Hail

The last several days have been pretty eventful, and I suspect it'll take a few posts to get it all in. Sorry I haven't been blogging all along (you will see that I have plenty to say), but it seems like a bad idea to tell the whole Internet your house will be empty for days, so I didn't. The irony of this will be explained in my next post.
Also, the DSL wasn't yet hooked up in my parents' apartment, where I was staying.

I went to D.C. on Saturday and stuck around until this morning. The ones of these that require more explanation will get their own posts (some with photos!), but some points worth noting, in approximately chronological order:

• Amtrak lied to me.
• I stood in a very long, very cold line at Union Station after midnight.
• I shared a cab with Nina Katz.
• I shared a cab with the nicest apparently very connected and wealthy man in the universe
• My father learned the word "Jumbotron," though he was annoyed that The Washington Post did not define the word when it used it. My explanation that that was because everyone already knows that word surprised him. Was I wrong?
• I prayed with my bishop and an in-person crowd more than fifteen times the size of our whole diocese.
• I ran into a good friend in the midst of a giant inaugural crowd — again.
• I laughed and prayed with several million strangers.
• Both "Hail to the Chief" and "Lift Every Voice and Sing" got stuck in my head. As a combination, you could do a lot worse.
• I met my beautiful new goddaughters.
• I threatened to get too drunk to appreciate my friends, but did not. I am not sure that level of drunk exists, actually, but if it does, I did not achieve it.
• I encountered the least offensive (and most sparkly) pro-life protesters I have ever seen.
• I left the food my parents lovingly prepared for me for the train, and the mystery I'd half-finished, in a cab.
• I failed to eat Mexican food, though that is, food-wise, what I miss most about D.C.