FunnyStrange.com

Had a nice quiet dinner with my hosts A. and S. and their two friends, down from New York for the inauguration. I brought a pie from the pie lady at the Durham Farmer's Market to contribute to the dinner. It was a lemon pie, which I love, but not everyone is crazy about lemon desserts. Well this pie was a big hit. It was a layer of lemon curd and then slices of candied lemon which were edible, including the rind. Really intense lemon flavor, not too sweet and not too tart. The pie lady never lets us down!

We had all been invited to a party but everyone bailed except A. and her oldest daughter. Younger daughter was tired, S. is getting over a cold, and all the out-of-towners including myself wanted to get a good night's sleep and be fresh in the morning. I'm aiming to leave here about 6:15-6:30 tomorrow. I'll walk to the Metro station, take it into the city and then walk to my security checkpoint. The others don't have to go through security so they're leaving around 8:30 and taking the bus.

A. gave me a map with pedestrian routes marked: I thought at first these were permanent pedestrian walkways but they are actually roads which have been closed for the day. In fact it looks like I'll end up walking on I-395 where it tunnels under the Mall. Georg and I drove through that tunnel on our way up before Thanksgiving (we missed the exit off the HOV lane and ended up driving right through the middle of DC) so it will be kind of cool to walk it.

Tonight I'm going to shower, lay out my clothes for tomorrow and pack everything up. I might even put my suitcase in my car tonight, so I won't have to deal with lugging it out while everyone is still asleep. I can put my pajamas in my computer bag and toss them in the car on the way out in the morning.

I also need to figure out how to make my phone act as an alarm clock. There's no clock in this room and I don't trust myself to wake up that early without an alarm.

A. and S. have two cats who are standoffish with strangers, but love burrowing. They seem torn between not wanting to get too close to me, and really really wanting to crawl under the blankets on the air mattress in here. I left the door cracked so they can get in and out as they please.

I'm in DC! The drive was super easy. I was expecting terrible traffic and left at 10 this morning. Somehow the bad traffic just never materialized and I got here about an hour ago.

I drove by my host's house to make sure I could find it, but didn't want to burst in on them four hours early so I drove back to a bagel shop I had seen on the way in. Now I have lunch, and wireless!

ETA: the bagel shop closes at 4! I couldn't find anyplace else nearby with wireless. Guess I will be showing up early after all.

This afternoon will be a fun show: Latin a la Lounge, cohosted by WXDU's Latin music expert Santa Salsera! We spent a few hours yesterday previewing music and I think it's going to be a great show. I had created a Latin channel on pandora.com to get ideas, and brought a list to Santa Salsera's house. She had everything on the list, no matter how obscure. Kiko Mendive? Check. Noro Morales? Check. In fact she had an album of Noro Morales doing American songs like "Am I Blue" and "Sheik of Araby" as cha-chas. Fun!

2-4 pm today. 88.7 if you're local, wxdu.org if you're not.

One more clip of Ricardo Montalban. This is a fun one: Ricardo flirting and dancing with Rita Moreno and Lana Turner, in Latin Lover.

This makes me feel better about declining the ball ticket:

"Never, ever, ever go to an inaugural ball. They’re terrible. First you get in a taxi and instantly hit terrible traffic. Then the taxi drops you off at some cavernous space, like the Air and Space Museum. Then you get in a long line to drop off your coat. Then, once you’ve dropped off your coat, you get into another long line to get a drink and the whole time you’re surrounded by people you don’t know, and people who don’t know each other." --David Frum

I made arrangements to visit my friend Pru on Tuesday night, rather than trying to drive straight home after the ceremony. The more I thought about it the more it sounded like sheer insanity. This way I can stay off the highway, drive up there on a state road, and spend the evening with an old friend. Traffic coming home will probably still be bad on Wednesday, but not quite as bad, I hope.

In other news of "I cannot believe how well this is all working out," my host in DC took it on herself to get me a Metro pass, so I wouldn't have to deal with buying one on Tuesday morning. I can't get over how thoughtful that was.

This evening driving home from Stoneline, I saw a travel advisory board warning of heavy inaugural traffic and delays on the 20th. This is a sign on I-85 south of Durham! Allowing 6 hours for the drive up (which would normally take 4) is maybe a little optimistic. I'm trying to get there around 6 pm, and I think I'll leave more like 10 am instead of noon. If by some miracle I get there early, I'm sure I can find a cafe with wireless to hang out until my hosts get home from work.

It's going to be cold for the next couple of nights, possibly as low as 9° tomorrow. Winterize your plants! This could be by far the coldest nights since we started gardening, and I'm a bit worried about some of our plants. After several years of it never dropping below about 22° we'd gotten cocky about planting things that aren't supposed to survive here.

