Yes, we came, we saw, we volunteered and we had a really great time! I don’t know what the newspapers are saying about it, but personally I think the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was a great success.
We left Friday afternoon to head up to DC. Mich went with us. Unfortunately for her, our Saturn VUE was in the shop, so we all had to pile into the sedan. That meant she spent the entire trip sandwiched between Princess and Pixie. She was a good sport about it though…
We got to my inlaws in DC around 8PM, had a very nice dinner with the family (courtesy of my brother-in-law Chris and his wife Heather), and then crashed for the night. Next morning we got up early, got dressed and headed out the door. On our way to the Metro, we saw the Burning Man Dragon, Abraxis!
There’s a video about this online at the Washington Post.
We got to the Metro, which was packed, and made it to the National Mall by about 10AM. There were people in costume everywhere, including this guy…
And this guy…
(If you have never found Waldo before, you couldn’t miss him at the rally. In fact, there were so many Waldos there, we were pretty much tripping over them!)
And then there was this very talented individual…
Yes, the man is juggling a tennis racket, a basketball, and a bowling ball, and doing it very well. I was impressed!
It wasn’t too terribly crowded when we got to the Mall, but it was crowded enough that we got separated from Mich. She managed to get a lot further forward in the crowd than we did, but then we were carrying two small children with us. Still, we had a decent view of the Jumbotron, and there was a very nice lady next to us who not only offered to let the girls sit in her lawn chair but also gave them a brownie. The girls were pretty good for the rally, though Pixie wanted to be held the entire time (and not by me, because she thinks I’m evil, but I held her anyway because I can’t hold up the Princess!).
Here are a few of the other characters we saw at the rally.
Tea bag, anyone?
I don’t care if he shot first, Han Solo has a nice butt.
Zombies!!!!
Patriotic zombies!!!!
The zombies were very cool. They ended up in front of us in the crowd. A lot of people kept passing back and forth in front of them, on their way to the porta-johns, and every time that happened, the entire group of zombies looked behind them before stepping back to make sure they didn’t step on Pixie and Princess. I thought that was very thoughtful of them. Yay for polite zombies!
We also brought rally signs, by the way. Mine was my “Fear Me” t-shirt, of course, but I also had signs made for the Hubster and kids.
Hubster is an engineer, so obviously he prefers balance in everything.
Thanks to Just Dance, Pixie is a huge fan of Katy Perry, and she thinks it’s unfair that her idol didn’t get to sing on Sesame Street.
Of course, the big winner of our signs was this one…
That’s right, Keep Deer Alive! Because we got separated from Mich, we spent two hours after the rally walking around the National Mall looking for her. The reason it took two hours to find her was because everyone few minutes, someone would stop us and ask to take a picture of Princess with her sign. By the end of the afternoon, she was really hamming it up, holding the sign over her head and chanting, “Keep deer alive! Keep deer alive! Where were you when Bambi’s mother was shot?!”
Her sign turned out to be popular enough that it even ended up on the Huffington Post (along with 500 or so others).
We finally found Mich around 6PM. She had volunteered to help with post-rally clean up and was sorting garbage and recyclables. I volunteered to stay and sort with her while Hubster took the kids home. The garbage sorting was interesting. We found a baby kegger, some lawn chairs, and enough uneaten food to provide a full course meal for a family of four (if there was a family of four willing to eat of the garbage can). We also found plenty of recyclables, so that made the garbage sorting effort worth it.
Mich and I finished up around 8PM or so, then made our way back to my in-laws. After another very nice dinner courtesy of Chris and Heather, we all crashed again, then headed out the next morning for home. Once again, poor Mich got stuffed in the back seat with the girls…
We made it home in plenty of time to unpack, clean up and get ready for trick or treating!
Although it really didn’t feel like we’d left the rally at DC, thanks to my neighbors’ fearful front yard.
If Stephen Colbert had jumped out of that Halloween display, I would not have been surprised!
Hope you all had a good weekend.
