Five Minutes of Fame

Today there was an article in the Washington Post about the database I've been working on at work on and off the past few weeks. Check it out:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092803862.html

This is cool because I specifically looked up and documented all of the earmark requests and campaign contributions for Senator Cochran, and now it's NEWS! Our office was really buzzing because of the publicity as well. I talked to CNN, Reuters, Huffington Post, NPR, and a few other random reporters. By "talked to" I mean I answered the phone and transferred them to someone who could really talk to them. But it was still cool.

(If the link doesn't work look it up by the title, "Defense Bill, Lauded by White House, Contains Billions in Earmarks" by R. Jeffrey Smith)

Two sayings to help you be brave

"Defeat appears to me preferable to total inaction."
-John Adams

"Go Forward"
-My superman keychain

What I Love About Fasting

Today is Fast Sunday.* Irony of ironies, Fast Sundays are anything but fast, as most of you know. Since we do not eat or drink anything for the equivalent of two meals on Fast Sundays, every minute is unnaturally long. If you listen carefully in church you’ll hear a choir of rumbling stomachs at any given moment in the congregation.

So, in light of the constant thoughts of food and hollow bellies on Fast Sunday, why do we fast? Why do we participate in something borderline masochistic on the first Sunday of every month?

The simple answer is, we weaken our bodies to strengthen our spirits. I love fasting because of (1) the reminder to pay fast offerings, (2) the opportunity to practice physical restraint in the name of something higher, and (3) the symbolic role of Christ as our Nourisher, or the Bread of Life.

Fast Offerings. Fast offerings are donations specifically to the poor or needy of the community. We choose to give the money we would have spend on two meals on Fast Sunday and donate it to the church to distribute locally and internationally. This conscientious sacrifice helps remind us every month that we have enough to give to others. We are testifying that we have enough bounty; we are content.

Fast offerings also recognize the Lord as our ultimate provider. I have food everyday. The fact that I have food and clean water sets me apart from a good portion of humankind. Committing to recognize the bounty in my life—even minimally—is something that turns my mind to those around me.

However, I could also donate money to the needy without fasting. Writing checks is not difficult. But, the personal sacrifice that I make by actually going without food consecrates my heart and mind to my donations. I am not just donating to placate my conscience. I am making a sacrifice right now, by going without food, and in the future, by going without money, to help others.

Mind Over Body. The most significant lesson I learn every month from fasting is that my spirit has power over my body. On Fast Sunday, my body needs food. My body is weakened and naturally inclined to sneaking a dorito or string cheese. However, when I fast, I choose to do so knowingly. I know that my body will be weakened, and I know that I will feel pain. I choose to fast anyway. My body wants to eat, but my mind chooses to overcome that desire. As a human, many of my actions are self-preserving and influenced by bodily needs (I need to sleep to be healthy, exercise and eat well) to keep my strength up. However, fasting reminds me every month that my actions are not controlled by my body. I choose my actions; I am not victim to natural instinct.

This reminder strengthens me. I become more confident in my ability to control and triumph over other weaknesses. If I can pass up a delectable brownie when I am extremely hungry, then I can do anything! It becomes easier to keep the law of chastity. I find myself more willing to exercise and less willing to oversleep.

The Sacrament Symbolism. The only food and water that we ingest during our fast is the bread and water of the Sacrament. Because I’m hungry, I usually try to grab the biggest piece of bread so that my stomach doesn’t howl and gargle as loudly as it can (and sometimes does) during Sacrament meeting. But I also love the symbolism that Christ is truly the Bread of Life and nourishes us always. It is to Him we owe everything. Fasting seems insignificant, compared to His sacrifice for me.


Ultimately, I enjoy fasting, not because I enjoy starving myself (I don’t), but because of the blessings for doing so. I am grateful for the opportunity to fast as a church every month.

*I understand that it might not be Fast Sunday for everyone, but we have stake conference the week after general conference, so there you go.

A look inside the mind of a typical Washingtonian (as observed by me--a reliable witness and diligent student of human behavior)

If you're only on the metro escalator for a minute, you don't notice. But if you're emerging from the depths of the earth where some of the trains operate (cough cough red line cough cough), and you have to entertain yourself to avoid falling asleep before reaching ground level, you notice that your hand is slowly moving away from your body.

And, since it's a new-fangled-moving-staircase escalator machine (and you are still disoriented from the metro ride), it takes you a moment to figure out what the problem is, regardless of how many college degrees you have.

Am I getting an ear infection? Is my sense of balance off? Am I still dizzy from the train and simply imagining my hand is getting away from me? Is my hand self-aware? Audaciously trying to escape from my body in broad daylight, ninja-like?

