Having a Ball! (Or not)

Once the Inauguration ceremonies were over, I had to make my way to the Convention Center. I would have liked to have stayed on the Mall because the parade was going to be broadcast live on the jumbotrons, but I needed to report at about the same time that the parade was going to start. Getting where I needed to be with about a million other people also trying to get someplace meant that I didn't have time to hang around.

What can I say? It was FREEZING! I was standing in the middle of the street scanning tickets. Wind chill brought the temperature down into the single digits. And, even though I had warmers tucked into my gloves and shoes, within half an hour my fingers and toes were beyond numb.

I was scanning tickets at the entrance for the Neighborhood Ball. I saw a handful of celebrities, but I have to say that I was concentrating so hard on trying to get the tickets to scan that I barely made eye contact with any of the people. There were a number of people that went by that I thought, "Hmm, you look familiar."

It was fun, for about an hour or two. After that things started to break down just a bit. There weren't enough of us to take frequent breaks because some volunteers left without telling anyone and never came back. Our team captain disappeared to warmer areas and wasn't there to help when we had situations to deal with. Ticketmaster didn't send anyone to be on site, so when the scanners started malfunctioning (probably due to the extreme cold), there wasn't anyone to help out. Secret Service was telling us that no one could go through unless they had a valid ticket. Yeah, great times.

Here we are just before getting started when we were still excited.