I just found out the DC road closures started an hour ago, which was about an hour too late for me to do anything about it. My car is still parked downtown and therefore stuck now for the duration. It hasn't gotten towed so far; wish me luck.
I'm already exhausted. Part of that is staying up until four o'clock in the morning participating in an impromptu dance party with my old friends from the Parma campaign office, granted, but it's also the added effort required to accomplish everyday things around here right now. Just a few examples of things that haven't worked for me in the last 24 hours: my metro card, the metro, the cab company phone number, my air mattress (slow leak), the ladies' room (if a complete absence of toilet paper counts as "not working," and for me it does), the credit card system at the bar, the ATM machine, basic planning and communication skills.
With the temporarily extended bar hours (til 4 am), DC is like New York's little sister that gets to stay up late just this one time for the special party. You can tell she's pretty excited about it, and also that she's not quite ready to hang with the grown-ups. The cab situation is dire, the metro inexplicably closed at midnight last night, and I can't think of a worse time for a bar to turn cash-only than that moment of the night when everyone is ready to put a lot of unnecessary drinks on a bar tab.
But it's all very fun anyway. Even though people are stuffed in every nook and cranny of the city, everyone is being VERY polite. There's tons of Obama goodwill in the air and especially courteous "excuse me"s and "thank you"s on every corner. It feels a little like when the Sox won the series for the first time in 2004 and I joined in the celebratory frenzy in Kenmore Square. Yeah, there was mass chaos, riot squaders, and the real possibility of death by trampling, but you could really feel the love too.
So, Happy MLK Day from DC, where I'm feeling the love...
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