We had already put straw on the tenderest plants, and tonight we'll put down more straw and clear plastic. The plastic has to be removed during the day, or it can heat up in the sun and cook the plants. But it adds a few degrees of protection overnight.

I'm not sanguine about the gerber daisies, the artichokes or the hardy amaryllis. The bay leaf may die back to the ground but I think the plant will survive. It's in the warmest spot in the yard -- right in front of a wall that gets full sun, and the exhaust vent from the water heater blows on it -- it will be fine. I hope.

The snapdragons will probably die, but they're easy to regrow from seed and were getting kind of leggy. So that might not be such a bad thing. It will make me sad if the fig dies.

I'm kind of broken up about Ricardo Montalban's death. It wasn't exactly a surprise, but still. He's been one of my favorite MGM stars for a long time. Santa Salsera and I used to have "Ricardo Montalban Night" where we would get together, eat Mexican food and watch his movies. The first movie we watched together was his first English language movie, Fiesta. Here he is from that movie, dancing with Cyd Charisse:

Here Montalban sings "My Heart Beats Faster" to Esther Williams, from Neptune's Daughter:

My favorite Montalban clip is one I could not find online, from Fiesta. His character is an aspiring composer, and sits down at the piano to play his own composition. He plays with surprising conviction and passion, and the scene is genuinely moving. It's one of the highlights of the movie. Someday I have to find out how to rip a clip from a DVD.

It's been a bad day. Ricardo Montalban has died. Best known for Mr. Rourke on Fantasy Island and Khan from Star Trek, Montalban was a wonderful matinee idol in the 40s and 50s. I loved him in Latin Lover with Lana Turner, Fiesta and On an Island With You with Esther Williams, My Man and I with Shelley Winters.

I also love his dramas, like Right Cross, Battleground and Mystery Street. I read an interview with Montalban in which he expressed pride that through his entire career, he never played a character who was demeaning. That's no small achievement for a Mexican actor working at the time that he got his start. Whatever role he played, he always found something positive about the character, something to be proud of. Adios, Ricardo.

Star of The Prisoner and Danger Man and noted misanthropist Patrick McGoohan has died. Farewell, Number Six.

I have a place to stay in DC! Georg wrote to an old friend who lives in Silver Spring and works in the city to ask for advice for me on getting around. And she invited me to stay at her house!

I can hardly believe her generosity. I'm a total stranger, and even Georg hasn't seen her in decades. She says her house is a five minute walk from the bus depot, and she advised me to take the bus instead of the Metro if I can. Apparently the Metro will be insanely crowded and she expressed doubt as to whether the system can really handle it. My invitation came with a map which tells me which Metro station to take -- I'll have to look at the bus map and see how close I can get to there.

So instead of staying in a motel in Fredericksburg and getting up at 4 am to drive to the Metro station, I'll get to spend the evening getting to know an old friend of Georg's, then get up at an early yet reasonable hour Tuesday morning and walk to the bus stop. What a life saver.

I'm still planning to drive up on Monday afternoon and leave on Tuesday afternoon. I think I'll take a look at Google maps and see if I can do anything to minimize the horribleness of the drive. Maybe I can detour to the west and avoid the loop around DC. If I added even 2-3 hours to the drive but avoided the inauguration traffic, well I probably wouldn't end up adding anything to the drive. Because I'm sure 95 around DC will be miles and miles of parking lot.

I can't let a bad lunch bring me down because my ticket to the inauguration arrived today! Now I can finally be sure it's for real. My assigned area pretty far away from the action, in the area behind the reflecting pool. Which is about what I had expected. I hear they'll have lots of big TVs, and thank goodness for that!

It's supposed to be really cold on inauguration day. I think I'll wear long johns instead of tights. With a pair of cute knee socks over the long johns no one will even know. I found out that there's no place to eat anywhere near the Capitol, so I guess I'll be taking a sandwich. They said no bags allowed, I guess I'll wrap it in paper and carry it. Unfortunately my coat is pseudo vintage (I made it from a vintage pattern) and has no pockets.

I hope they don't collect the tickets when we get there. I want to save it for posterity.

Had a truly wretched lunch at Toast today. Everything I've had there before was really good. Today I got a roasted beet bruschetta which was so redolent with raw garlic that even though I only ate a few bites, seven hours later my mouth still burns. I felt queasy all afternoon, and I can only imagine how awful it must have been for the person who was sharing a small office with me. I ended up not going to the big Durham for Obama meeting for the dual reason of my upset stomach and not wanting to offend the other participants. I feel like a head of garlic crawled into my mouth and died.

