All I Want For Christmas - Part 2 (and the subsequent end)

So as mentioned in the "All I want for Christmas" post, for two months I've been anxiously awaiting a response from seemingly a black hole known as my congressman Jerry Connolly regarding the lottery being held for inauguration tickets. Well, midday NYE an email had arrived and I can't begin to tell you how excited I was. Here's the opening paragraph:

Dear Michael,

Thank you for contacting the office of Congressman-Elect Gerry Connolly with your request for tickets to President-Elect Obama's Inauguration. We will be sending emails to lottery winners in the next few minutes. If you do not receive a subsequent email from us today, your name was not selected in the lottery.

Sounds good to me. I'll hang tight Gerry!

I caught it on my blackberry and I literally stopped everything, waiting very impatiently for the follow up email to arrive. I've always defined "a few" as three, not sure why, so I figured I'd take a break and just stare at my phone screen for (much longer than) three minutes.

I have to say, I was very optimistic. 10,000 ticket requests for only 200 available tickets. 2% odds...but hey, better than any other lotteries I've played. I also must admit that for me it's felt like the movie A Christmas Story. I wanted the Red Ryder BB gun sooo bad that it just had to come. How could it not?

Lastly, I recently saw this short on The Secret and was convinced that me thinking about it constantly would make it happen. Right? Those people wouldn't lie.

What I learned:

1. The Secret doesn't apply to the historical Obama inauguration event, so go ahead and bite it you stupid secret cult scam fancy ass.
   
2. "A few" may not be three, but I know it's not 1000 because I still don't have an email.
3. Who voted Gerry Connolly into office (maybe I did)? But I hate suspense, and now I don't like you either. Where's your compassion? Not getting an email from you was like breaking up over facebook - I felt cheap, used, and led on.
4. I'll be one of the other 4.99 million Americans crammed on the mall watching from a distance on Jan 20. Whatever, at least I'm tall.
5. Instead of getting my Red Rider, I got the pink bunny PJs.

Who knows, maybe something amazing will happen in the next couple of weeks and I'll be blessed with a ticket to the event. Either way, I'm still excited and only hope it's not freezing out that day. I plan to take lots of pictures, and maybe even get a decent few shots with Mr Pres Elect in them (which I'll share of course).

-msc