A peek into the life of Addison Rose

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Political Addy: Shaking hands

On Friday morning, we set out to see Barack Obama. He was to speak at Key Arena. We were told that the doors would open at 11:00am. Not really wanting to stand out in the cold with Addy for too long, we decided to arrive at 10:30. Key Arena holds close to 18,000 people so we didn't think that we'd have a problem getting in. Little did we know. We got downtown about 10:15 and were met with crazy, mad traffic. We inched. We creeped. We crawled. We finally foud a parking space about 11:30 and rushed to the arena. We were shut out - along with about 3,000 others. It turned out that the arena was filled (or at least had all of its seats spoken for) 15 minutes before the doors even opened.

We decided to head to lunch at a nearby food court so that we could wander back by after lunch - around 1:00 (the time that Obama was to start speaking) and see if there was any possibilty of getting in once everyone was settled inside.

As we were eating, a big screen TV was set up and we realized that the Obama speech would be broadcast live there. There was quite a crowd gathering, so we decided to stay put and watch on TV. The crowd still got into the speech, so it was still fun.

Obama spoke for about an hour. Addy didn't seem too interested in the speech. She was much more interested in trying to take my glasses off my face. But she was still very good, and I'm sure that she absorbed the content of the speech in the deepest part of her brain.

The crowd outside - after Key Arena had been filled.

Addy and Mom getting ready to watch the rally.

The crowd watching the rally on TV.

The way that we watched Senator Obama speak.

Political Addy: Stumping for votes

In the past 36 hours, Seattle has been visited by all three front-runners for the presidency. Adam, Addy and I decided to set out to see all of them. These next few posts are from those adventures!

First, we saw Hillary Clinton on Thursday night at Pier 30 in Seattle. The streets were packed with cars and people and we found a parking spot about 1/2 mile away from the venue. We finally arrived at 7:20 for an 8:00 rally start time and were situated about halfway between the back doors and the stage. It was cold outside and hot inside. Rock music, no doubt, specifically picked, blared until Clinton was introduced.

At one point before Clinton arrived the fire alarms went off and we wondered how that would affect things. No matter to some, one person just hung his hat on the fire alarm so that the flashing strobe light on the fire alarm couldn't be seen. For what it's worth, it was a false alarm.

Senator Clinton took the stage about 9:30 in front of a capacity crowd of 5,000 and spoke for about 45 minutes. She sounded pretty froggy when she started but soon lost that. Addy stayed awake for the entire thing and quite enjoyed being around people - many of whom were more than happy to make faces and play peek-a-boo with her. She often clapped along with the crowd but was ready for the speech to be over when it was. She conked on the way home, but was bright eyed the next morning - ready to see two more candidates.