6.25.12-6.29.12
So, I really should utilize my time better and work to stay
up-to-date on these blog posts, but that would remove the suspense, right?
The beginning of this week was pretty chill. I didn’t want to spend too much money (going
out adds up fast!) so I opted to be a bit of a hermit for the first part of the
week. Sunday night, despite being a
great day, resulted in a sleepless night.
I had difficulty both falling and staying asleep. That made my Monday a little rough (it is
hard to get up on Mondays anyhow, so when you are extra sleepy, they are just
all the worse). In addition to being
sleepy, Rush+, Metro’s attempt to make Rush hours less crowded and more
efficient, was a complete failure on Monday.
To give you an idea of what Rush+ really does, it’s as my friend Garrett
keeps quoting, “It is like trying to rearrange the chairs on the Titanic.”
So, despite the fact I managed to leave my house five
minutes earlier than normal (just by dumb luck), I got to work about 10 minutes
later than I normally do. Thanks to the
Metro sitting in two different spots for 5-10 minutes while we waited for the
train in front of us to move. The
all-knowing Metro gods have removed trains from the blue line and placed them
the orange line. The result: an
extremely crowded blue line and a delayed orange line. Oh well.
After getting to work, I cheered up a bit. I really enjoy working on the Policy team. While at times I don’t feel like I’m adding a
lot to the conversation, I do know that my small contribution is being used
elsewhere (and, at times, my small contribution is bigger than I originally
expected!). Monday turned out to be a
pretty good day. That night, heartbroken
over not being able to watch HIMYM, I
ended up being productive and reading for our Tuesday session.
After a fairly sleepless Monday I thought I would crash when
I was finished with everything else. And
my body felt like it was going to, that is until I finally laid my head down to
go to sleep. For some strange reason, my
mind went into overdrive and started thinking about a plethora of events and
happenings from my past. All were
pleasant and positive, but I was sleepy.
Couldn’t my mind have done this in dream form? For whatever reason, I struggled to fall
asleep for the second night in a row.
Blah.
Tuesday was virtually a repeat of my Monday. I got up, managed to leave my house early,
got stuck on the Metro, and arrived at work later than I normally do (not that
I was late, I just like to be early!).
Our Tuesday sessions were a little slow moving (I think it’s because I
was sleepy) but our group brainstorming resulted in our project moving
forward! I was quite excited (even if my
other groupmates were not) about the progress we made.
Tuesday night was a pleasant surprise: I found season 7 of HIMYM on an online site!
Score! However, I was sleepy, so after only a couple episodes, I decided
I should probably shut it off and get some sleep. So, I disconnected my laptop…and tried to
sleep. Key word, tried. I am not sure why,
but my mind decided that it wanted to go into overdrive around the same time my
body wanted to just sleep. I partially
blame this on too many late nights at college.
Dang awkward times to be productive! (11pm-1am for those who are
curious).
Wednesday I got up late, and I didn’t care. I was too tired to worry about 10
minutes. Luckily, the Metro decided to
actually return to its normal level of inefficiency, as opposed to the
increased level of inefficiency. Work
was, as usual, entertaining. There was
some excitement in the air, as we all started talking about the healthcare
ruling. The Institute had brought in
Randy Barnett to speak about the case (he represented Small Businesses in the
suit against Obamacare) and things were looking pretty great.
Until Thursday happened (after another sleepless night—this
time because of excitement and anticipation).
The Communications team sits on the 3rd floor
near the Policy team, and they have two different TVs they keep on at all
time. Well, the majority of the 3rd
floor ended up in the Com-space. We had
Fox on one TV and the SCOTUS blog on CSPAN-3 on another. After a quick and glorious moment when we saw
Fox report “Mandate struck down” we realized that the reporting was wrong. The SCOTUS blog kept reporting, and…our
office grew silent and solemn. After
about 30 minutes of watching the outcome, various individuals started to leave
the room. Some with hopes of finding the
silver lining, some disgusted, and others were just shocked.
