So on or around election day, Carin had the idea of both of us trying to get tickets to the 56th (remember that number, it’s important later) Presidential Inauguration Swearing In Ceremony. I figured the odds were astronomical, but it was worth a shot. So between us, we sent a total of six emails to our Senators and our respective Representatives. Then we pretty much forgot about it.

Then today, I get a message saying she got an email saying that she’d won two tickets in the California 22nd district lottery. The email reads as follows.

We are pleased to let you know that after conducting a lottery, your name was selected to receive inaugural tickets for the 53rd Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2009.

In order to accommodate as many ticket requests for this historic inauguration, a lottery was conducted of ticket requesters. While your name was selected,:

· If you requested 1 ticket, 1 ticket has been reserved for you.

· If you requested more than 1 ticket, 2 tickets have been reserved for you.

The number of tickets that have been reserved for you and your party is: 2

Based on procedures issued by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, we will be given all of the inaugural tickets allotted to the 22nd Congressional District the week prior to the Inauguration. And in order to ensure that ticket recipients are constituents of the 22nd Congressional District, tickets must be picked up by yourself from my Washington D.C. office on Friday January 16. We will send more information regarding ticket distribution.

Please respond to this email, no later than Friday, December 12, indicating that you are still planning on attending the inauguration and would still like tickets so you and your party can attend. If you are no longer attending the inauguration, we would appreciate knowing so that the tickets can be returned to the lottery system so another neighbor of ours might be able to attend.

Thank you for your patience.

Notice anything fishy? That’s right, the email mentions the 53rd inauguration. We’re both really, really hoping this is just a typo, and not some really scummy scam or prank or hoax. This is history, and we’d both be honored to witness it. The email address certainly looks legit from the forward, but I haven’t been able to look at the full headers yet, so that’s no help. We’ve both called all over the place to try and find somebody who might be able to get ahold of someone in Representative Kevin McCarthy’s office to confirm the status of the email. Nobody’s picking up the phone on a Sunday. Grrrrrrrr . . . Luckily we’ve got our plane tickets price saved until tomorrow, so hopefully we’ll be able to clear this up in time to not get ripped off any further on plane fare. The next hurdle will be accommodations, but for that I have a cunning plan . . .

So, if you’re reading this, please send us good mojo. I promise to share the most awesome possible pictures from whatever vantage we get.

If you haven’t seen the entire series “Firefly” and it’s companion film “Serenity”, you really should. Fantastic writing, acting, and an exceptionally well conceived futurist vision. Also, it contains the linguistic convention “Shiny!” which is roughly equivalent to our own dreadfully overused and worn-out “Cool!” I am formally announcing my intent to utilize the far more textured “Shiny!” in my personal lexicon, and if you happen to catch me lapsing into the threadbare contemporary equivalents, do please remind me of my lapse.