We r freezing!  Ppl here are darling - they r so happy and gracious. The best thing I've seen is the little children - cherubic faces wrapped in wool and muffs and smiles from ear to ear.

Got to dc sun night - bill and I anchored in dc this morning and instead of having our normal 3 hours to prepare, I had about 1.5 b/c I spent half my morning trying to find an office to sit in, setting up a printer (why is that so hard?) and trying to get my email up. Nightmare! U prob think we have people who take care of that for us - not so much.

Pat summers (my producer - who coordinates my live shots, etc.) and I got lunch and then headed over to our location on the mall (which, for non dc ppl, is the open area between the capitol and the washington monument where all the masses will gather tomorrow). Could not believe how many ppl were out just to take a look when there was nothing going on! U can feel the excitement in the air here - it is nice to see ppl so enthused, although we ran into some republicans who weren't quite feeling it - said this is all a bit much.

Street vendors are everywhere selling everything from Obama socks to tees to buttons that read "yes we did!" Some tee shirts have pics of the entire Obama family on them.

Today it was cold - same for Tuesday - I wore pink fuzzy socks underneath black fuzzy boots and still my feet were frozen after an hour. On the bright side, the fox rv where I can go between live shots is warm and stocked with chow so it should be a nice reprieve. There's even a bed in there where our coordinating producer Jake Gibson is sleeping tonight! So many ppl are sleeping in our dc newsroom b/c they live in va and they are closing the bridges from va into dc overnight. The one-time senior producer os special report is literally bringing a cot into the newsroom - I hope he's still on it when I get in - I will snap a photo!

Hotel is nice but has no mini-bar. Bad for the hunger, good for the waistline. Must go to bed in an hour or so to get enough sleep for my 4am wakeup. Things get rolling eaaaarrrlly. See u from the mall! Will update when I can.

Sitting in hair and makeup - the stylists have been here since 3:30am and are exhausted - they slept for only a few hours at the home of one of our booker's, some on his kitchen floor, others scattered about the house. It's all b/c u can't get into d.c. from Virginia this morning (bridges closed), so they had to sleep in d.c.

Cannot believe how many ppl are out on the streets at 5am - might as well be 5pm - hundreds and hundreds!! They are heading to the mall now - six hours ahead of the swearing-in - just to get their spots watching it on the big screens.

Pat my producer had to go to my hotel room to get my credentials for me b/c I forgot them - he said there were about 300 ppl lined up around the Starbucks. It's crazy here!

We are literally walking thru the 3d st tunnel in dc - WALKING! There are thousands upon thousands of ppl - it is a little scary b/c of the sheer volume and there's really no easy ingress/egress.
This is surreal.

Ppl are being so polite - they are jubilant. Mood is celebratory - they are wrkg together to keep things moving. Still - this is unbelievable!