February 12, 2009
Setback #1
I'm sure this is just the first of many setbacks we will encounter during the construction process -- and we've already dealt with several during the design, engineering, and permitting phases -- but it's particularly stressful because the builder found several areas of mold in the walls of the house. It didn't come as a huge surprise, since the house is over 80 years old and has had various water-related issues even during the 5 years we occupied it. But this particular issue will cost us time and money to resolve, and it's something that I consider to be far more serious than Josh does, which means he's not going to want to invest much in dealing with it. Ugh.
February 10, 2009
Raze the Roof
I stopped by the house on the way to the library yesterday, and the roof was mostly gone! Thanks to the spray foam insulation we had installed a few years ago, the house did not feel completely open to the elements, but there were several places where you could look up and see the sky (or at least a tarp).
I didn't venture too far into the house as there were still guys walking around on the roof -- and the occasional chunk of debris falling to the floor. Here's the view from just inside the front door looking straight back through the arch into the dining room and family room.
The sound of jackhammers could be heard from the basement. Paul (the guy in the photo above) told me they were digging up the basement floor to do the foundation work and waterproofing. I did not think it would be a good idea to wander downstairs to take photos of that. So far, no other artifacts (or dead bodies) have turned up, but I wouldn't be surprised if something was unearthed during the foundation work, since they'll also be digging around the exterior of the house. One other interesting thing we discovered was this strange metal tank above the closet in my office (next to the bathroom).
There were pipes running down to the basement from the other side, so our builder thinks it might have been an auxiliary hot water tank for the bathroom. It appears to say "Electric Hild" on it, but I haven't found any information about that name.Anyway, my subsequent trip to the library's Virginia Room was not all that fruitful. Even though I called first to ask, it turns out they do not have archival property records there. I'll have to make a trip to the Land Records Division of the county offices later this week to get that information. The lady who managed the Virginia Room was fascinated by all the stuff that was found in the house (I brought it along) and encouraged me to come back once I had done my research with the county records. She even suggested creating an exhibit at the library if I was able to learn anything interesting about the items. We'll see...
We had a meeting with our builders and architect this morning to discuss all the items they need us to make decisions on ASAP. They are interconnected, so each decision will affect the others -- which doesn't make it any easier. I think we've got a handle on the windows, but we'll need to educate ourselves a little more about some of the other issues, including mold abatement and stucco options. I thought I learned a lot of esoteric information working for Discovery, but it pales in comparison to all the things I need to know about now...
February 9, 2009
I Heart Josh
Since Valentine's Day is coming up, I thought I'd share this story with you, which is actually related to the renovation...
My old roommate, Marcy, and I used to bring each other cheesy souvenirs whenever we traveled anywhere. One such item Marcy gave me was a glow-in-the-dark keychain that said "I (Heart) JOSH" Since it was rather large, I never really used it for anything, but it remained in my desk drawer until a couple years ago when I needed a keychain for the spare key to our house. Much like those oversized restroom keys they hand out at coffee houses, I figured houseguests were unlikely to walk off with our house key if it was on such a large and potentially embarrassing keychain.
Well, the day we moved (a week ago), I got a call from Rob, our project supervisor, asking if I could leave a key for him somewhere so he could get into the house and start work first thing the next morning. Since I still needed my own key, my only option was to leave him the spare. I left it with a note apologizing for the keychain.
When I stopped by the house a few days later, I asked Rob if he needed my key as well. He said he'd already had duplicates made, and that he got some funny looks from the guy at the hardware store when he handed him the key, still on the I HEART JOSH keychain, and asked for 3 copies. We all had a good laugh over that.
I saw Rob at the house again on Friday, and he said his wife had asked him who the heck Josh was. Apparently, she had come across a pile of stuff he had emptied out of his pockets and saw the keychain. Hopefully she believed his explanation...