I could write an entire blog post on how I feel about
ObamaCare, but I am sure most of my readers have read plenty on the
matter. In summary, our office was
horrified at the ruling. The majority of us would be working on whatever
project we had on our desk, abruptly stop and just rant for a few minutes on
the ruling.
While this was a storm cloud over my day, there was a small
silver-lining. That evening I was going
to attend an America’s Future Foundation event.
The event was being held on K-Street (that horrible, horrible street, or,
for those of you that don’t know, the street where most Lobbyists reside) at the
Microsoft headquarters. The HQ was
amazing. The walls were lit up,
everywhere; there were giant screens and just an amazing amount of technology
in the room.
We (that is, Sam, Garrett and I) mingled with a bunch of
other KIP interns along with many other individuals. The panel discussion was quite interesting,
discussing the difficulties of cronyism and how business has taken a very
negative turn in government involvement.
I really enjoyed it. However, I
won’t bore you with the details.
After the panel, I was quite hungry. I had not eaten since
lunch. There had been appetizers at the event, but not nearly enough to fill me
up. So, the three of us wandered to find
food. After being disappointed with our
selection, we settled for Cosi (and I do mean settled). Cosi, for those who don’t know, is similar to
Panera.
The food was edible, and the conversation, as usual, was
humorous. The only logical thing to talk
about, of course, was one another. So,
we insulted the heck out of one another.
It was most certainly required after the terrible day we all had
had! We chatted until I noticed that the
staff at Cosi was cleaning and locking the doors. I took this as a hint that they were
closing. So, Sam and I parted ways with
Garrett (he was headed on the Red line, while Sam and I get off at the
penultimate and final Metro stop on the Orange line towards Vienna) and headed
home on the Metro. Of course, Sam and I
had to talk about Garrett while he wasn’t around (Only kidding)! After a lovely chat covering a range of
topics, from dress shopping to significant others, it was time for Sam to
depart. I enjoyed the rest of the Metro
ride back in silence (And by silence, I mean, I listened to music) and finally
made it home.
I was worn out, so I quickly got ready for bed and opted to
skip any episodes of HIMYM (it was
around 11 when I finally got back and everything ready for the next day). So, I called it a night and attempted to fall
asleep. While most nights this week I
had struggled to fall asleep and stay asleep, this time I only had difficulty
falling asleep. After getting to sleep,
I managed to stay that way until my alarm went off. Thankfully!
Finally, Friday.
Friday morning I met with a couple other interns and our HR manager to
discuss how we liked the program so far.
We had coffee at the Bayou (a coffee shop that was in our building) and
had a very enjoyable chat. After our
little meeting, I had to return to work—meaning scroll through 6 different
states newspapers and a blog to look for examples of cronyism. This was extra depressing, since everything
was talking about the SCOTUS ruling L. However, I made it (and even found an article
that was beneficial to us!) through and started on some less depressing
work.
Each month CKI/CKF has an employee brownbag luncheon where
everyone gets together to just have lunch and chat with people they don’t
normally see. It was quite entertaining
(especially since there was cake and pie!) and I got to have a pretty
interesting discussion about the merits of Psychology and how it, while being a
soft science, has led to some major benefits in the world. I know—I’m a nerd!
As usual, I called it an early Friday—but this time not to
go sightseeing. A group of us from
CKI/CKF (along with lots of other KIPers) were headed to the CATO building to
hear an intern specific discussion on “10 Reasons you are probably a
Libertarian.” It was a very fascinating
event (And the Cato building is huge!) with a reception afterwards. I met a few individuals from American
University who reminded me of the ultimate east-coast preparatory school
boys. They had slight English accents
and were just…fun to talk to. I enjoyed
our conversation, but I couldn’t help but feel a little odd. I am learning more and more that my
grassroots, rural upbringing is not something that is common in the DC
area. At least, not among the
individuals I have met. The funniest
part of the situation involving my east-coast friends: One was from the Lexington Area of
Kentucky. I mentioned going to school in
Louisville, and he 1) was surprised to hear I “knew how to say it” and 2) knew
where Bellarmine was. That makes 2
people I have met in the past 2 or three weeks.
Small world.
