show, which we totally would have, except that it is on June 1st, which is 5-Alone‘s big show as well, and my birthday with all of its investment and skydiving-related opportunities and commitments. Speaking of my birthday, I was recently informed that Lucky’s, a tattoo and piercing parlor in Northampton, will give you a free piercing on your eighteenth birthday. This fits in perfectly with my planned theme for that whole day, so I am considering getting another piercing. It would definitely be an ear. I have to decide if I want to get my other (right) earlobe pierced, or if I want to go for one of those upper-ear-type things, and if so, if I want it to be on the left (already pierced) ear, or or the right. Decision, decisions.
Tomorrow I am sleeping, going to see my school’s production of Hair with a friend, and going to a Mock Trial meeting.
I ended up not going to New York this morning, so I am home for the day. I think I will see if I am needed at work, which opens at noon today, and I am planning to go see Brett Dennen this evening.
What an exhausting set of five days. I am SO ready for the weekend.
Tomorrow I am working all day. On Sunday, my family and I will be traveling to Long Island for my great-great-aunt’s one hundredth birthday.
I am home. I got here just before 4, and had to run out immediately for an eye exam. Now I am back, unpacked, settled, etc. We had a rather smooth drive home, except for when we stopped at a rest area in CT. We managed to lose the car key inside of the dashboard, and the driver and I spent about half an hour disassembling the dashboard before I was able to fish the key out.
DC was a fabulous experience. Overall, the city was in the strange state of limbo; everything had sort of stopped, and yet there was a feeling of great motion within the city. This may have been due to the literally millions of people in the streets.
We had tickets to the Silver area for the inauguration ceremony, which was closer to the Capitol steps, but when we got there, the ticketholders’ line was about five or six thousand people long, and growing longer, so we decided not to risk missing the ceremony standing on line and to go in the general admission, which didn’t have any security, and thus no line, just a whole lot of people. A whole lot. I have never in my entire life seen crowds this size before. We ended up on the National Mall at around 9th street. We watched the inauguration on gigantic screens, which realistically is probably what we would have been doing if we were in the Silver area.
One thing that pissed me off was that the sound and video were out of sync. The sound was live, but the video lagged about one second. I do not understand why they didn’t fix this; it seems like it would have been fairly simple to jump forward in the feed by a second; certainly easier than jumping the sound forward if it had been lagging. Oh well. We could hear the proceedings, and that’s what counted.
Back at the apartment on Penn. Ave. (when we finally got there), it was a mob scene. Everyone was jubilant, and there was an enormous quantity of most delectable food. Once the parade started, we trooped out to balconies and roofs to watch. At first, it was rather boring; imagine about 50 consecutive motorcycles driving at five miles an hour. But then Obama’s motorcade came along, and we saw him! Him and Michelle got out of the car, and they walked and waved! I got some pictures, but the iPhone camera is not very good, so it’s hard to see who’s where. Some of them give a pretty good image of the parade overall, though.
We came back inside and watched coverage of the parade for a while. It lasted for many hours, and if we opened the door, we could hear it outside; marching bands galore.
We also saw some footage of the Obama’s special presidential limo. It was a rather unremarkable black hulk, until I saw them open the door. The door must have been a foot thick. This thing is apparently bullet-proof and bomb-proof, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was mortar- and apocalypse-proof. I have never seen such a beefy car. It must get awful milage.
In terms of current happenings related to the inauguration, the Obama administration appears to have gotten off to a flying start, ordering Guantanamo detainee trials frozen as part of a broader effort to shut the place entirely, and making some excellent statements about transparency, as well as sining executive orders to this effect. And John McCain, ever the honorable man, has urged fellow Republicans to work with the new administration and Congressional Democrats to move forward. This is truly a new era for cooperative and constructive politics.
We are on our way back out of DC. It is going to be a long ride home.
Data networks were down earlier today, so here are the rest of the photos, including ones from the National Mall, the collossal crowds on the way back, and the parade, which I watched from a roof.
