U.S. Sen. Richard Burr wants to honor military spouses.

The Winston-Salem Republican sponsored a resolution declaring this Friday to be "Military Spouse Appreciation Day."

Cosponsored by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the resolution unanimously passed the Senate yesterday.

But Burr is pushing for more.

He has also sponsored a bill that would give military spouses who frequently move on federal orders the same rights to establish residency as their spouse.

"Our military, their spouses and their families are often called on to make frequent relocations, which can be very disruptive to their lives, and it is only fair that we give the same residency benefits to spouses as we do to servicemembers," Burr said in a statement.

That bill is currently before the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, where Burr is the ranking Republican.

Even a distant connection paid off for some people today.

Soraya Kaloudis, 50, got front-row seats at President Barack Obama's inauguration this morning from her niece's roommate. 

An employee of Bank of America in Charlotte, Kaloudis was just excited to be at the ceremony.

"I never thought I would go to an inauguration," she said. "I've never been politically involved in any way, but when my niece said she had tickets, I couldn't turn it down."

At last night's Arab-American inaugural ball, her niece, Mariam Al-Shawaf, told her just how good the seats were: Just below the platform, about as good as you can get without being a member of Congress or a Supreme Court justice.

Shawaf said that the tickets were almost an afterthought. Her roommate, who works for Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, one of the inaugural coordinators, had e-mailed her a year ago to ask if she wanted tickets.

Now, she said she finally has one on her aunt. 

"She shows us up every year with the best Christmas presents and my mom is always like 'Man, I'm not as creative as my sister,'" she said. "This time, we totally trumped her. We win for life, now."

Dome has heard that U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole is 23.

Twenty-three, you say? That's right, she's the 23rd oldest person in the U.S. Senate.

Although a recent TV ad implies that Dole is in her 90s, there's only one senator who's that advanced in age: Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, who was born in 1917.

Five senators are in their 80s: Sens. Ted Stevens, Frank Lautenberg, Daniel Inouye, Daniel Akaka and John Warner.

And 19 senators, including Dole, are septuagenerians. The list includes Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Dick Lugar and Ted Kennedy, who are all older than the North Carolina's senior senator, and John McCain and Jay Rockefeller, who are younger.

The average age of a U.S. senator is currently about 63 years old, as is the median, although those numbers will drop a little in the next few years with the possible departures of Kennedy, who has a brain tumor, and Stevens, who has been indicted.

At 43, the youngest is Sen. John Sununu; the third youngest at 47, Sen. Barack Obama.