The funny thing is Rob and Josh have never met. I'm sure they will, eventually. Who knows? Maybe once Rob meets him, he'll decide he actually does "heart" Josh... ;-)
My old roommate, Marcy, and I used to bring each other cheesy souvenirs whenever we traveled anywhere. One such item Marcy gave me was a glow-in-the-dark keychain that said "I (Heart) JOSH" Since it was rather large, I never really used it for anything, but it remained in my desk drawer until a couple years ago when I needed a keychain for the spare key to our house. Much like those oversized restroom keys they hand out at coffee houses, I figured houseguests were unlikely to walk off with our house key if it was on such a large and potentially embarrassing keychain.
Well, the day we moved (a week ago), I got a call from Rob, our project supervisor, asking if I could leave a key for him somewhere so he could get into the house and start work first thing the next morning. Since I still needed my own key, my only option was to leave him the spare. I left it with a note apologizing for the keychain.
When I stopped by the house a few days later, I asked Rob if he needed my key as well. He said he'd already had duplicates made, and that he got some funny looks from the guy at the hardware store when he handed him the key, still on the I HEART JOSH keychain, and asked for 3 copies. We all had a good laugh over that.
I saw Rob at the house again on Friday, and he said his wife had asked him who the heck Josh was. Apparently, she had come across a pile of stuff he had emptied out of his pockets and saw the keychain. Hopefully she believed his explanation...
The funny thing is Rob and Josh have never met. I'm sure they will, eventually. Who knows? Maybe once Rob meets him, he'll decide he actually does "heart" Josh... ;-)
February 8, 2009
Treasure Theories
I went by the house Friday afternoon to pick up our 'treasures' and say a quick hello to our architect and builder, who were meeting there. The house was completely gutted at this point, so you could stand in the dining room in the middle of the house and see clear through to all 4 exterior walls. I took this from what used to be our pantry/mudroom looking through the family room and into the office:
Even the built-in bookshelves and mantel in the living room had been removed.
They had already donated all our kitchen appliances to the Habitat Restore and moved the kitchen cabinets down to the basement, which was also completely gutted.
The landscaping around the house had also been relocated to the back yard, making the house look kind of naked from the front.
These guys work fast! Apparently, the roof is coming off next week.
Everyone was fascinated by all the stuff that had been walled into the house for more than 50 years. I asked Rob where they had found it, and it turns out it had been inside the wall of the closet in my office. I had speculated that it might have been inside a closet wall, since our closets are lined with cedar panels. It's possible that there were originally shelves or cubbyholes inside the closet that were covered up when the cedar lining was installed at a later point in the house's history. Or, someone could have created a hiding place by prying loose one of the panels…
When I left, I took my bag of treasures to my next-door neighbor's house. Francine inherited her house (which was built at the same time as ours – around 1925) from her uncle, who was the original owner, when she was a teenager and has lived there for more than 60 years. Her memory for names isn't great, but she told me some interesting stories about some of our predecessors. In the 70's and 80's the family that lived there was traumatized when their daughter married the leader of a Hare Krishna group from Germany and renounced most of her worldly possessions.
In the 60's, the house was purchased by a wealthy family for their son and his new wife. Apparently, the wife, who was from England, had been the family's maid, but the son got her pregnant, so his parents married them off and moved them into the house. It sounds like it was not a very happy union. Francine described the husband as a "psychopath" and said she once heard loud music coming from next door and looked out her bedroom window to see him performing some kind of crazy ballet dance up and down the driveway. He made his wife play tennis with him all the time, even during the final stages of her pregnancy. His family eventually had him committed to the Pratt mental hospital in Baltimore.
In the 50's, a woman lived there with her mother and son. Francine liked both women, but said the son was "wild" and always getting in trouble. Once, while staying at a hotel, he flew into a range and threw everything out the window of his room. His father was a "crazy doctor" who lived in DC – it wasn't clear if they were divorced or just lived apart for the sake of convenience (although DC isn't exactly far away).
