Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been everywhere in my area lately. As the Inquirer says, the Philadelphia suburbs hold the key to victory in the primary.

Yesterday, "High Tech Hillary" first appeared at Haverford College (just a few minutes away from here), and later she went to the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia where she paused to fix some electronics equipment which even Stephen Colbert couldn't fix:

The Colbert cable-TV show, which was taping its final appearance in Philadelphia, afforded a bit of comic relief for Clinton in the closing days of her Pennsylvania campaign against Sen. Barack Obama, who campaigned yesterday in North Carolina.

At the Annenberg Center, Clinton waited off stage as the show's host, Stephen Colbert, noticed that the set's backdrop picture showing the Liberty Bell failed to appear.

Colbert called out for help but was told that all the technicians had left.

In stepped Clinton, offering to lend a hand.

"Are you using a digital or analog truck?" she asked in a series of technical queries. "Try toggling the input," she instructed, and the picture returned.

She nodded in approval, and as she turned to leave, Clinton quipped: "Call me any time. . . . Call me at 3 a.m."

Likewise, Barack Obama has been all over the place, and one of my friends got a great picture of him at a Town Hall meeting in another high school.

But I've been feeling, like totally left out of the campaigns. You'd think that after going to all the trouble of changing my registration they'd be grateful and invite me to events and everything, but no!

Finally today at around 1:00 p.m., I read something I couldn't ignore. Hillary was to hold a Town Hall meeting at the Radnor High School at 11:00 a.m.! While that's literally walking distance from where I live, by the time I read about it it was too late to attend.

I was beginning to feel, like, completely left out, as if I'd never get to see either candidate. The election is on Tuesday, and no matter how crucial this area is right now, they won't be wasting time around here after then. So against my better judgment (and mainly in the interest of entertaining you, my dear readers!), I figured I'd head over to Radnor High, just to see whether people were still hanging around. When I got there the driveways were blocked, cars were pouring out and everyone was leaving. So I parked nearby, and just walked in through the exiting crowd, atracting no attention at all. Yes, the event was over, but there were still buttons and Hillary teddy bears like these for sale outside:

People I asked said that Hillary had finished her Town Hall talk, but was still inside being given a tour of the school or something, so I walked in and saw that the main auditorium had emptied out, but there was a gaggle of cops and Secret Service guys were blocking access to a large hall that went towards the back of the school complex. They would not let me in, so I walked back out, then followed the driveway around to the back of the building, where I saw a line of media vehicles, and the campaign media bus:

There were at least a half a dozen Secret Service agents hanging around the nearest exit doors to that media bus, and parked in front of the doors were several identical, heavy SUVs with thick glass, with Secret Service standing around them. I decided to just hang around inconspicuously where the media trucks were parked in the hope of seeing Hillary exit. Periodically, a Secret Service guy would come along and shoo people away from the highest point on the hill overlooking the exits, so I just walked around and waited. It was incredibly boring, and too far away to get a good picture, but I figured I was already there. so why not wait? At one point I was asked what I was doing and I replied that I had been "sent by the Classical Values dot com web site" to cover the event. (A statement which is technically true; since I am the classicalvalues.com web site proprietor, I can in theory send myself anywhere I want, can't I?)

After around an hour, most of the Secret Service guys went inside the building, and shortly after that, the doors opened without warning and Hillary came out, accompanied by body person Huma and Secret Service people. The latter are understandably paranoid about the "coming and going from building to car" part of their job, and they moved her so fast from the building to the SUV that it was all I could do to get a couple of poor quality photos -- this one being the best.

No sooner did she get in the SUV than the caravan took off, and it was bye bye Hillary!

Better late than never, I guess.

There is one thing I learned today: a member of the paparazzi I'll never be. Too much sitting around waiting.

(OTOH, if I had a good zoom lens.....)