BUFFY star stalking at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

We're not famous and we're not media, but we were lucky enough to be invited to this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner--a bizarre mix of politicians, celebrities and yes even a few of the people who actually report on the White House. 

We saw some weird combinations: Tyne Daly chatting up Madeleine Albright, and Wolf Blitzer jockeying for a picture with the MODERN FAMILY cast. And we spotted celebrities aplenty, from Scarlett Johansson (secreted away at the Huffington Post table next to us and not listed in the program) to Matthew Morrison (his manager had to save him from being mobbed... I know this because I was in the mob...) to Paula Abdul (I gave her directions to the bathroom and she was very sweet!) to Jane Lynch (who gamely assented to a fast picture with us BUT the pic is on someone else's camera... will post soon!).

Pretty much all of the actors were a LOT tinier in person and for the most part pretty game about chatting with the random people like us who walked up to them. 

I managed to get my picture with not one but TWO alums of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Here's Danny Strong (at right), who played Johnathan on BUFFY and is now a successful screenwriter (and super nice). 

And below is Michelle Trachtenberg, who I spotted on the way into dinner. She had to be one of the tiniest actresses there. 

She smiled and seemed to tolerate my gushing about "I've been watching you grow up since Harriet the Spy and BUFFY!" Even though her expression suggests that she is about to summon one of the four thousand Secret Service guys that roamed here, there and everywhere at the event. 

It was such a treat to dress up and act like a Fancy Person for a night. But it was equally awesome to throw my still-wavy hair up in a ponytail the next day and head to IHOP with my dudes. Maybe even MORE awesome. And seeing as how I am not a famous Hollywood actor, I ordered the chocolate-chip pancakes.

They were delicious.

Hello, snow?

Where I grew up, snow was a serious thing. You didn't get an inch or two. You got a foot or two. Everybody had a snowblower or a half-dozen snow shovels and a bunch of kids to use them--whether they wanted to or not. 

On snow days, the morning started with two sounds. First, the phone, early: the school calling to tell my Dad that there wouldn't be any classes. Then, as soon as it was light enough, the rumble of Dad's snowblower. I'd look out the window and see arcs of snow coming from most every driveway on the street. 

I shoveled, still, and plenty; the plow couldn't quite get our sidewalk, and sometimes the snow was too heavy or deep for even the snowblower. 

I must have complained. Isn't that a shoveling kid's job? But now I'm eager to lift a shovel. Here in DC, we only own one shovel, and a half-used bag of ice melt. Snow means a few inches, but that's enough to send the area into a tizzy. It's not enough for me. I want big snow.

I want to be out there shoveling into snowbanks that my kid can burrow into. I love the silence that snow brings--especially here, where traffic is a never-ending background noise. And I love the satisfaction of carving straight, clean lines of snow out of my driveway. You know when you've done a good job shoveling. There's no ambiguity there. Either you scraped down to the driveway or you didn't. 

So today I've got my fingers crossed. There's another big storm headed for the northeast. The forecasters say it'll only bring 1-4 inches to DC. But hey. They've been wrong before.

And when they do, I'll be the crazy one out there with a shovel and a big grin. 

It's mostly nice having our power back...

Thanks to the big thunderstorms that hit DC on Sunday afternoon, we were without power for 30 hours, along with 299,999 of our neighbors.

You know what? It was kind of nice.

Not all of it, of course. It wasn't nice sleeping without the AC. I hated throwing away the melted carton of brand-new ice cream, and the sad squishy popsicles.

But being forced to slow down, to live without the constant in-your-face option of TV, video games, video chats, twitter chats, e-mail marathon sessions... that was pretty great. We read lots of books out loud, and made art with Little Dude. He loved the undivided attention, I think, even though he did cast wistful glances at the basement and its silenced Wii.

I loved feeling more connected to our neighborhood, too, thanks to our open windows. Living in DC, you either have your windows closed because it's muggy and the AC is running... or you have them closed because it's cold enough that you need heat. Then you just get out of the habit of opening the windows, for those few glorious times when the weather is perfect enough to welcome it in your house.

During the power outage, though, we opened each and every window. When Little Dude was in bed, we sat in our dark living room and just listened. We heard the whistle of a train a few miles away. We heard people walking down our street and softly laughing. We heard crickets and the rustle of animals in the bushes and our little urban meadow. We heard what each other had to say, too--because there was nothing to distract us from fully listening. I could feel my brain slowing down. All of my stresses didn't seem so important anymore.

When the power came back on at 9:00 last night, the entire neighborhood cheered. You could hear shouts coming from several streets away. And then... the AC kicked on. We ran around the house and slammed the windows shut. We locked them, too, sealing away most every outside sound.

If anyone was cheering, still, we couldn't hear it. We pretty much couldn't hear our neighborhood at all.

This makes me think about how important it is for writers, and other creative people, to keep our "windows" open... and to be still, and silent enough, to hear everything that's going on outside. It's so easy to seal yourself into your daily life, and not notice all the fascinating things on the fringe, waiting to become part of a story. Even if you can only do it once and awhile, it's worth sitting still, opening your mind, and waiting to see what you notice.