So I think our treasure trove was left by the son. He must have hidden his cigarettes and booze in the wall of the closet so his mother and grandmother wouldn't find them. I suspect some of the other items may have been stolen or found. The wallet belonged to a John C. Snider Jr. (b. 1917), who lived on the next block over, and the key case had a card inside identifying them as the property of Dr. Clift P. Berger of Oakland, MD (or maybe he was the father?). One of the glasses cases, which contains a cracked pair of aviator sunglasses, has this handwritten inside: 2nd Lieu John Poe; 247th Fighter Group; Andrews Air Force Base. Josh thinks the writing looks more like a kid's wishful thinking than an actual Air Force pilot's, so maybe that was his name.
The library book, which was found in the ceiling, is a 1947 edition of Young America's Aviation Annual. It was checked out from the Clarendon Branch of the Arlington Public Library on Nov 25, 1950. After flipping through it, I can see why it was hidden in the rafters rather than returned to the library – many of the photos have been cut out!
I'm hoping to get to the library this week to do some research on the previous owners of our home and see if any of the names and dates match up. Maybe they still have a record of who checked out that book…
Even the built-in bookshelves and mantel in the living room had been removed.
They had already donated all our kitchen appliances to the Habitat Restore and moved the kitchen cabinets down to the basement, which was also completely gutted.
The landscaping around the house had also been relocated to the back yard, making the house look kind of naked from the front.
These guys work fast! Apparently, the roof is coming off next week.Everyone was fascinated by all the stuff that had been walled into the house for more than 50 years. I asked Rob where they had found it, and it turns out it had been inside the wall of the closet in my office. I had speculated that it might have been inside a closet wall, since our closets are lined with cedar panels. It's possible that there were originally shelves or cubbyholes inside the closet that were covered up when the cedar lining was installed at a later point in the house's history. Or, someone could have created a hiding place by prying loose one of the panels…
When I left, I took my bag of treasures to my next-door neighbor's house. Francine inherited her house (which was built at the same time as ours – around 1925) from her uncle, who was the original owner, when she was a teenager and has lived there for more than 60 years. Her memory for names isn't great, but she told me some interesting stories about some of our predecessors. In the 70's and 80's the family that lived there was traumatized when their daughter married the leader of a Hare Krishna group from Germany and renounced most of her worldly possessions.
In the 60's, the house was purchased by a wealthy family for their son and his new wife. Apparently, the wife, who was from England, had been the family's maid, but the son got her pregnant, so his parents married them off and moved them into the house. It sounds like it was not a very happy union. Francine described the husband as a "psychopath" and said she once heard loud music coming from next door and looked out her bedroom window to see him performing some kind of crazy ballet dance up and down the driveway. He made his wife play tennis with him all the time, even during the final stages of her pregnancy. His family eventually had him committed to the Pratt mental hospital in Baltimore.
In the 50's, a woman lived there with her mother and son. Francine liked both women, but said the son was "wild" and always getting in trouble. Once, while staying at a hotel, he flew into a range and threw everything out the window of his room. His father was a "crazy doctor" who lived in DC – it wasn't clear if they were divorced or just lived apart for the sake of convenience (although DC isn't exactly far away).
So I think our treasure trove was left by the son. He must have hidden his cigarettes and booze in the wall of the closet so his mother and grandmother wouldn't find them. I suspect some of the other items may have been stolen or found. The wallet belonged to a John C. Snider Jr. (b. 1917), who lived on the next block over, and the key case had a card inside identifying them as the property of Dr. Clift P. Berger of Oakland, MD (or maybe he was the father?). One of the glasses cases, which contains a cracked pair of aviator sunglasses, has this handwritten inside: 2nd Lieu John Poe; 247th Fighter Group; Andrews Air Force Base. Josh thinks the writing looks more like a kid's wishful thinking than an actual Air Force pilot's, so maybe that was his name.
