I got the purple ticket!!! (and Happy Birthday Michelle Obama)

We got the purple tickets! If you've been reading, you know I was fervently hoping for orange or yellow standing tickets to the swearing-in, but I was being greedy. I am perfectly happy with our purple standing tickets, which are not right up close, yet not far (silver section is a little farther back). I'm still on West Coast time and was exhausted from writing all day yesterday, so I didn't wake up until 10:30. I did some more writing for a bit this morning, then Donna's fiance Keith drove us to the Cannon House office building. We finally got to Pelosi's office around 2pm and picked up our tickets.
Joyous San Franciscans were filtering in and out, enjoying the cookies and coffee. We were all eagerly picking up our manila envelopes. Everyone was smiling.

I had to show my ID, then was handed my envelope. I asked eagerly, "So how were we picked amongst the thousands of constituents who requested tickets?" Staffer: "Uhh...I don't really know, but you are so, so lucky!"

Thank you, Speaker Pelosi...You'll always have my vote (that is, if you push Filipino Veteran's Equity forward!)


Here is the packet that I got.

The cold caused car problems for Keith and it wouldn't start, so we hung out on the Hill for a while and had lunch. Unfortunately, we then missed the FANHS panel. We didn't get back to Virginia until about 30 minutes ago. So now we are getting ready to go to the Filipinos for Obama reception at Cafe Asia back in the district.

We're watching CNN. Those poor folks -- Wolf, Anderson, Donna Brazile, Soledad O'Brien, David Gergen -- have been out in the cold since 10 this morning! They're going to have pneumonia before Monday, I swear. I even heard a little sipun (snifflies) in Obama's voice when he did a press conference on his train. It is cold here. Cold. The wind cut right through my long underwear, froze my ears, and blew right through my gloves.