SCAVENGING FOR FUN

NICEST GIFT OF THE WEEK: look at the lovely roses Maxy got me

Yesterday was awesome. In the morning, we watched 'Eagle vs. Shark', which was not awesome. It's a quirky indie film from New Zealand, with Jermaine from 'Flight of the Conchords' in it and it was kind of fun, but brilliant.

After lunch, we went to the National Gallery - somewhere I'm ashamed to say we have yet to visit - to do a scavenger hunt.

I get an email once a week, letting me know about events coming up in DC and offering cut-price tickets and stuff. That's how we went to the baseball in Baltimore and the basketball the other day. And the scavenger hunt yesterday.

On our way to the Gallery (we walked all the way!), we came across a game of hockey being played on rollerblades in front of the OEOB, just by the White House, which was pretty cool.

However, the scavenger hunt was SO much cooler! Maxy and I were a team of two, though there were lots of other teams, mostly of four (all adults). We were met by a representative of the scavenger hunt company who set the scene of a murder that had been committed in the gallery.

She wasn't very into it, but I was! Basically, a curator had been murdered and some random numbers had been found in his drawer, along with a diary with blanks in some of the sentences. We had to fill in the blanks in the sentences by solving clues found in paintings in the gallery.

We were given a time limit of two hours, and dashed off to solve the mystery. It was SO fun and a really good way to see the gallery for the first time, because you're running around everywhere, so get to see what is there to see, so that you can come back at your leisure and go straight to the bits of interest.

The hunt was really tricky and we found some of the clues quite difficult to solve, which we really liked. And you had to have a bit of outside knowledge to solve them, too - with some clues, it wasn't enough just to look at the painting and spot an object or whatever - so it was a real challenge.

The numbers left in the curator's drawer corresponded with the numbers of our answers, so when we had all our answers, we took the first letter from each of the numbered answers in question and that revealed the killer.

We were one of the first teams to finish and then, when all the answers were marked and points totted up - it was very tense - we were in joint first place! I thought the fact that we'd done it faster would mean we would win, but unfortunately the time limit seemed singularly spurious.

Instead, we had to go head-to-head with the - 3-person - team in a tie-break. The question was: In what year was the boardgame Clue created?

I love Clue(do) and was sure I'd seen an anniversary edition out recently, so we said 1958 and the other team said 1964, I think. The answer was 1948, so we won!!

the proud victors with their prizes

I so enjoyed the scavenger hunt and definitely want to do more. There's one in the Museum of American History, which I think would be awesome.

High on our great victory, we hopped and skipped just up the road to Chinatown, to see 'Role Models', which was every bit as brilliant as we'd hoped. It was just great.

This morning, I helped out at Sunday School and then we had a nice webcam chat with our friends Matt and Jilly, before watching 'Recount' - the HBO movie about how Al Gore lost the 2000 election.

It's a film we've been wanting to see for ages, but had to wait until the Democrats were back in power, before we could bear to watch how the Republicans basically stole the presidency for Bush. It was so depressing, but brilliant. The thing that interested me the most was how anti-democracy the Republicans were when there was a query about the result in Florida. According to the film (which was made from a liberal perspective but claims to be telling the truth), the Republicans didn't want any kind of re-vote or recount, even though there had been critical errors in the voting process, so the result was potentially wrong. Bunch of cowboys.

OBAMA WEATHER

Even the weather is better, now Obama has won the election! It was FREAKY warm tonight, with people sitting outside restaurants, eating on pavements as if it was a balmy evening on the French riviera, or something.

I got disastrous news today - Anne is moving out from next door! Her landlord has asked Megan and her to commit to a 12-month lease, but Megan is confident that she'll be moving in with Jonathan within the next year, so doesn't want to sign up for that long with Anne.

Meanwhile, Anne doesn't want to find another flatmate and can't afford to live next door by herself, so she's looking for a place to live by herself! Noooooooooo. Fortunately she's keen to stay in the immediate vicinity, as Hugh lives round the corner and I'm her new BFF. But still, it'll suck to have to put shoes on to go and see her. At the moment, we just nip in and out of each other's flats like dorms.

I spent today battling away at the online election stuff, which was dull and overwhelming, but needs to be done. Then this evening, we went to see Joel McHale live at the Warner Theatre.

