| | Sunday, January 18, 2:00am – I hooked up with three other grad students from my program who flew in from LAX (on US Airways, hah, via Charlotte) at Dulles Airport. We eventually made it to our hotel for night #1 with a fourth person from my program, and a friend of one of them. As it turned out, we were able to score a room in the Embassy Suites, right in downtown DC, and it was only $90… thank you Hotwire. Sunday, January 18, 4:00am – For inauguration weekend, the District of Columbia allowed bars to stay open until 5am. With that in mind, a couple of people in my group, particularly the pair that come arrived earliest, still felt like hitting the town, despite it being 2:00am. There was a bit of a wrench into this plan, and that was the free concert that was being held on the National Mall on Sunday, starting at 2:30pm. The person that everybody else was staying with wanted to go to the concert and really early to get a good spot. By early, she wanted the people staying with her to bring their stuff over at about 4:30am. This did not fit into the plans of the three that wanted to go out, nor the two that wanted to sleep. Nor did it fit into anybody’s good idea of how to spend a day… sleep two hours, go stand in the cold for 10 hours, don’t eat for over 12+ hours. Eventually, they settled on the guy in my program and his friend who knew her best to go pick up her key at 4:30am, let the others sleep, and let their friend go to the concert if they want. So at around 4:00am the two of them grabbed their bags, went out in the cold, and walked the 10 blocks to go there. From what I heard, I think they slept after they got there. Originally, the setup was me sharing a pull-out sofa-bed for the night. But since my bunkmate had to go, I had my own bed for all but 30 minutes, despite us starting the night with 6 people in the room. Sunday, January 18, 1:15pm – I made a visit to the National Archives. My law professor told us who were going that our homework was to go take a picture of the constitution. I went, but I’ll be back in time for class Wednesday afternoon, so I took a picture of something that’s just the same, the Magna Carta… A lady next to me asked, “Why do we have the Magna Carta?” That’s a very good question… Before heading to a Metro station, I made a stop on the National Mall to see all the preparation. I was surprised by just how many screens they put up and how close they were. Granted, they still weren’t that big or that plentiful, but when faced with trying to put screens for an extremely open area, I thought it was as good a job as they could do. I exchanged picture takings with a nice couple from New Mexico, and then we were approached to do the same for a man visiting from Turkey. In the picture I took, I was holding a Manila folder of papers that was in my backpack. As I detailed in Part 1, I was covering a bunch of classes last week with another graduate student. I couldn’t cover one class Friday afternoon that I usually grade for, so the other TA collected the papers. She handed them to me in Washington, and just to make sure there was evidence of that particular homework’s 4500 mile trip, I had to take a picture of them in front of the Capitol. Sunday, January 18, 3:45pm – I went up to College Park, Maryland to watch the Conference Championship games with a buddy of mine. We started off with the NFC Championship at the Cornerstone Pub a couple blocks away from the University of Maryland campus. I was a little apprehensive walking in since I was wearing my Cal cap, and we lost to them in September, but everyone was definitely in NFL mode. Considering we were 10 minutes out of DC, the place was like three quarters full of Eagles fan. So much so, right before kickoff the assembled Eagles crowed broke out in a rendition of “Fly, Eagles, Fly…” A friend of my friend was with us, and he was also an Eagles fan. Thankfully though, he’s one of those quiet, whoa he’s a sports fan type of fans. Sort of reminds me of one of my roommates, who took me a year to figure out was a Lakers fan, as you know, usually their loud and boorish. Watching the intensity level on people’s faces, even before pre-game, made me think, well, people in the East Coast just by default are a couple notches angrier than Westerners. You could see the intensity level ramp up more as the Cardinals built up their early lead. I jokingly uttered, when do people start calling to fire Andy Reid? Sunday, January 18, 4:30pm – While fairly neutral, I am tacitly rooting for the Cardinals. Not that I’m showing it other than not cheering when Eagles do thing, and doing referee-like hand gestures on Cardinal touchdowns. Since again, I had my Cal hat on, I could have tricked people into thinking I was DeSean Jackson and thus Eagles fan. The strongest reaction I had all day was when he dropped the first pass thrown to him (although it was a little behind him). If DeSean didn’t hold on to his juggled touchdown later in the game, I don’t know if I would’ve made it out alive. Sunday, January 18, 5:15pm – The Eagles, down 18, get