Inauguration Day

I really enjoyed watching the pomp and circumstance of the whole Inauguration proceeding. Dick refused to look at any of it - he busied himself outside bringing wood to the house and moving snow. Or else he sat in a different room reading a book. I'm just hooked on seeing all of the bigwigs and seeing how the women are dressed.

It was fun to see the first families and ex-Presidents and first ladies entering the podium for the oath of office. It's unusual to see a gathering of so many people and recognize all of the faces. The people accompanying and escorting the bigwigs were interesting too. For instance, the announcer actually said, "Ladies and gentlemen, accompanying Mrs. Lynn Cheney are Mrs. Tom DeLay and Mr. Paul Pelosi." Now there's an odd couple!

It was heroic of Chief Justice Rehnquist to make it to the podium for the swearing in. He's so ill - I know it was a real struggle for him to do that. And he was escorted out immediately after "So help me God." He must have had a strong desire to be there.

During the speech, I just listened on the computer while I cleaned out our files in the computer room. I tossed out a bunch of old financial statements and filed away all of the new stuff. Made a new folder for our Subaru and just generally organized papers all afternoon. Finally have all of the year-end tax documents in one place - so that's a good job done.

Made some chili for supper, and it smells so good it's making me hungry! The coverage of the Inaugural Balls begins at 8 p.m. I would really like to watch some of it - it's fun to see how the other half lives. Dick will not be at all interested.

We do have this problem of such an extravagant Inaugural celebration at a time of such widespread human suffering in Iraq and also in South East Asia. It would have been such an excellent plan to tone things down a bit, and send some of that money to the other side of the world. But it didn't happen that way - it's the biggest, splashiest celebration ever. I had the thought when I saw all the flags around the Capitol building that those flags should have been at half mast in honor of dead soldiers. We have felt ever since George was sort of elected the first time that the country has been totally out of our hands. The feeling continues.