Horses who came to watch over the Inauguration of President Barack Obama (main post still on hold)

Until I find the time to finish the inaugural post, I can at least post images of a few horses that came to watch over the crowd on Inauguration Day. This was taken shortly after the swearing in, as the crowd was dispersing from off the national mall and Lisa and I were looking for Margie, who had disappeared.

By now, I had found Margie, but I lost both her and Lisa after I stopped to photograph this horse. It took me about 15 minutes to find them.

And here is a curious thing - using this laptop, these photos look pale and washed out after I put them online in the blog, but they don't in Photoshop.

I need to figure out why.

For the first time since her injury, we take Margie out of the guest house and into D.C. (Inaugural still on hold)

The process was complicated and I won't go into it, because it is 1:00 AM and I just want to go to bed, but today Lisa and I got Margie out of the guesthouse and into D.C. It took much longer than I had anticpated to get her ready, but when she was, her hair was clean and so were her clothes - no more hospital-blue paper pants. She looked nice.

We did a bunch of driving around and then wound up at the Muesum of the American Indian. We checked out a wheelchair and this fellow helped us get Margie into it.

As for the black and white, I am not trying to be artistic or to recall the good old days when I shot nothing but black and white film. I left my big cameras behind today and only took the pocket camera. I always keep it set to RAW, but somehow it had switched to JPEG with the color balance set to tungsten.

I tried and tried to come up with a suitable color balance and, had the images been RAW, it would have been no problem, even with the tungsten setting. But I could not do it, so I just made them black and white.

Well, the light inside the cafe of the Museum of the American Indian must have been tungsten.

They close the museum at 5:30 and by the time we finished eating, it was already after 5:00, so we didn't get to see much of it. I had thought we could go back tomorrow, but Margie says, no, it is too hard in the wheelchair. She does not want to do it again.

So it looks like we will just have to come back to Washington, D.C., another time. Maybe when the cherry blossoms bloom.

Outgoing President says Goodbye; Chris Matthews through the window - Inauguration post must wait one more day

President Bush says goodbye. As he does, a low, murmuring "boo" rises from many spread throughout the crowd. Then voices, scattered throughout, begin to sing, "sha-na-na-naah, sha-na-na-naah, hey-heyeeh, good-bye."

As for me and my inaugural post, I was unable to complete it today. When one's wife gets hurt far from home and enters a temporary state of helplessness, her care takes precedence over the blog.

I did get the pictures edited down to a reasonable number, however, and I do expect to post it tomorrow.

Still, I felt that I needed to post something today, so I thought I would throw in the outgoing President and then deal with the new one tomorrow.

I know - the nomination of President Barack Obama will be ancient history by then, but sometimes things go that way.

After the inauguration concluded, the three of us (Margie, Lisa and I) happened to walk by the portable studio MSNBC had set up on the National Mall as Chris Matthews and guest Norah O‘Donnell told viewers what they had actually saw this day. Matthews said the "booing" of President Bush had been in poor form, but was an accurate reflection of how the nation as a whole felt about the man.

 I shot a few pictures through the huge studio windows.

Lisa wanted to get on TV, so she took a seat on the MSNBC bleachers, which are frequently panned by the cameras. She was enthralled, and stayed there for hours and hours and hours, not giving one damn about the cold that had all of DC talking.

I would have been happy to stay, too, but cold and exhaustion had overwhelmed my Margie, so we walked to the Metro, rode the underground train to Friendship Heights, where she fell and broke herself.

I did not tell Lisa until I picked her up at the  Friendship Heights Metro station and then drove her back to the home where we were staying. She was having a great time, and I could see no point in putting a damper on it prematurely.

Besides, she had never before navigated the Washington, DC Metro system on her own and I did not want her to be distracted with worry and then maybe wind up on the wrong train.

I find myself all alone with Kalib - well, not quite; sorry, cats, for ever saying that - two are never alone when there are cats about

As usual on Monday and Tuesday evenings, I strapped Kalib into his car seat and then drove him and Margie to Wal-Mart, where I dropped her off to go to work.

Normally, Jacob and Lavina return home about the same time that I get back - sometimes, they even meet us at Wal-Mart and take Kalib away from his grandpa. Hey - I know that's me, isn't it? "Grandpa!"

