The White House: I Want to Go to There

Friday, December 18, 2009

Picture this: A coworker & I discover neither of us is invited to a staff meeting we feel we should be attending. So we print out photos of the country's most famous party-crashing couple, don them around our necks, & show up at the meeting anyway.


Now, cut to a few hours later. About a dozen people from my office (including some coworkers' young kids) have tickets to tour the White House's Christmas decorations. We're all dressed up, & maybe I left work at lunch to buy a new purple cardigan in honor of the festive occasion, or something. The kids show up in their Christmas finery, & we cab our way over to Barack's house, giddy with anticipation.

Except then the unthinkable happens. You know what I'm about to say, right? Of course something this awesome would go awry.

Our names... were not on the list.

Well, to be fair, six of them were. Five coworkers & one plus-one made it in with no problem. The other 11 of us somehow didn't make it onto the final, be-all-end-all list. We spent about 20 minutes chattering with cold as we tried to sort out this devastating situation, half our coworkers already inside without us. We were hopeful, though. Would you turn this little munchkin away from the Christmas tour of her dreams?


End result? No dice. We were offered a make-up tour on the 23rd (I'll be out of town) or a post-Christmas private tour (sans decorations), both of which are, of course, massively appreciated. But yes, I was actually so disappointed that I cried a little. Just because IT WAS GOING TO BE SO COOL. And I was so dressed up. And Kal Penn was there.

Yes, Kal Penn. Yes, he's my favorite, & I've been talking about running into him in DC for, oh, a year now - but under the circumstances, I was too sad to even enjoy my first spotting, though not too sad to snap this "Boy in the Striped Pajamas"esque photo of him through the wrought-iron fence:


Officially rejected, we turned away & trudged back to the office in the blustery cold - party clothes, crushed spirits & all:


We did try to console ourselves, though. How? With vodka, of course. Nothing says "Wish we'd gotten into the White House" like drinking a vanilla vodka Coke at 4:30p.m. on a Thursday.


I returned to the office to find a text from the coworker who played the meeting-crashing joke with me earlier: "Wow. That Salahi joke seemed a lot funnier a couple of hours ago, eh?"

4 comments:

  1. Aw! Sad times. Though I love the Liz Lemon reference. Almost makes it all better (maybe not so much?).

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  2. Oh no! What irony. :)

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  3. This is a sad story but at least it has a happy ending.

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  4. Kate- I randomly came across this on facebook about your blog entry with Jessie and found it hilarious.

    I would've gotten the vanilla vodka and coke too. Nice choice.
    ;-)

    Hope you are doing well and staying warm in DC!

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