It's a surprise to have such a bad experience, since their food is normally so good. Well, except that one time I got the cheese sandwich and it wasn't grilled enough, and one of the cheeses was kind of hard inside the sandwich. Now that I think about it, both times it was really busy. Maybe the key is not to eat there when it's busy.

[update: Nine hours, and my mouth still hurts. My god, that taste. I never want to eat garlic again as long as I live, and will eat at Toast again almost as soon.]

It didn't seem that cold out, but I felt so very very cold all day. I sat and shivered at my desk. At my job (the one for which I still have to leave home and go sit at a desk) we don't have control over the temperature in our office, and it's always cold in winter. There's a space heater but I have a bad habit of forgetting to turn it off, so I only use it rarely.

Today I discovered that the big door by the loading dock retains heat. Makes sense: it's a big sheet of corrugated metal in full sun. Of course it absorbs heat. You can feel the heat radiating off the door as you walk by. The door (like much of the facility) is so dirty that I didn't want to touch it. Instead I stood as close as I could, sort of leaned against it without touching it. It felt like standing in front of a fireplace.

Needless to say I did this when no one was around. I don't fancy having to explain what I'm doing if someone catches me warming my hands at the loading dock door.

The cold seems to be running its course. I'm still sneezy but this morning, for the first time in days I don't feel like death warmed over. Unfortunately Santa Salsera and I already decided to postpone today's Latin a la Lounge show, as her busy schedule and my illness prevented us from getting together and reviewing our music.

Starting to work out the details of my trip to DC. We had a brief hope that Georg could go too -- we wouldn't be able to stand together during the ceremony, but the whole Mall will be open to the public so he could at least be there -- but unfortunately his job needs him on the 19th and 20th. Danged responsibilities!

So I'll definitely be going alone, and most likely just for the one day. The plan so far is to stay in a hotel in Fredericksburg, VA on Monday night. Tuesday morning I'll drive to the Metro station, leave my car there and take the Metro into the city. I'm not concerned about finding my way: there will be hundreds of thousands of people going to the same place I'm going, all I'll have to do is follow everyone else. The Metro website advised buying a card in advance, which I'll probably do. Unfortunately this means I have to spend $10 extra for a commemorative card with Obama's face on it -- whoop-de-doo, I still have a box full of campaign stuff with pictures of Obama -- plus whatever they charge for shipping. I guess it will be worth it not to have to wait in line to buy a card on the 20th.

I decided to forego the ticket to the Neighborhood Ball. I know the balls are a big deal, but I don't know if anyone I know will be there, since I'm guessing a lot of the NC people will be at the Southern ball instead. And dealing with the clothes would be a major headache: not only would I have to come up with a dress in a week (which would mean, first of all, cleaning up my sewing area, a scary prospect all on its own), but I'd have to go all the back to my car after the swearing in, find a place to change, and then go all the way back into the city for the ball. Instead I'm just going to go for the swearing in, and maybe stay to watch the parade as well. I read on the Post website that you can't go to both the swearing in and the parade -- with so many people there just won't be time to get from one place to the other. They recommend staying put on the Mall and watching the parade on the Jumbotrons.

Afterwards I'll take the Metro back to my car and then drive home in the evening. Traffic will be pretty horrible and I might spend some time on Google Maps figuring out if I can stay off I-95 for awhile. I have a feeling that every road out of DC will be equally nightmarish.

I won't be totally convinced until I have the invitation in hand, but it would be foolish not to start planning. So, does anyone reading this know DC & can you recommend where I can go to get something to eat after the ceremony? I'm planning to bring a snack for the morning, but since you can't bring big bags, it won't be a big snack, and I'll need a place for lunch afterwards. I'm expecting to wait in long lines anyplace, but assuming it will be worst right near the Mall. Is there a neighborhood I could walk to with a high concentration of decent cafes, something like that?

So I have a cold. And the thing about colds is, a frequent cold symptom for me is insomnia. No idea why. The medicine maybe? Whatever the reason, I can't breathe and I can't sleep. Whine, whine.

Time Warner Cable made slight amends for the looming price increase by finally giving us Bravo a few days ago. The first day we recorded a Project Runway marathon. Like fun! It started in the middle of season 5 and went to the end, and I think this was the first season I managed to see unspoiled.

As always one of the cast got the "bitch edit" in a major way. No spoilers here because I don't even remember her name. You'll know when you see it: she's the one who is rude and immature all the time. After we finished watching the season, Georg found an interview with her which was a classic case of self-delusion. A few choice comments, with translations:

"I just think I’m very animated. With me, what you see is what you get. I’m very honest and truthful and I think it just comes across as rude."
translation: I behave rudely, and then for some weird reason people think I'm rude. Go figure!