Even though I like being a grandpa, I can't get used to hearing that word applied to me, because it sounds like a word used to describe someone old, whereas I am still young. Absolutely. I am young and I intend to stay that way, no matter how old I get.

But I digress. Tonight, his parents didn't pick Kalib up. They called to say that there had been an accident on the Parks Highway and they were stuck in traffic that moved only occassionally, and then not very far.

So when we got home, I sat Kalib on the floor and watched him as he scooted around. He often looked up at me and made walrus sounds. I wonder where he learned to do that?

I made walrus sounds right back. I learned to do it from listening to walrus, and to Eskimos, making Walrus sounds during certain motion dances, or even just when they are very happy, like when they've caught a whale.

Given what happened with Martigne, you might think it wreckless of me to let Kalib get this close to Royce, but if you knew Royce, you would know the cat is in far more danger from the toddler than the toddler is from the cat.

As much fur as Royce has, he has lost great clumps of it to Kalib's yanking hands. Royce's eyes sometimes go wide when this happens, but Royce will take a mauling from someone he loves and never strike back.

He is that kind of cat.

And he is growing old - so very old.

And no kitten will ever call him, "Grandpa." 

Sorry about that, Royce.

Post-accident car shopping, part III: We try Wasilla

Soon it was the next day, Saturday, and I did not want to go to Kendall Ford. I didn't want to go back to Anchorage, either. I just wanted to stay home, but we had just over two days before we had to return the rental car to Enterprise and I had to get this car shopping done.

So I dropped Margie off at Wal-Mart after lunch and then headed to Kendall Ford, right here in Wasilla, Alaska. What you see above is what I saw when I got there, right after I stepped out of the rental car. For those of you who care about this kind of thing, the temperature was about -20 F (compared to -50's and -60's in several Interior Alaska communities).

This is Bob, the salesman who was standing at the door when I entered. He used to be a photographer in Livingston, Montana, before he left that state for Alaska to escape the teeming crowds. He immediately took my case and brought me into his cubbyhole. I told him that I was mighty interested in the Toyota RAV, but was willing to take a look at the Escape.

He said that the RAV was a real good car, but the Escape was even better. I told him the Toyota salesman told me that the Escape was a great car, but the RAV was even better. He said one could look up comparisons on the internet and then he was quite certain the Escape would come out ahead.

We talked about other aspects, too, like gas mileage, insurance, colors and such.

I was tired and sleepy, so he gave me a cup of coffee. I appreciated the generosity and the caffeine worked okay, but the coffee was not very good.

Bob elicited the help of a colleague named Steve to take me on a test drive of a red Escape, the color that I had requested. It took about half-an-hour for him to get it warmed up enough where he felt comfortable taking me out in it.

In the meantime, I chatted with Bob, and sipped very slowly on that coffee.

Here we go on the test drive. Driving the Taurus, even with winter-tires and studs, I have become accustomed to slipping and sliding a bit everywhere I go around here this time of year. The Escape just had factory tires and no studs. We searched out icy roads, one with a steep hill.

The Escape handled beautifully. It did not slip, it did not slide. As we approached an icy intersection, a guy in a pickup truck ran a stop sign right in front of us, within collision distance. I slammed on the brakes. The Escape stopped in short order.

After we returned, Bob wanted to make a deal with me right then, but I told him I had to discuss it with Margie and that I wanted to compare the Escape and the RAV on the web and sleep on it. I told him I still favored the Toyota, which I had never driven. I told him I would bring Margie back to see the Escape and go for a drive in it.

He said, "okay." He gave me a sheet with numbers on it, something neither of the other two salesman had done. That was where he had the advantage, because those numbers were better than the numbers for the Toyota.

I got on the computer and looked up many comparisons between the RAV 4 and the Escape. They consistently came out exceedingly close together, but with a slight advantage to the RAV.

After I picked Margie up from work and drove her home, I found an email from Bob in my computer. He had sent me a copy of the vehicle sticker. No other salesman emailed me any information. Margie wondered why I only looked at the Escape and the not the Fusion. So I sent an email to Bob and he responded with the same numbers for the Fusion.

Soon it was Sunday. I did not want to go back to Kendall and I did not want to drive to Anchorage. At noon, Jake, Lavina and Kalib joined me in the rental car and we drove to IHOP to meet Margie for breakfast. I had already eaten oatmeal earlier, but so what.

