We started out Saturday morning my sleeping in... which was amazing, but it also meant that we got a late start to our day, which probably was not a brilliant plan... We decided to head over to Arlington National Cemetery just as a big storm started to roll in. We visited the Iwo Jima monument as the storm darkened (see picture...). Of course, in all of our genius-ness, we decided to head over to the tomb of the unknown soldiers for the changing of the guard, which is on the entire opposite side of the cemetery. As we walked over, we stopped at the house of Robert E. Lee and the tombs of L'Enfant and the Kennedy's. When we were stopped at the Kennedy's grave site, it started to rain, which as Jessica pointed out, made it pretty creepy. We continued our walk and finally made it to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers for the 2pm changing of the guard... and as we walked up, it began to pour rain. It was pretty incredible to see a rainstorm that huge; however, we were outside... during the equivalent of a hurricane (probably not, but I like to exaggerate) while standing under a bunch of trees and a bunch of umbrellas. I just felt bad for the poor fool who was being changed out because he didn't have a raincoat on like the other two guys. After that, we went home and pretty much chilled out (literally).
Sunday: We woke up late again, mostly because we could. We decided to head over to the Aquarium to watch the feeding of the piranhas! The aquarium itself isn't that fantastic (it's in the basement of the Department of Commerce...), but it was really cool to watch the piranhas get fed... they are pretty intense about it (worse that the swim team at a banquet...!) After that, we headed up to the Zoo... which is pretty amazing, mostly because they have PANDAS! :) After we walked the whole zoo, we exited on the other side, where we thought that we might be near a metro stop... but we were wrong. So we had to walk through Rock Creek Park in order to get to the metro stop... that was quite a hike! When we got home, we met up with Jill and watched Friends... because we can't do that anywhere but Washington DC... I also met Mary for dinner at this really cute restaurant around the corner called Tonic. I had.... PIZZA... shocker... but it was really good, which was awesome! :)
Monday: We had to go to work again... but it was really cool because we got to meet with Jeff Bingaman (D-NM!). I was on support, so when we walked in, I had to help out in the front, which means answering phones and saying HI to everyone who walks past. Jessica came to give me something, and as she was leaving she started making funny hand signals and pointing outside. It took me a second, but I finally realized that Jeff was walking down the hall, about to come into the office. So I got to meet him as he came in, before we had our "official" meeting with him (cuz I'm awesome like that). As the person on support, I got to run a couple of errands (like get lost while trying to find the post office...haha). After work, Jill made me try some Steamed Maryland Blue Crab. Ewww. As much as I love seafood, I really actually don't. But that's ok... now I can say that I at least TRIED it. :)
Tuesday: Just a regular day of work... Nothing too exciting of importance happened...
Wednesday: My first day of Tours! I got to give a Capitol Building tour to a family of 5 from Albuquerque... they were really nice & understanding (since it was my first time...) It was a lot of fun... I only got us almost shot once when we were trying to leave... Oh well.
Thursday: Jill was sick :( so I covered her support day for her... I didn't actually have to do anything, which was nice, so we went and did some other awesome stuff. We went to a lecture from the House and Senate Historians. It was very interesting... not a job that I will ever want or do, but very interesting! I also got to go to a briefing in the Capitol building with my supervisor on border violence on the US-Mexico border. It was really interesting because we got to look at a bunch of guns that they had confiscated and look into the reasoning for increased border violence (S2867). That was really fun... I felt so official for being able to go (just cuz I'm awesome like that).
Friday: It was a good Friday. I got a lot of research done for my project, and I found a lot of new sources... I'm just a little bit miffed by the NM Dept. of Education because I emailed them to get drop out rate statistics... and they don't have any... so they are going to look into it for me and get back when they find the numbers... um right. We went to lunch at this cute little hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Matchbox in Chinatown. It was delicious! We all got pizza... I don't think I have ever had such good pepperoni in my LIFE! :)
We had a little girl's night out at the Nationals game. They got their butts kicked by SF Giants... but that's okay. We had a LOT of fun!
Saturday: We got up nice and late just in time to watch Hillary give her not-so-concession speech... and be late for it... (not that I'm bitter or anything...) We finally got going mid-afternoon... which was terrible because of the heat. It was 97 out, but it felt like 107! It was really gross, but we walked down to the Museum of Natural History, which was pretty awesome. We were so hot that we walked through the dinosaur section and then went to get some ice cream. We decided to get tickets to the IMAX theater so that we could cool off and sit down. We went over to see the Hope Diamond, which was really pretty! Afterwards, we decided to come home and have dinner. Jill and I are about to go shopping at the Mall (not the National Mall) to hang out.
Tomorrow Jill, Dane and I are going to rent bikes and ride around the C & O canal for the morning and into the early afternoon. Hopefully we won't be out during the heat of the day because it is WAY too hot. Yes yes.
:)
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