The library book, which was found in the ceiling, is a 1947 edition of Young America's Aviation Annual. It was checked out from the Clarendon Branch of the Arlington Public Library on Nov 25, 1950. After flipping through it, I can see why it was hidden in the rafters rather than returned to the library – many of the photos have been cut out!
I'm hoping to get to the library this week to do some research on the previous owners of our home and see if any of the names and dates match up. Maybe they still have a record of who checked out that book…
February 5, 2009
Decisions, Decisions
Now that we're out of the house and settling in to our apartment, it's time to get back to seemingly unending process of making decisions. If you have ever been involved in a home renovation project, you were probably just as overwhelmed with the astounding number of details you had to sweat as we have been -- everything from windows to appliances to insulation to doorknobs. Once we grasped the enormous scope of decisions we'd have to make, our first decision was to start working on them ASAP. We were hoping that focusing on green products would narrow down our choices, but now there are so many options available that we still have our work cut out for us.
One thing that has worked in our favor is that Josh and I have relatively similar tastes and priorities, so at least we generally agree with one another. And when we don't, one of us can usually get the other to go along with what she wants... ;)
To make the process more manageable, we've been trying to focus on one thing at a time. We spent a good part of last summer looking at kitchen appliances, and we've already found countertop material and tile that we like. We spent many a Sunday afternoon going to open houses last year so we could get ideas for what we liked and didn't like. We mostly saw stuff we didn't like -- spec houses tend to be pretty bland and mostly the same, with beige travertine bathrooms and stainless steel and granite kitchens. Not quite our cup of tea... Most of the realtors we encountered were surprisingly helpful when we admitted we weren't actually interested in buying the house -- just looking for ideas for our own renovation project. They referred us to builders, interior decorators, and financing specialists, and even suggested other open houses we might want to check out.
One realtor suggested we visit a tile store in Old Town Alexandria (about 15 minutes from our house) called Architectural Ceramics, so we made a trip down there in October and were blown away by all the beautiful tile they had in their teeny showroom. Better yet, one of the designers there was in the process of becoming a specialist in green products, so we worked with her over several Saturday morning meetings to come up with tile strategies for our 3 bathrooms, kitchen, stairs, and laundry room. It was a huge undertaking in itself, but she did wonders helping us find tile we liked within our budget -- including several green products. We filled in the remaining blanks when we were in California for Christmas by visiting Fireclay Tile in San Jose. If we had an unlimited budget, we would have happily tiled our entire house with what we saw there. But, since we aren't bajillionaires, we selected a few decorative accent tiles for our first-floor bathroom and the stairs. It's going to be gorgeous!
After changing our minds several times, we eventually settled on soapstone for the kitchen countertops. That satisfied our requirements of maintaining the period look of the house, choosing an acid- and heat-resistant material, and using a natural stone that is locally mined here in Virginia.
So, now that we have appliances, countertop, and tile taken care of, what's left? Windows, cabinets, kitchen & bathroom fixtures (sinks, toilets, tubs, faucets), hardware (towel bars, doorknobs, drawer pulls), light fixtures, roofing material, paint colors, outlet & light switch placement, and more! No rest for the weary...
One thing that has worked in our favor is that Josh and I have relatively similar tastes and priorities, so at least we generally agree with one another. And when we don't, one of us can usually get the other to go along with what she wants... ;)
To make the process more manageable, we've been trying to focus on one thing at a time. We spent a good part of last summer looking at kitchen appliances, and we've already found countertop material and tile that we like. We spent many a Sunday afternoon going to open houses last year so we could get ideas for what we liked and didn't like. We mostly saw stuff we didn't like -- spec houses tend to be pretty bland and mostly the same, with beige travertine bathrooms and stainless steel and granite kitchens. Not quite our cup of tea... Most of the realtors we encountered were surprisingly helpful when we admitted we weren't actually interested in buying the house -- just looking for ideas for our own renovation project. They referred us to builders, interior decorators, and financing specialists, and even suggested other open houses we might want to check out.
