I am totally connected.

The Peruvian Embassy is across the street. Across another street, although I can't see it from my room, is the Philippines. A block down Massachusetts Ave, next to Scott Circle, is Australia.
The National Cathedral is far away, but a block up Rhode Island the other direction is St. Matthew the Apostle.
Oh, and apparently Johns Hopkins is across the street from the Peruvian Embassy, as is Georgetown.

One last thing

Did anybody think to invite Glen Beck? If he finds out we had a rally without him, he'll be crushed.

Rallified

Our rallying group takes a little while to gather inertia. Between that, an overwhelmed breakfast wait staff, and discovering that the Metro was stuffed way too full to ride, we managed to fight our way through the surging crowd (for those of you who haven't heard, they planned for 60 thousand and it's possible we had 150 thousand, which using the Michele Bachmann scale* means there were about 2.5 million people there) after the rally had started. The permit was for third to seventh street, and we were closer to ninth than to eighth. We couldn't even see the facade, and aside from the singing of the Star Spangled Banner, the only part I heard was because a young teacup next to me had a boombox and was playing the NPR simulcast.

It became quickly apparent that a claustrophobic crowd was not going to get along well here, and it was determined that the museums would also be off limits, as they would collect overflow from people at the rally who couldn't see or hear and decided not to stay and dance in the drum circle. We got separated on our retreat, and of course the satellite towers were full of traffic, but we eventually met up outside the museum of Crime and Punishment where we caught a taxi.

I got many compliments on my "Science--it works, bitches" shirt, and any time that a pretty girl smiles just from looking at me is not a bad time. Anyway. That's the story of how we drove ten hours and spent $20 in tolls to watch the Rally to Restore Sanity in our hotel room. Or at least most of it.

*“We’re not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today – because we were witnesses.”

Aside from the pinch of putting three people into a two person room, our hotel is very nice. My only complaint is ( behind an lj-cut for toilet TMI )

The drive out here was dramatically twisty, and wow the turnpike is expensive, and tomorrow we'll start to do it all over again. I may get to see the National Cathedral, if things work out.