Joel McHale is the host of one of our favourite shows on TV - 'The Soup' - which is a bit like a much more snarky version of 'Harry Hill's TV Burp': Joel McHale is an acerbic (and hot) comedian who takes the mickey out of ridiculous TV clips from stuff like 'The Hills' and anything involving Miley Cyrus. He's hilarious.

So we were very excited to get tickets to see him do standup here in DC, though a bit perturbed when his warmup man - and friend, apparently - appeared to be stuck in the 70s and just churned out terrible, terrible jokes about how rubbish his wife is and aren't women a pain in the ass and all this ridiculously unfunny stuff that hasn't been heard - or at least laughed at - since blackface was thought acceptable. He was awful. Never have I been so tempted to heckle, but that would probably have made his day, because I was a woman and would just be confirming his point. Ugh.

I wasn't feeling at all warmed up by the time the mighty (literally - he's ginormous. Though I appreciate you wouldn't get that from the photo) McHale came on stage and was looking forward to him redeeming the whole night. But, while he was kind of amusing, he never quite got beyond the level of humour dished out by your funniest mate in the pub. It was ok, but really not great and certainly not on a par with 'The Soup'.

A WHOLE NEW WORLD

ELECTION-ECLIPSING TRIUMPH OF THE DAY: I saw an Alaskan numberplate!! We're only missing Alaska and Idaho, then we'll have them all! Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, though...

It's so nice, everyone seems so much happier now the election is over.

Since 94% of DC citizens voted for Obama, I should imagine it's because he won. And that would certainly account for the irrepressible jauntiness apparent in Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on the telly. However, I suspect even Republicans are at least relieved the whole shebang is over, if not pleased with the result.

Nate Silver of the website fivethirtyeight.com has emerged - with Rachel Maddow - as one of the liberal stars of the election, applying rules of statistics and predictions usually used in sports betting to politics. Turns out today that he called almost every single state race correctly. Max hearts him.

However, with Maine-gate from Tuesday night, Max proved himself to be no slouch in the stars-of-the-election stakes.

As you might imagine, after our day and night of excitement, we did very little yesterday but noodle. We watched the terrible 'Made of Honor' romcom, napped and eventually fell asleep at 7.30pm.

It was with a very heavy heart that I realised this morning that I could no longer put off the work on the online activity during the election that I've been given to do by Lib Dems man back home and so very reluctantly got down to work. It's been weeks since I did the half-a-day I was meant to be doing each week since June and so I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks making up for it and trying to wrangle the gigantic volume of information held in countless emails that I've received from Max and the Obama campaign over the past months, but filed away immediately, rather than processing. Ugh.

Max has been such a massive help with this project and it'd be either impossible or at least unbelievably time-consuming to do it without him, as he's reading all the political blogs every day anyway, so just pings things over when he thinks they might help me. It's so brilliant - both for this work and just generally in life - that I have my very own political whizz who I can just ask questions and get immediate and comprehensive summaries of what's going on in the world.

I'm very amused by the in-fighting that's going on regarding Palin, with some Republicans turning on their own and Palin retreating to Alaska. Can you imagine if she was now vice-president?!! I'm very excited for Amtrak Joe, getting to live just down the road from his office. Since being sworn in to the Senate (by the bedside of his critically ill son. *sigh*) over 30 years ago, he has kept his promise to return to Delaware every single night, to have supper with his family. As awesome as this is, he must not know what to do with all the time he has on his hands, now that his commute has been slashed from 90 mins to 20 mins, courtesy of a motorcade!

This evening we went over to Capitol Hill for our first curry since getting to the US, with Alison and Brewster. Apparently Alison really didn't have the most fun, watching the election results come in with Emily and Brewster - having been in two minds about who to vote for - reverted to kind and went for McCain, and doesn't seem too pleased with the result, even though he thinks Obama will do good things for the economy, with the people he's surrounding himself with.

Ah well, too bad! *grin*

PHOTOS: ELECTION DAY

Click HERE for photos of my election day experience

YES WE CAN!!!!

Holy moly. I can't believe it!! President Obama - COOL!!!

I'd like to say that I spent yesterday at the beating heart of the electoral process, participating in democracy and helping our new President to the White House by ferrying people to and from the polls in the minivan I specially hired.

However, I did not.

I was so excited when I woke up, singing the American national anthem in the shower and donning my spiffy Obama t-shirt with pride, ready to play my part in making history.

I felt very conspicuous in my Obama shirt, as if people were noting it when I walked past, and either silently poo-pooing me, or smiling in solidarity.