the ball first to start the 3rd and are forced to punt. A girl in the crowd yelled out, “Fire Andy Reid.” Oh, there it is. Did I say two notches angrier at the beginning of the game, I meant five notches angrier… Sunday, January 18, 6:15 pm – A confluence of intrigue is going on right now. The Eagles have stormed back stirring the Eagles crowd. For a while, a handful of non-Eagles fans, particularly one guy who looked like he had to have been from New York, were running roughshod on the crowd, singing the praises of Kurt Warner. Now momentum wears #36… I was going to say momentum wears green, but 36 is more accurate. Of like the 15 Eagles jersey’s being worn, all were for Westbrook except one Brian Dawkins (20) and one Jason Avant (81, with duct tape over Owens name). Meanwhile, on a more local level, the waitress has cutoff this bumbling tall guy in the next table over. This guy has seemed a bit out of it ever since he showed up. He just stands next to the table, towering over it for a little while, then sits down. When he sits down he usually elbows our table or bumps his chair into it. Now he gets up, leans a little, and looks as if he is about to topple over like a chopped down tree. At this point, I’m not feeling confident about my personal safety. On a more positive note, finally the first non-white or black guy showed up at this place. And funny enough, it’s another doppelganger, this time of one of my former students. Although, the guy who walked in wasn’t as good a doppelganger as the others, being an apparently half-Asian version of a White guy. Sunday, January 18, 8:30pm – For the AFC Championship Game, I went to the house of some friends of my friend, two of which are people in one of my Fantasy Baseball leagues I’ve never met before. My friend introduced us by our team names. Introducing me one of them, my friend goes, this is Gimmeapid… I had to ask him to say that again, because for the last two years, I thought his team neame is Gimmepaid… Not that either variant means anything… About half of the people there were Ravens fans, and the other half are outsiders with no rooting interest. I was kind of surprised there were really hard core Ravens fans since they haven’t been around that long. Makes me wonder if they were only football fans since the Ravens started, or they intensely liked another team, and became turncoats… Sunday, January 18, 9:30pm – The Ravens are starting off very poorly, and one of the guys isn’t taking it too well. Apparently when his teams lose, he gets a little depressive and frustrated, thus explaining why his Fantasy Baseball teams have extreme turnover. He disappears from the basement and doesn’t come back until halftime. He watches the game upstairs, and as it turns out, we have a bit of a delay downstairs. So, we can tell what’s about to happen based on the thuds, or lack of thuds coming from the floor above us. What’s kind of funny about the Baltimore Ravens super-fan is that he kind of breaks the mold of his field a little bit. He’s kind of an intense, and thus not so mild-mannered, meteorologist. Funny still, is that he lives with a wine-living, lone-star flag flying, Texan who did his undergrad at Oklahoma. Finally, their third roommates is an Indian guy. Now, that’s not that odd in particular, but he was the first for certain non-White or non-Black guy I ran into today. Sunday, January 18, 10:30pm – How To Get Killed Tip #81, say you take Terrell Owens’ side within 50 miles of Philadelphia… thank goodness I was only within 100 miles… Monday, January 19 – I was supposed to meet back up with the other students from my program for a day trip to Philadelphia. However, since they partied it up too late the previous night, they didn’t get up until noon. They also got scared by people telling them they were crazy to try and do the trip because of road closures. I don’t buy that reasoning, because they would’ve avoided the road closures because to get Philadelphia from Washington, you did not need to go through the City of Washington. You only had to go around the suburbs on the Beltway. Most of the closures were interior of the Beltway. Perhaps though, it was a good idea to not go to Philly since it was snowing in Baltimore and northward. While in Baltimore it was looking like a White Christmas, TV footage showed that in Washington, only 35 miles south, it was not even cloudy… I ended up hanging out with my professor as he visited a couple of old friends he knew back from when he lived in Baltimore, along with a friend of his from Elementary School who came down from New York for the inauguration. While perhaps less exciting than a trip to Philadelphia would have been, it was interesting to spend Martin Luther King Day talking with African-Americans. My professor is originally from Ghana, and so are most of the people we visited Monday. I ended up getting fed a couple of times, and was surprised to find that Ghanian’s staple food is rice. Perhaps this explains why Ghana is one of the most stable, more industrialized countries in sub-Saharan Africa. |