Upon completion of the reception (translation: When the Cato staff kicked us out) it was
time to search for real food. Garrett,
Mike, Scott (a friend of Mike’s from HIS), and I decided to try our luck at
finding something to eat. We meandered
towards the Metro—with hopes of finding something or else heading in a
direction where we could find something.
As we wandered and discussed various topics relating to economics and
the SCOTUS ruling, we ended up passing a Thai restaurant. Mike noticed their sandwich board had their
happy hour drink specials listed on it (I’ve come to realize every intern over
21 in DC drinks to some extent, with plenty of happy hours to quench their
thirst). I had never had Thai food
before, so I was game for trying something new.
The restaurant was small, but nice. I ordered Panage Kai (I think) which is
Chicken in Peanut sauce with broccoli.
It was wonderful! Apparently Thai
food utilizes peanuts well, because all four of us ordered something different
(well, sort of. Mike ordered the same
thing I had, except he had Tofu in place of chicken) and each dish had
something peanut related. I was very
pleased with my order. I attempted to
eat it all, but there was simply too much!
I definitely will look forward to getting Thai food more often!
(Thai and Indian places are both on my lists of places to
locate once I return to Louisville).
After dinner, Garrett wanted to wander to U street, but I
was worn out (my body was finally starting to give in to its lack of sleep), so
I left him in the care of Mike. Scott and I both headed towards Vienna on the
Orange line while our friends headed to U Street. Scott is an incredibly
interesting individual, very intelligent and talkative. I enjoyed getting to have dinner with him and
hear his stories.
I finally made it back to my apartment and was ready to
enjoy the AC and relax. I also had plans
to skype my friend Jena. She is
currently on the last leg of her study abroad adventure, and is in Rome. I am incredibly jealous and was excited to
hear about her adventures!
I suppose before I continue, I should mention that the
beginning of this week started out relatively nice, with highs in the lower
80s. By Wednesday, this was old
news. We were setting record highs with
humidity that made it feel like you were walking through water. Friday was no exception.
For those who are not familiar with weather, extreme
temperatures sometimes lead to extreme storms.
Well, around 10:30, this combination occurred in Ohio, W. Virginia and
Virginia. I was relaxing in my room,
getting ready to watch a couple episodes of HIMYM
and kill time until I was to skype Jena at 1am, when I heard the wind start
gusting, followed by some thunder and heavy rain. I was quite happy for a split second—I love
storms—until the power flickered once, twice, and then kicked off for a few
seconds before flickering a third time, and going out.
Well, living in the Midwest, I am no stranger to storms. I
wandered upstairs, hearing my IF wander around looking for flashlights and
lamps. I opened the door to see a very
dark sky (darker than even the night sky) and rain being blown
horizontally. Yes, the rain was actually
going sideways. It was intense. Well, my basement was nice and cool, so I
decided that I would just wander back down there and relax for a while until the
storm passed and the power came back on.
I send Jena an email from my phone, a warning just in case my power was
still out come our agreed upon skype time.
And then I waited. My phone was pretty low on charge, so I
plugged it into my laptop and decided to let it charge that way. Well, whenever my laptop would hibernate, my
phone would stop charging. So, I pulled up my windows media player and listened
to music while my phone charged to keep my laptop from kicking out on me.
I was getting sleepy, so I decided I would take a nap before
skyping Jena (I was optimistic the power would be back on. I was used to going
a few hours without power after a storm).
I turned my music down low, turned by laptop so the screen’s light
didn’t hit my eyes, and set my phone’s alarm so I would wake up in time to
skype…and then I dozed off.
Well, I woke up when my alarm went off…and it was dark. My microwave clock was not on and I did not
hear the hum of the AC. Dang. Still no power. Well, I had to settle for emailing Jena via
my phone if I wanted to communicate with her, so that’s what I did for a little
while, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I stayed awake long enough to
see my laptop die, meaning my phone would no longer be charging.
I was optimistic that the power would kick back on during
the night, so I plugged my phone into my wall charger, to ensure it charged
once the power did come back on.
Well, let’s just say I blame my naiveté on being an Intern.
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