"I just became the outcast, I guess probably because of me…When I feel like someone doesn’t like me I don’t really try to make the effort to try to make them like me. I think that’s what happened."
translation: If someone rubs me the wrong way I assume they don't like me, act so badly that I ensure they won't like me, and then for some weird reason they don't like me. Go figure!
Also, if I say "I guess probably because of me" then I don't have to actually understand why.

"Heidi would say the same thing three times, like ‘those are horrible! I can’t believe they walked down the runway!’ So, and you’re out there for four hours listening to this, and people need to realize that. So, yeah, they did get reactions out of me. I’m shocked that no one was the way I was. It just became like jabs over and over again. I just got annoyed, like ‘alright! I heard you the first three times, now you’re just doing it for TV. Making sure you get that comment on camera and get my reaction.’ So they really did get the best of me."
translation: I knew they were trying to provoke me but I have so little self-control that I gave them the footage they wanted anyway. And then for some weird reason I got the bitch edit. Go figure!

"Other than the way I acted towards people to their face, I was very nice to people."
translation: ???

I'm sure that once the show decided she was the bad guy, they aired everything ill-mannered they could find to reinforce that perception. And I can imagine how she would feel like it was unfair. But then again, she gave them the footage. Long ago I read a surprisingly insightful essay by a Real World cast member (I think it was Matt from New Orleans) who said that with editing the show could change the context of what they said, but he still had to own it because the show couldn't make them say something they never said.

Also, Georg and I think that once reality shows have decided who is the outcast, they arrange for that person to arrive last when the cast are reunited. To increase the likelihood that the ones who like each other will have a great time catching up and bonding, and then they'll all give the cold shoulder to the outcast. Watch the finales of shows like Top Chef and Project Runway, where they come back from a hiatus: it happens every time.

It's for real, I have a ticket to the swearing in ceremony. My field organizer is the most amazing person in the world! She had a few tickets to give out and she gave one to me.

So it seems that 239,999 other people and I will get cozy and watch Obama be sworn in -- on a Jumbotron, as I'm sure I'll be too far away to see anything but the backs of people's heads. And here I was all excited about spending that day at home with C-SPAN. Gosh, I have to look at a map of the Metro.

A friend of a friend (of a friend) was chosen to ride on the train to DC with Obama and Biden.

Wow. I mean, I'm excited about maybe being one of 240,000 people to stand around outside in the cold all day, but that? Wow!

Georg found an article on the Washington Post that suggests that email I got is legit. So I typed in my address and this is what came up:

Can this be legit? It has to be some kind of mistake. How the fuck could I have gotten a ticket to the swearing in? I didn't even ask for one! At least I don't think so, I can't remember actually. I know I didn't ask Price because I had friends who did and they told me he had a pool of thousands of people asking for a few hundred tickets.

And if it's real, what do I do? It will only let me select 1 ticket and it would suck to go without Georg. The "change your address" page wouldn't let me change my name -- I tried because they spelled it Sara with no h -- and I've read that tickets with names on them are non-transferable, so I couldn't give the ticket to someone else.

There has to be a catch. I can't possibly have a ticket to the swearing in. This must mean something else besides what it looks like.

That page loads easily this morning ... and goes to an "Update your Profile" page that wants my address. There's no way to see what it is they're offering me until I fill in the address; the "home" link goes back to the same "Update your Profile" page.

This thing is much better done than any phishing scam I've ever seen before: not only are there no misspelled words, the web site appears to be the actual Ticketmaster, and I looked at the email headers & it came from Blue State Digital. Still, the way this thing is set up is incredibly suspicious. I have a hard time believing the real inaugural committee would do this.

[ETA: there's a phone number on the website that is the number of the inaugural committee. I suspect that what they're offering me is the chance to buy a $150 ticket to a ball. In which I have no interest. I did rearrange my work schedule so I can be home on the 20th and watch the swearing in.]

Is anyone who reads this going to the inauguration? I just got an email which claims to be from the Presidential Inaugural Committee and claims to be offering me inaugural tickets.

Did anyone else get this message? If it's a phishing scam then everyone probably got one. It's got to be either outright phishing and isn't from the PIC at all, or it is from the PIC and is offering me the "opportunity" to buy tickets to a $500 rubber chicken dinner or something. Because I thought the only way to get inaugural tickets was from your congressman or senator. I didn't even put in a request for tickets because I knew the demand would be so high.

The email has a link to Ticketmaster, and an account number and password they say is unique to me. The page wouldn't load (yes I did click the link, and yes it did go to Ticketmaster). There are probably ten million other people frantically trying to follow that link right now.

I searched on "inaugural ticket scam" and didn't find anything about this email specifically. Just warnings from back in November not to buy tickets to the swearing-in ceremony. I'll try the link again in the morning and see if I can figure out what this is all about.