One realtor suggested we visit a tile store in Old Town Alexandria (about 15 minutes from our house) called Architectural Ceramics, so we made a trip down there in October and were blown away by all the beautiful tile they had in their teeny showroom. Better yet, one of the designers there was in the process of becoming a specialist in green products, so we worked with her over several Saturday morning meetings to come up with tile strategies for our 3 bathrooms, kitchen, stairs, and laundry room. It was a huge undertaking in itself, but she did wonders helping us find tile we liked within our budget -- including several green products. We filled in the remaining blanks when we were in California for Christmas by visiting Fireclay Tile in San Jose. If we had an unlimited budget, we would have happily tiled our entire house with what we saw there. But, since we aren't bajillionaires, we selected a few decorative accent tiles for our first-floor bathroom and the stairs. It's going to be gorgeous!
After changing our minds several times, we eventually settled on soapstone for the kitchen countertops. That satisfied our requirements of maintaining the period look of the house, choosing an acid- and heat-resistant material, and using a natural stone that is locally mined here in Virginia.
So, now that we have appliances, countertop, and tile taken care of, what's left? Windows, cabinets, kitchen & bathroom fixtures (sinks, toilets, tubs, faucets), hardware (towel bars, doorknobs, drawer pulls), light fixtures, roofing material, paint colors, outlet & light switch placement, and more! No rest for the weary...
February 4, 2009
Buried Treasure
I stopped by the house this afternoon to drop off the building permit and plans with Rob, our project supervisor. New addition: storage pod on the front lawn (for all the doors, light fixtures, and other items we want to save and re-use). Missing: the entire interior of the right side of the house. They had already demolished the interior walls and ceilings of all three bedrooms and the bathroom. Here are some photos, starting with the front bedroom:
The middle bedroom, looking through what used to be my closet:
The bathroom. I was afraid to ask why they still had toilet paper and air freshener in there...
And what used to be my office. I think that's the original insulation on the floor. When we had spray foam insulation installed a few years ago, they couldn't reach the back part of the house with their equipment so they had to leave the old stuff in place.
They had also removed all the kitchen cabinets, exposing some old wallpaper. Dig that Parisian scene! Not so much the brown floral print...
But the coolest part was that the workmen had discovered a stash of 'treasures' hidden in one of the walls that dated back to circa 1950 (the house was built in 1925). It included 3 pair of aviator sunglasses, a whiskey bottle, a can of Impregnite shoe polish ("For the Hand Impregnation of Shoes"), a man's wallet and keys, a pipe, 4 packs of Kool/Kent cigarettes, a tie, and a book on military aviation that is extremely overdue from the Arlington Public Library. 
I didn't have time to take a close look at all the stuff, but Rob promised to save it for me, along with any other artifacts they unearthed during the demolition or foundation work. When I have a chance to look through the wallet and find out who it belonged to (someone with the initials J.S. Jr), I'll ask my neighbor, Francine, about him. She's lived in the house next door for about 60 years, so she's bound to remember something about the previous occupants of our house.
The middle bedroom, looking through what used to be my closet:
The bathroom. I was afraid to ask why they still had toilet paper and air freshener in there...
And what used to be my office. I think that's the original insulation on the floor. When we had spray foam insulation installed a few years ago, they couldn't reach the back part of the house with their equipment so they had to leave the old stuff in place.
They had also removed all the kitchen cabinets, exposing some old wallpaper. Dig that Parisian scene! Not so much the brown floral print...
But the coolest part was that the workmen had discovered a stash of 'treasures' hidden in one of the walls that dated back to circa 1950 (the house was built in 1925). It included 3 pair of aviator sunglasses, a whiskey bottle, a can of Impregnite shoe polish ("For the Hand Impregnation of Shoes"), a man's wallet and keys, a pipe, 4 packs of Kool/Kent cigarettes, a tie, and a book on military aviation that is extremely overdue from the Arlington Public Library. 
