I did think about going to Washington DC-my sister lives in a burb around there and so does a grand-uncle, and hub's brother also lives in a burb. So it isn't that we couldn't have had a cheapy place to stay. We simply didn't want to brave all those crowds and I prefer to watch via a closeup (I've said before that one time we went to Texas Motor Speedway to watch a concert and we weren't close enough to watch it in person-we watched it on a big honking monitor-well, heck, we could have been home sipping a beer in the A/C. )

I am getting excited now. NPR has a page of a bunch of related stories as well as the schedule of events.

On Tuesday

The Swearing in and speech start at 11:30 am ET (that would be 10:30 am CST, OUR time). I'm sure we'll already be watching before that, I want to see the parade of him coming TO the capital -here's a map from AP.  My particular favorite way of watching the parade before has been on C-span. IF Microsoft's Silverlight also shows the parade crowds, we'll watch it that way. I notice on the link just above that there will be camera links to watch the crowds via the internet.

This is truly a historic day, the first day I can remember watching a swearing in and being really proud of the person taking office. A day for ALL Americans.