I rocked up at the car rental place to collect my minivan, with plenty of time to get to Obama HQ to start picking up the people I'd offered to give a lift to, having called the car rental place yesterday to confirm that they'd have a minivan for me and being snippily assured by the man that there would be a minivan there, implying I was in some way square and/or fussy to be checking.

Hmph. Turns out I was right to be dubious, because they didn't have a minivan for me. They helpfully suggested I take the metro to the airport, because that branch had one. Whatever happened to the famed American customer service?!

Cutting my losses, I dashed over to another car rental place I've used before, established that they did have a minivan and then waited AGES for them to bring it round for me. Eventually, I was on the road, but didn't get to Obama HQ until 10am, by which time everyone who needed a lift had been looked after! I was so sad. I was really looking forward to helping out, in lieu of actually voting.

I sheepishly came home, where Max was hanging out before going into work this afternoon and I picked him up and we cruised around the city, trying to catch a glimpse of the crazy-long queues at polling stations that we'd heard about on the news. We finally managed to find one, just off U St, but it took a while and seemed like the city was in pretty good shape for those hoping to vote.

By way of consolation for not being able to ferry voters to the polls, the Obama HQ people had asked me to drive some students out to Virginia to do some last-minute canvassing. This is exactly what I didn't want to do - I wanted to be in and around polling stations, not knocking on doors or harrassing people on the street, especially as my British accent would surely have made people wonder what business it is of mine who they vote for.

Anyways, I headed off to the DNC headquarters to report for duty, only to discover that they had loads of volunteers already! I had to sit in my minivan outside the DNC for over an hour, in driving rain, just waiting for enough people to need lifts to Virginia. This is not what I'd had in mind for my election day experience!

Eventually my minivan was full of eager and hilariously geeky boys from Georgetown University and we headed off through the rain, encroaching darkness and terrible traffic towards Virginia, as the politics students all argued about who made the best speech on the campaign trail, who was likely to be in the cabinet and other such pressing issues.

We finally found the office we were heading to, which was a hive of activity. We were put in a holding room and eventually given a task to do, after I dropped the bombshell that we only had two hours before we had to go back to DC (as per what the DNC had promised us. Plus, I had an election night party to host single-handed and the eager beavers had to get back for their Democrats Society party).

We were sent out into the darkness to knock on doors of registered Obama supporters, to make sure they'd voted. I had a grand total of 8 households to visit, 6 of whom weren't home and of the other two, one had already voted and the other was in the shower, but his housemate was going to tell him to vote. I'm fairly sure that house was either a crack den or a cult - there was the weirdest array of people there.

The weird estate me and my fellow volunteers were canvassing was in the middle of nowhere and kind of creepy in the pitch darkness, so I wasn't too sad to leave, though really disappointed that the sum total of my contribution to the Obama cause was talking to two people who'd already voted.

We got horribly lost on the way back in DC, so Max had to do the Kenneth Kendall bit for me that I'd done for him in Maine, and talk us through it. We eventually got back, just in time for me to start preparations for my election night party with Anne and Hugh, Jim and Cindy, Tim and Holly (J&C's friends we met at baseball - Tim's Mancunian and Holly works at NatGeo) and Cindy's sad friend who recently split up from his boyfriend.

Tim, Holly, sad man whose name I can't remember, Jim, Cindy, Hugh, Anne

I was really sad not to be able to watch the results come in with Maxy - I really wanted to share the whole experience with him, but he was at the Bureau, working on the results desk - he was one of three people calling the results for the entire BBC! And he'd text me secret inside info, which made the night all the more fun for us, as we ate pizza and watched with glee as the electoral map turned increasingly blue.

I kept track of which state went to whom with my hi-tech system that rivalled anything Peter Snow or Wolf Blitzer could manage. Sure, CNN had a weird and pointless hologram of Will.I.Am, but I had postits! And one column for Obama, the other for McCain. Foolproof!

Max texted very early - before 9pm - to say that it was game over, that Obama had won Ohio and was looking good in Virginia and Florida, which were crucial swing states.

Shortly afterwards, he texted to say that McCain was about to concede, but with the west coast polls yet to close, I knew that that was a bit premature.

Nevertheless, our sitting room was a-buzz with excitement and teary eyes and rank disbelief. Then, when CNN called it for Obama on the dot of 11pm (just as west coast polls closed), we all erupted and cried and whooped and cheered and hugged and texted loved ones, amazed it was all over so quickly and with such little effort (give or take the two solid years Obama spent on the campaign trail). Amazing!!!

