Purple is the new Silver

We drove down to Capitol Hill today to pick up the Inauguration tickets from Congressman Perriello's office. I didn't realize when they said "you can pick them up from 10 to 2" that that's what the other 243,999 ticket holders were also told. We brought the kids, thinking we'd waltz right in and they could finally get to see in person what they're always watching on C-SPAN. As it turns out, there were crazy lines into every House and Senate office building. And there were just a few streets closed and "No Parking" signs up because apparently some kind of event is happening tomorrow. Couldn't they just mail these out? Don't Congressfolks get free use of the postal service??

Anyway, after about an hour wait (the kids were great!), we finally got in and went upstairs to Congressman Perriello's office. I think I've mentioned this here before, but this was a pretty amazing come-from-way-the-heck-behind victory over the incumbent Republican down in southwest Virginia. And these tickets were a big thank you to Mike and Pat (Ali's folks) for all their hard work on the campaign. So we walk into the office, and we've been building this up for Jake to keep him interested and it looked like someone had just moved in after the previous tenant lost their deposit. Ok, it was such a close race that Tom probably had less time than others to get their offices set up, but I almost gave him my GSA business card so he could order some paperclips and pencils.

So Tom wasn't there, but we didn't expect him to be. One of his staff gave us the tickets and Ali and Pat were excited because they were "Purple" tickets and closer in than they expected. So Ali tried to start up a conversation with this girl and says "Wow purple tickets! Where will you be tomorrow?" She barely looked up from her Blackberry to say: "I'll be at the inauguration."

Tom, if you read this blog-- and I can't see why you wouldn't-- you might want to find someone a bit more friendly to sit up at that front desk. Oh, and thanks for the tickets.

If anyone wants to see where Ali and Pat will be tomorrow, here's a link.