I didn't have time to take a close look at all the stuff, but Rob promised to save it for me, along with any other artifacts they unearthed during the demolition or foundation work. When I have a chance to look through the wallet and find out who it belonged to (someone with the initials J.S. Jr), I'll ask my neighbor, Francine, about him. She's lived in the house next door for about 60 years, so she's bound to remember something about the previous occupants of our house.
Inauguration
OK, this has absolutely nothing to do with our renovation, but I thought some people might be interested in hearing about our inauguration experience, and I figured I might as well post it here...
My sister, Sonia, informed me at Christmas that a friend had managed to get inauguration tickets from her Congressperson so the two of them were planning to fly out and stay with us for several days in late January. Unfortunately, a few days beforehand, her friend's grandfather fell ill and she had to fly to Arizona instead. She called her Congressperson's office to see if Sonia could pick up her tickets, but they said no. Sonia decided to come anyway and just go with Josh and me (who didn't have tickets.)
Monday (Jan 19th) night we took the Metro to Josh's parents' house near Eastern Market, which is just a few blocks east of the Capitol building. The Metro was packed with people, as were all the bars and restaurants around Eastern Market. We had dinner with Josh's parents and then went to nearby tavern for dessert and warm coffee drinks. We didn't sleep much that night. We heard sirens, buses, revelers, and general traffic all night long -- and the coffee drinks probably didn't help much either.
We got up at 7 am the next day (Jan 20) and wolfed down some toast and a few sips of OJ (we didn't want to deal with port-a-johns in below-freezing weather) before bundling up and heading out on foot for the Mall. It was very cold outside (high: 31, low: 19), and the wind chill made it feel even colder. Because the parade route ran along the north side of the Mall, those who wanted to attend the inauguration ceremony were told to approach the Mall from the south. By the time we got near the Capitol, the streets were so crammed with people we could barely move. There were huge lines for the ticketed areas, and the streets were lined with buses, volunteers, vendors of Obama memorabilia, and law enforcement/military types. We kept walking and walking in search of an actual entrance onto the Mall, but it seemed to be completely fenced off. Here was the scene by the USDA building around 9 am:
It turned out they had already closed off the entire Mall by that point because there were so many people. We ended up walking all the way to the Washington Monument, which is about 1.2 miles from the Capitol, and made our way through the throngs to a spot on the hill right near the base of the monument. Here are Josh & I waiting for the ceremony to begin with part of the Monument in the background (Josh is wearing his "I'm gay for Obama" button):
To get a better sense of where we were, take a look at the second photo on this page. It was taken from the top of the Washington Monument, directly above us. We had a decent view of the Capitol as well as one of the many Jumbotron screens set up along the Mall, so although we were too far away to see anything in person, we could watch the ceremony on the big screen. Here's our view of the actual swearing-in:
It was so cold that we had to march in place for the 3 hours we were standing there in order to keep warm. My hands and feet actually hurt from the cold! Many people around us were doing the same thing, so imagine this whole sea of hoods and hats bobbing up and down. Even though we were cold, tired, and over a mile away, it was still an incredible experience to be there in person with 2 million other extremely excited people. The crowd went wild whenever Obama was on the screen, and the sight of Dick Cheney in his wheelchair was greeted with the sound of hundreds of thousands of people booing. I almost felt sorry for him...
After the ceremony was over, we realized there were nearly 2 million people between us and Josh's parents' house, so we turned around and headed in the opposite direction towards our house in Arlington. It was surreal walking down major DC streets with no cars but hordes of people. It felt like a scene from some epic, post-apocalyptic movie. We crossed the Potomac (which was frozen over) by walking right down the middle of the Roosevelt Bridge:
We stopped at a pizza place in Rosslyn around 2:30 for a much-needed lunch, rest, and bathroom break and finally made it home around 4. All told, I think we walked about 7 miles, not including the 3 hours of marching in place...