I was so sad not to share the moment with Max, but so pleased it happened and that I was at home with friends. It felt like a 'where were you?' moment. And so exciting that Obama entirely re-wrote the electoral map and won so decisively, with none of the hanging chad-like shenanigans that allowed Bush to take power. What a dude.

I was amused to see McCain look so relieved during his concession speech, with Palin quietly crying next to him. It was so lame that some of the handful of people McCain was addressing booed when he paid tribute to Obama and so excellent that, although Obama addressed hundreds of thousands of people in Grant Park, Chicago, not one boo was audible when he praised McCain.

I didn't much like Michelle's weird dress she wore at Grant Park. She's looked so great all campaign, and then wore something that looked a bit like her insides were bursting out of her. But Sasha and Malia were adorable, and I loved Obama's line about them earning the puppy that would be coming with them to the White House.

Anne and Hugh and Cindy's friend had to leave after the speeches, but Cindy, Jim, Tim, Holly and I headed out onto U St to join crowds of people celebrating.

It was so emotional that U St had been the epicentre of race riots in 1968 and was now the site of jubilation at an African American becoming president. The atmosphere was just incredible, like nothing I've ever experienced. Everyone was just so happy and there was an amazing range of people just wandering around the streets, cheering, whooping, hi-5ing and grinning as cars crept past, honking their horns with people hanging out of the windows. There were young people, old people, a range of ethnicities and apparent backgrounds and everyone was united in this outpouring of euphoria - what an extraordinary thing, that politics managed to do this. And if anyone was in any doubt as to how important Obama's win was, they just had to look at the glee and relief on people's faces. I can't imagine McCain would've received the same reaction.

We walked around for a while, soaking up the atmosphere and marvelling at the manifest happiness of such a huge group of diverse people, then went our separate ways.

Max came home shortly afterwards, having suffered no mishaps at work, despite being under immense pressure. In fact, he saved the day! The BBC were getting their results from the wires and also had a deal with ABC that they'd tip the BBC off 15 mins in advance of calling a result for a particular candidate.

The Bureau Chief was the liaison with ABC and came into the results room at one point, to say that McCain had one three of Maine's four electoral votes, so they should call Maine for McCain. However, Max thought this sounded fishy and refused to post the result. And he turned out to be right! I'm not sure how the mistake was made, but Maxy spotted it and prevented poor David Dimbleby, who seemed to be coming under enough fire from Gore Vidal and Christopher Hitchens, from having to back-track and correct an erroneous result! What a clever fellow Max is.

I caught a repeat of the Daily Show's live election show and was so moved to see Jon Stewart, usually a picture of togetherness and never one to show any real emotion, get choked up as he announced Obama as the decisive winner of the election. What a night.

After a couple of hours sleep, Max and I drove round to pick up Susie and Louis just before 6am (I still had the minivan) and headed to the Lincoln Memorial, where we met Jim and Cindy again, to watch the sun come up on this bright new day, from the spot where MLK delivered his 'I Have A Dream' speech. Obviously to be in that spot was particularly poignant on the day when that dream took a massive step towards being realised.

The monument was deserted, but for some security guards and mental joggers dashing up and down the steps, and we were able to sit there as the thick cloud cover got gradually lighter (so much for a dramatic sunrise!), trying to get our heads around the enormity of what's just happened and what it means for the world, and babies like Louis.

the future's bright

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

With the aches and pains of butts, guts and guns finally a distant memory, I ventured back to the gym this morning for my first ever yoga class. And I loved it! It was so nice to just stretch and feel like my body was having good things done to it without having to sweat or feel on the verge of passing out. I feel much more limber and loose now and can't wait to go again.

NatGeo is just across the road from the gym and I had a nice lunch with Cindy after my class. She's started doing her Big Sister volunteering, which I think is amazing. Her little sister is from Central America - maybe El Salvador? - and is in 6th grade, so she's about 11.

Her living conditions sound awful - she and her sister sleep on the floor of their bedroom because her mother can't afford beds and her mother and two younger siblings sleep together on the sofa in the sitting room, while they rent out the second bedroom in the small flat.

Cindy's having quite a few problems with the mother, who keeps asking her to buy things for Catherine (Cindy's little sister) and the rest of the family, so Cindy's having to work out ways to say no and to empower the mother to find schemes to help her, rather than just giving her handouts that Cindy can't afford.

