A night with Hillary Clinton

What a night I had last night! As soon as we heard on Thursday that Hillary Clinton was coming to town, myself and one of my new co-workers, Stacey Grosh, decided we'd do what it took to see her. Having seen Chelsea Clinton on Ball State's campus earlier in the week, and being thoroughly impressed, I was excited to hear her mom speak for herself on the issues.

Hillary spoke at about nine o'clock last night at Muncie Central High School, inside the school's gym. Here's a photo of the line that I snapped right after we got there at about 5:30 p.m. — eventually, that line wrapped around three sides of the school. Stacey brought her 3 girls (who are 12, 11 and 9) and they were SUCH troopers! It was freezing outside in that line!

There was TONS of media there — including my husband.

It was interesting to see all the buttons vendors were hawking to those standing in line. One of my favorites was this one I spotted on a woman in front of us. Another I saw that I liked: "Hill YEAH!"

The crowd spent about two more hours waiting for Hillary once inside the gym. There was just this great "buzz" among everyone, the excitement of feeling included in this year's presidential primary. Despite voting for years, last night was really the first time I've ever felt such a part of our country's political process. It gave me goose bumps.

When Hillary finally arrived, everybody went crazy. She spent more than an hour laying out her platform to the crowd. My respect for her grew when I realized she was still campaigning after 10 p.m. She started her day today with another rally in Indy at 10 a.m. (I tried to get as close as I could for shots but I was TOTALLY envious of all the press photographers with their huge telephoto lens. This was the best I could do and I'm pretty happy with what I got)

What I appreciate about Hillary's platform is that for every idea she has, she proposes a way she'll pay for it. If you haven't taken the time to really get to know her platform, check out her Web site, then click on "Issues." If you take the time to educate yourself about her plans to address the "big" ones — from health care and education to improving our schools and promoting energy independence — I think you might find yourself more open to voting for her if you're still undecided.

That being said, whoever you vote for, just GET OUT THERE AND VOTE on May 7! And with that, I'll get off my soapbox now!

** In case you haven't noticed, I'm back to publishing photos in a large format on the blog again. After all, that's what you're here for, right? :)