Week 3!!! :)

It's a good thing that I'm doing this blog with pictures... because then I actually have to download them all onto my computer! ...haha...


So here is the official weekly update, beginning with SUNDAY (kinda)!:

Jill, Dane and I went for a nice long bike ride along the C & O canal. It was gorgeous. If you want to know more, read the post about Hissing Geese. On Sunday night, Jill, Jess, and I went to see Sex and the City (the movie). It was good. Nothing really too exciting happened... besides that we found the Starbucks on campus that is about 1 block away!

Monday: We had to go to code of conduct training at work. Oh my goodness! It was an hour and a half long given by a guy with a st-st-stu-stutter. Which, normally isn't too bad, but he freaking READ OFF OF THE SLIDES and then he RE-STATED IT not on the slides (or vice-versa, depending on what else it related to). I think the worst part about that was that it is only required for employees of the Senate to get within the first 60 days of working there... but we aren't even going to be here for 60 days. It's only 35 if you count the weekends! Oh well... I survived that (barely).

Tuesday: If anything exciting or important happened, it was all forgotten when J.Lo showed up on our floor of the Hart office building! She had come to talk to Obama... who wasn't in town... but that was pretty much the extent of the excitement. (for more about this, read the post "When J.Lo comes to town")

Wednesday: I got to be the support person for the day... and that meant that I got to hang out up front for a while, which I have to say, is pretty fun. It's a little bit higher pressure (sometimes) but you actually get to interact with consitutents and other people who happen to come by the office. I also got a nice big project for being on support-- we had to look up a bunch of Sen. Bingaman's floor speeches for some big project that someone is doing... lucky for them, I don't know who (jk... it wasn't that bad). Jill helped me with it and we finished it by Friday's COB. I also got another project from my supervisor about Guantanamo Bay... that should be fun. Wednesday was also the half way point of our internship... it really has gone by fast!

Thursday: Robin's family (minus Robin...) came to town, so I got to give them a tour of the Capitol! It was lots of fun. We went out to dinner to Matchbox (again) and this time I got their famous Mini Burgers. Oh my goodness, they were EXCELLENT! So I have officially given 2 tours... but that's okay with me. They are fun to give because it gets you out of the office and into the craziness of things, but then you have to act like you know everything... which is only sometimes true.

Friday!: We had another one of those mandatory lectures, but this one had potential to be exceptionally good: Women of the Senate. It actually was really good, I was just really tired and the lady's voice was really soothing... Right. Anywho. As I said earlier, Jill and I finished that project, which was really nice to get done. We went to lunch at the Capital City Brewing Company, which had really good food-- and we had a really delicious Brownie smothered in ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup (it was REALLY good.) We headed up to Baltimore for an Orioles game... and they WON... amazingly enough, 9-6! We had some adventures on the way there with trains and tickets and, well, you know... travel drama. But it all worked out and we made it there in back all in one piece!


Saturday: I met up with mi madre's friend, Bridget who used to work at the Smithsonian and now owns her own framing business. She has had an interesting life and has met up with some very interesting people. We went all around, to a bunch of museums (arm museums, mostly, but also the new Native American museum) and then to the sculpture garden, where we got lunch and sat by the fountain and talked. It was really cool to sit and people watch while talking about life. Now Jess, Jill and I are going to head out and maybe get some dinner and hope to avoid a big rainstorm!

:)

When J.Lo Comes to Town...

Well...the excitement of today's work was that J.Lo came to visit Sen. Barack Obama! As you probably don't know, Obama's office is down the hall and around the corner from Sen. Bingaman's office (that's where I work), so we heard about the visit pretty quick. However, Obama wasn't around... he was out campaigning (apparently in St. Louis), which WE all knew as informed people who watched the votes on the Senate floor today.


As the crowd gathered, we went up to the 8th floor to get a better view of Obama's office. We stood around for about 30 minutes, waiting for her to come out. We were speculating what she was doing there, and pretty much we came up with the "fact" that J.Lo is Obama's pick for VP. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, J.Lo is going to be the first female vice president. Because that wouldn't be ridiculous at all.

It was all rather amusing. The crowd gathered just by people passing by and hearing what was up and from all sorts of messages that were being sent around the senate. We got shushed about 3 times by the Capitol Police because basically the crowd was compromised of a bunch of interns and young staffers (who all LOVE to talk!). After a while, one of Obama's staffers went into the upstairs part of their office and put up a sign that said "She's Gone." We stood there in disbelief for a little while until we looked down to the first floor where the exit is... and saw a small crowd of about 10 people surrounding a young woman who was wearing a BRIGHT YELLOW dress... Sad days... no one got a picture of her coming out of his office... oh well.

So that is what happened on the Hill today: Your tax dollars [hard] at work!

:)

Hissing Geese

Today Jill, Dane, and I went for a 4 hour bike ride along the C & O Canal. It was really awesome and fun... and HOT. One of the coolest things that we saw was a blue crane along the canal. It was really beautiful, but we couldn't take a picture because we were biking... and it flew off when we got too close. :(

I think one of the funniest things that we saw was geese along the side of the path. The mom & dad geese were chilling out with their babies and as we rode past, they started HISSING at us... which was probably one of the funniest things I have ever heard. There were a lot of geese around and at least 2 of the families hissed at us. So I hissed back. Haha.

Now Jess and Jill and I are off to see Sex and the City!

:)

Week 2!!

So the past week has been pretty intense & crazy! The Senate went back into session, so we had to stay at work an extra hour each day... BUT before we did that, Jessica, Dane and I did some crazy things over last weekend!

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.

:)

Why can't people be on time???

So last night, I got tickets to go to Hillary Clinton's "suspension" speech. But the ticket did not guarantee admission, so instead, I slept in and now I am trying to watch it on CNN.com. It's rather frustrating because first, it was supposed to start at 10am. So when I got up at 10 to watch it, it wasn't on... and CNN said that she was supposed to speak at noon. So I went back to sleep and got up at noon... and now, at 12:17 pm, she is RUNNING LATE.

Good thing she didn't get the nomination because otherwise, she would be all late for everything that she didn't want to do (at least that's my assumption).

Oh. And all of her comments about RFK's assassination, I think that Barack might need some extra protection now just to make sure that he is not accidentally assassinated... and if he is, I think I know who to blame... (JUST KIDDING.)