I'm so sad that Obama's grandmother, Toot, died today - on the eve of the election.

She sounds like an incredible woman, who helped bring up Barack and instill in him many of the values and qualities he's looking to bring to the White House.

It's so sad that she didn't get to see whether he won the election and I only hope that, when he suspended his campaign a while ago to go and visit her in Hawaii one last time, he was able to take down the guard he has up in public, when he remains cautious about believing the 100+ polls that say he's going to win the election, and told her that it's in the bag and that he is going to make history as the first African American president of the States.

It's SO exciting that the election is finally here and Maxy says there's no way Obama can lose, that it's generally thought that the Bradley Effect has been overstated and early voting numbers are looking good. But I think everyone's still incredibly nervous and tense, excited to see whether Obama can take as many swing states as the polls would have us believe he could, but worried that this is how everyone was feeling in 2000, before Bush 'beat' Gore.

I say everyone, but I didn't follow the 2000 election. Or the 2004 one, really - this is the first time I've really been excited by politics and invested in a candidate because I believe in their policies and ways of doing things and I think it's the same for a lot of people this year, which is testament to the sheer force of Obama's excellence: it can't be ignored.

FLAT WOES

WHOOPS! We totally forgot the clocks went back today.

Ugh. The boiler in our flat in London, which our friend Adrian is living in at the moment is apparently not creating any central heating and Adrian and his girlfriend are freezing. What's worse is, when we got the boiler serviced when we bought the moneypit - I mean flat - we were warned that it was past it's 'expiry' date and that if anything went wrong with it, it'd make more sense to replace it than repair it.

So I spent most of yesterday on the phone with Adrian and with our lovely gasman, who happens to live upstairs from our flat and was kind enough to check out what the problem was. I'm still unclear of what's wrong, mainly because I'm blinded by the £1600 it's going to take to replace the boiler.

Max and I are lucky to be living rent-free over here, and having our mortgage covered back in London, but with me not working, there's not piles of extra cash sloshing around. However, we have been able to save a little bit each month for a while and guess how much we've squirreled away? Almost exactly £1600. Byyeeeee!

Ugh. We're actually massively lucky, because Luli (our gasman) is really busy, but is fitting us in in the evenings and weekend next week and has now calculated it'll actually cost over £2000, but is standing by his original quote. What a legend. But what a pain in the butt. Being a grown up sucks!

The news obviously posed as something of a downer on our weekend, but we did have a great webcam chat with our friends Matt and Jilly yesterday, and then Max went to work and I walked into Georgetown, where I raided the place for supplies I'd been turned onto by the card-making course. I'm going to make our Christmas cards this year!

We were meant to be going to a Halloween party with Anne tonight (yes, it's still going!), but didn't feel like it, so stayed home and had Anne over for drinks beforehand instead, which was lovely. Anne had worked out what she wanted to go as to the party, but now how to do it, so we put together her whole entire costume for her, based around a pair of pink trousers that she had. Can you guess what it is yet?

She's a pig in lipstick! That's Maxy's pink shirt and my pink duvet shoes (a staple for any supernoodle). I made her hair look like ears and created an ingenious nose from the base of a plastic cup, then coloured it pink, cut out black tape in the shape of nostrils, tied elastic to it and bingo bango!

'Blue Peter's loss is Anne's gain...

Despite our boiler drama funk, I wish we had gone to the party now, because we stayed in and watched the TERRIBLE 'Heartbreak Kid' on DVD, instead. Ugh, it's SO bad! I don't really know where to begin in explaining why, so will just leave it at: never watch this movie, even on a plane - it's awful! We haven't been doing very well lately... (apart from 'This Is England').

We watched a bit of 'Saturday Night Live' afterwards, and saw Ben Affleck do a HILARIOUS impression of Keith Olbermann, who's one of our favourite political pundits and is famous for his righteous indignation and directly addressing someone who's offended him (John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Bill O'Reilly...) with a 'special comment', delivered straight down the camera. He gets very hett-up - I worry for Keith. But Ben Affleck did him so well! Actually, he didn't sound at all like him - he affected a weird quasi-British accent - but his spluttering and outrage were spot on, despite the 'special comment' being aimed at the head of the residents committee in his building who wouldn't allow him to keep his cat, Mrs Precious Perfect, in his flat.

Boiler? What boiler!