Here we are, driving to IHOP. It is cold weather that makes exhaust thick like this. I bet you could hardly even breathe in Fairbanks on this day.

Margie, Melanie, Lisa and Lavina all accompanied me to look at the Fusion. Margie had slipped on the ice in the Wal-Mart parking lot, had fallen and hurt her knee. She was pretty uncomfortable.

Steve set out to warm up the Fusion. After about 15 minutes, I grew impatient and wanted to take the test drive. "I don't want you to get cold," he said, "maybe we should let it warm up a little longer."

"We're Alaskans," I answered. "It's not going to bother us."

"Okay," he said, "we'll go now."

Here is Melanie, scraping off the windshield just before the test drive. The Fusion handled nice, but it did slip and slide a bit, as one would expect. Then we took another ride in the Escape. I wanted Margie to drive but her knee hurt too bad.

Afterward, of all the cars that we had looked at, Margie was leaning toward the Fusion. Melanie was working hard to find a way to steer us away from Ford altogether. I still liked the RAV best. Bob insisted that he did not want to pressure us, but he did want to make the sale before we left.

He said he had talked to the guy in the big office and he had told him that if we agreed to buy the car tonight, he would throw in an auto start - but only tonight. After tonight, the auto-start would not be available.

Even so, we left to go home and think about it. 

I am not quite sure how we came to what we came to, because all the time I liked the RAV best but had resigned myself to the Fusion but, come Monday, Margie and I were talking. We had to get the deed done before evening, because we needed to turn the rental car back in.

(I must note that Melanie offered to let us borrow her car for a week or two and she would walk about Anchorage and ride the bus and have Charlie take her here and there. It would be worth it, she said, to give us more time to think about it and make the right choice - but I could not take my daughter's transportation from her.)

I felt under terrible pressure. I did not want to drive back to Anchorage and start haggling with Toyota again. I did not want to go back to Kendall.

And then, somehow, we decided to go with the Escape.

So I called Bob and told him to get it ready, "but only if you throw the autostart back in," I said. "Otherwise, we go to Anchorage." When the time came, we drove to Kendall, but before we got there we stopped at A&W/KFC. Here we are, in the drive through. I don't know who the woman ahead of us is. Margie ordered chicken strips, mashed potatoes and Diet Pepsi. I ordered a hamburger and fries, plus Pepsi. 

I have no idea what the woman in front of us ordered.

We parked in the lot to eat our lunch. This raven came hopping to the car. The raven asked me for a french fry, so I gave him one. Or her one. How would I know?

Here we are, in Bob's cubby hole, the Escape that will soon be ours parked outside the window. I do not know who the man is, and I have no idea who he is talking to. I was kind of worried that he might lean against the Escape, but he didn't.

Bob said the man in the office was unhappy that he had thrown the autostart back in. 

One always wonders what really gets said back in the office.

So we financed the Escape for six years, at 4.7 percent interest. This is Ryan, the guy who put the financing together. He is punching numbers. Or maybe he is crunching them. We've got to pay them.

Just before we drive away, Bob points out things like where the coolant goes, how to find the dipstick, the head-bolt heater plug in - stuff like that. 

Then we drove off into the night, me in the Escape, Margie in the Caravan. Her knee still hurt, but she was able to drive it.

Sure enough, when we dropped the Caravan off at Enterprise, they blamed us for the chipped windshield. They hung on to our $50 deposit, said it would be used to fill in the chip and anything left over would be refunded back to our credit card. I protested, because we had nothing to do with any chip in the windshield. He said they had records and could only go by the records, but if someone else, somewhere else, found a record of the already chipped windshield, then we would get the whole $50 back.

I don't hold it against the guys behind the desk. They're just doing their job. Still, those little chips can be hard to see on a walk-around, hard to distinguish from beads of ice. So I am aggravated, to get charged by Enterprise for something that I had nothing to do with.

But that's how it is.

"I think we did the right thing," Margie said as we drove home. "I feel good about it. We bought an American car from an American company. We're bolstering the economy."

And not only that, but in our conversations with Bob, I learned that he has a cat, a Siamese. That cat is always there to greet him when he comes home from work.

Thanks to us, Bob can buy more catfood for that cat.

I feel pretty good about that.