Before Sonia flew back to California, we paid a visit to the National Portrait Gallery to see the original Shepard Fairey "HOPE" poster, which is actually a collage of different types of colored and patterned paper. Very cool:
My sister, Sonia, informed me at Christmas that a friend had managed to get inauguration tickets from her Congressperson so the two of them were planning to fly out and stay with us for several days in late January. Unfortunately, a few days beforehand, her friend's grandfather fell ill and she had to fly to Arizona instead. She called her Congressperson's office to see if Sonia could pick up her tickets, but they said no. Sonia decided to come anyway and just go with Josh and me (who didn't have tickets.)
Monday (Jan 19th) night we took the Metro to Josh's parents' house near Eastern Market, which is just a few blocks east of the Capitol building. The Metro was packed with people, as were all the bars and restaurants around Eastern Market. We had dinner with Josh's parents and then went to nearby tavern for dessert and warm coffee drinks. We didn't sleep much that night. We heard sirens, buses, revelers, and general traffic all night long -- and the coffee drinks probably didn't help much either.
We got up at 7 am the next day (Jan 20) and wolfed down some toast and a few sips of OJ (we didn't want to deal with port-a-johns in below-freezing weather) before bundling up and heading out on foot for the Mall. It was very cold outside (high: 31, low: 19), and the wind chill made it feel even colder. Because the parade route ran along the north side of the Mall, those who wanted to attend the inauguration ceremony were told to approach the Mall from the south. By the time we got near the Capitol, the streets were so crammed with people we could barely move. There were huge lines for the ticketed areas, and the streets were lined with buses, volunteers, vendors of Obama memorabilia, and law enforcement/military types. We kept walking and walking in search of an actual entrance onto the Mall, but it seemed to be completely fenced off. Here was the scene by the USDA building around 9 am:
It turned out they had already closed off the entire Mall by that point because there were so many people. We ended up walking all the way to the Washington Monument, which is about 1.2 miles from the Capitol, and made our way through the throngs to a spot on the hill right near the base of the monument. Here are Josh & I waiting for the ceremony to begin with part of the Monument in the background (Josh is wearing his "I'm gay for Obama" button):
To get a better sense of where we were, take a look at the second photo on this page. It was taken from the top of the Washington Monument, directly above us. We had a decent view of the Capitol as well as one of the many Jumbotron screens set up along the Mall, so although we were too far away to see anything in person, we could watch the ceremony on the big screen. Here's our view of the actual swearing-in:
It was so cold that we had to march in place for the 3 hours we were standing there in order to keep warm. My hands and feet actually hurt from the cold! Many people around us were doing the same thing, so imagine this whole sea of hoods and hats bobbing up and down. Even though we were cold, tired, and over a mile away, it was still an incredible experience to be there in person with 2 million other extremely excited people. The crowd went wild whenever Obama was on the screen, and the sight of Dick Cheney in his wheelchair was greeted with the sound of hundreds of thousands of people booing. I almost felt sorry for him...After the ceremony was over, we realized there were nearly 2 million people between us and Josh's parents' house, so we turned around and headed in the opposite direction towards our house in Arlington. It was surreal walking down major DC streets with no cars but hordes of people. It felt like a scene from some epic, post-apocalyptic movie. We crossed the Potomac (which was frozen over) by walking right down the middle of the Roosevelt Bridge:
We stopped at a pizza place in Rosslyn around 2:30 for a much-needed lunch, rest, and bathroom break and finally made it home around 4. All told, I think we walked about 7 miles, not including the 3 hours of marching in place...Before Sonia flew back to California, we paid a visit to the National Portrait Gallery to see the original Shepard Fairey "HOPE" poster, which is actually a collage of different types of colored and patterned paper. Very cool:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
