The physics of frigid

The 'noguration is coming up, nobody's going to be able to drive or park or walk in unsanctioned areas but downtown businesses will try find housing for staff so that they can stay open to feed and shake down the crowds, of course today Metro is demonstrating its inability to handle even seasonal temperature variations so everyone's dooooomed come Tuesday, and it's so cold outside that the wires of my earrings conducted an icy burn straight through my earlobes as I shuffled toward work this morning. If it weren't for the fact that we're going to have Obama in office come Tuesday night, I'd pack it in, curl up under the duvet, moan about how returning to Pilates is making my bits hurt, and not come out until people have stopped talking about the new Battlestar Galactica while I'm only halfway through season 3 on and don't want to know who the twelfth Cylon is.

(Whew. The cold makes my sentences run together. And I did go to Pilates, a whole hour of it, at the Big Sexy Gym. Which has a plasma TV in the women's dressing room, because you might swoon if you missed an ort of CNN while you were pulling off your layers? I don't know. I do know that it was the same when I left as it was when I got there: "Plane still in river. Cause still birds. Still no terrorists involved. Still nobody dead. STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS." Thanks, I'll...be over here, gasping my way through the Hundred.)

But no, it's gonna be fun: We're going to have Renegade, Renaissance, Radiance, and Rosebud, concrete evidence that the Secret Service bad-asses have secret marshmallow fluff compartments for hearts; an epic party or seven no matter where in town you are; and mebbe a few more Hello Cupcake! Very Berry Obama treats (multi-berry cakes of surprising tastiness, topped with cream cheese icing laced with real vanilla and bedecked with stars-and-bars sugar pellets and a little American flag). Worth getting up for.

The contrast with the previous inaugurations is stark. The Bush swearings-in and -at were a pretty bitter time for most DC locals, who vote Democratic in overwhelming numbers, and it felt like the revelers were a hostile occupying force, which in retrospect makes dark sense. This time around, the locals are basically expecting a logistical meltdown that not even the cheerily efficient Obama-style organizing crews can do more than mitigate, and yet most of us who are not in Virginia are doing our grumbling without real rancor. I'll be hosting La Mère, a NoVa refugee who wants to make an effort to get downtown on Tuesday, and we hope to avoid WMATA's planned failures by taking the bus into town. We've already agreed on a strategic retreat to my office, which isn't too far from the Mall, should we start feeling the need for heat, bathrooms, and keys-only access; should the weather be too parky or the crowds too horrible, we've got the option of crashing IE's watch party.

And if it turns out that Barack is the twelfth Cylon, frak it. I for one will welcome our new mechanical overlords.