Blah blah blah

Like all good Americans (except those equally good Americans who chose to watch something a little more entertaining), I dutifully sat through the State of the Union address last night. I tried to listen carefully, but I must admit, I didn't retain a lot of what was said.

Thinking back on the speech, all I can really remember is a droning voice saying stuff like,

"blah blah blah Iraq blah blah Freedom blah blah blah marriage is between a man and a woman blah blah blah Freedom blah blah social security blah blah blah danger blah blah blah blah Freedom blah blah blah social security blah blah..."

I know that was bad of me. I'm sure some serious things were discussed, but I just really didn't care to listen too intently since I already knew what was going to be said.

The night wasn't a total waste, though. Watching the speech transported me back to September 2000 when Ed and I visited Washington as tourists. We made tour arrangements before the trip with our representative, expecting nothing more than tickets for the White House tour and maybe tickets to a Capitol tour. Much to our suprise and great thrill, the congressional wannabe aide guy who was in the representative's office when we arrived, took us on a very cool personal/private tour of the Capitol building. We got to walk through the famous basement tunnels from the congressional office building to the Capitol building itself. He then proceeded to take us all through the building to see things we had no idea even existed. At one point, we paused outside a closed door, he opened the door and invited us to follow him in, and we found ourselves standing on the floor of the US House of Representatives, represented terribly crudely by the stick figure drawing below:

I nearly soiled myself. From the best I can remember, we stood right in front of the seat where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was sitting last night.

I know most people wouldn't think that was quite as cool as I thought it was, but I was pretty much in another world at that point. The shear magnitude of history that has been made in that very room was a bit overwhelming to me. I could see in my mind's eye FDR in that room telling the country about "a date which will live in infamy," JFK standing at the podium encouraging the country to send a man to the moon, and all of the other big moments that have happened there.

Amazingly enough, our tour didn't end there, either. Next, we found ourselves strolling through the Speaker's office and out onto his private balcony overlooking the Mall, with probably one of the most spectacular bird's eye views in all of Washington - the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and Arlington House all lined up. It was quite a tour and one reason I'll always be grateful that we visited DC the year before 9/11. I have a feeling we won't see any of those cool things on our next trip.