Irony Out of the Blue

I received a call, out of the blue, from a casting agency yesterday; Claire Simon Casting. Claire is an old friend. She was my first agent and she has been great about calling me in for projects that would suit me as an actor instead of just using me to fill out a list of potentials given to a client. When Claire or one of her people call I can be assured that the audition will be for something that I might actually get cast in. They called to ask me to audition today for a history channel program on William McKinley.
Here's the irony. Today is my Sis' birthday. When I helped move my Sis to Brooklyn while she was participating in the NYC Fellows program. I told her that in my travels back and forth across I-80 I would choose a different spot to stop and do a touristy type thing (i.e. see a site, go to a grave of someone I admire or a museum). We stopped at the William McKinley library. I was not very impressed with Mr. McKinley and more than a little annoyed by the similarities between his presidency and the current one. They both seem overrun with corporate influence and crony patronage. At least Mac got Hawaii (Hooray!) as a territory, Bushie is bringing us Baghdad and 40,000 thieves. I found the unusual synchronicity of the audition date and my Sis' birthday amusing and ironic that the one place that we chose to stop would be the library of the president I would be asked to portray in the audition.
I had to turn down the opportunity. I am too busy with school and don't have the flexibility in my schedule to accept the role should I be fortunate enough to have it offered. However, I did a little make-up test to see if I could make myself resemble such a homely guy. The good news is I could, the bad news is it didn't take as much make-up as I had expected.