After staring at your hand for several moments as it continues to stretch away from you, it hits you:

The moving railing of the escalator to get on the metro is moving ever-so-slightly faster than the actual escalator.

Ha! The triumph of a logical solution! Yes! That is the solution to your spatial disorientation for the past 30 seconds! A wave of self-satisfaction washes over you. But, as quickly as it came, another thought hits you:

Why in the world can't the escalator keep up with the handrail?! I mean, I would have been able to think about the mini cilantro dumplings waiting for me at home for at least 30 more seconds...sigh.

How annoying.

Homeless

I did it. I gave in.

There was a man outside Trader Joes selling a newspaper called "Street Sense" for $1. He asked every person if they could spare a dollar for the homeless and when they avoided eye contact or just ignored him completely, he would still say thank you, in a non-bitter way.

So, I gave him a dollar. I had just finished buying food, for goodness' sakes, the least I could do was give a dollar.

Random Observations Concerning Work

• A particularly entertaining earmark I came across at work today..."The Operating Room of the Future"

• I came across an earmark destined for none other than Socorro, New Mexico! Say hi to the $2 mil we sent there, Paul!

• I saw that Hackensack is an actual town in New Jersey! (An unintended consequence: I had "Movin' Out" stuck in my head for three hours.)

• I came across a company called "Moog Inc. - FloTork." You can't make up a more ridiculous name.

• I sat in on a quarterly planning meeting today and figured out how non-profits work: proposals, grants, and results. And the cycle never ends, by the time you find out if you got a grant or not, you have to start writing a proposal to apply for the next year.

• Sometimes we put C-SPAN on in the background at work, and today the woman taking votes sounded just like Katharine Hepburn! It was strangely comforting...

Doing the Washington Walk

People walk quickly here.

Even if you're just walking to the washroom, you need to walk with purpose.

This might be partly because time in transit is time wasted. The sooner you get to your destination the sooner you can get on with your life/your goals/your dreams.

Don't know where you're going? You'd better figure it out, because the people behind you do know where they're going and they are not going to slow up for you.

Random Thoughts About D.C. Not Having to Do with Politics (That would have to be a completely separate post)

• I get motion sick on the Metro sometimes. I don’t know if some of the drivers just really like playing with the brakes, but I get pretty woozy after 20 minutes.

• It would take you twice as long to get anywhere if you strictly follow the pedestrian traffic signals. For those of you who are wary of my moral character for admitting that I jay walk every day, all the time (cough cough Charlie cough cough), let me ‘splain.

If the streets in Salt Lake are laid out like a grid, the streets in D.C. are laid out like a toddler took a crayon and drew a picture of “spaghetti” all over your neat graph paper. The streets in Salt Lake are often four/five lanes and cars are coming from both directions. Here most of the streets I cross are about ten feet wide and only one way. So, rest assured that I never jaywalk across a busy intersection, and rarely across a street that has cars coming from both directions. I have only gotten honked at a few times, and I like to think that was because of my girlish charm, not my reckless, lawless jaywalking.

• The homeless people fascinate and distress me. It’s the ones who don’t beg for money that really seize my heart with a rigid fist until I can turn the corner and distract myself with everyday events. What can I do? We are not encouraged to give to them. And like I said, it’s the ones who don’t even ask for money that I am compelled to help. There is one man in particular, probably about 45 years old that sits on the same street corner 6 out of 7 days. It’s interesting. You’d think he’d sit on a bench, or in a park, but he sits at the same intersection. He sits crosslegged with his white hair sticking straight up and his back to traffic. He never looks unhappy. I rarely see emotion on his face. It’s pretty clear that he has some kind of mental disability. But I wonder what his life is like. What he does all day on his corner. What he sees, where he goes when it gets colder.

• I always seem to get caught walking behind someone who is smoking. It also always seems to happen when the wind blows the smoke right in my face. It’s disgusting. Especially cigars.

• I have to be careful about my typing technique or else I will injure myself. Seriously. I actually type that much. And if I get lazy, my wrists and tendons will start to tingle.

• We played two ridiculous but ridiculously hilarious games at FHE tonight. One called duck fighting and one called ninja war or something like that. I haven’t laughed so hard playing an EFY game in a long time.

• Days go quickly here! No time for frivolities. If you hesitate for a moment, this town will leave you in the dust.

Saturday Sept. 19 or the National Zoo

After a luscious morning of sleeping in, we went to Eastern Market this morning around 10:30.

Eastern Market is a fabulous outdoor market about three blocks east of the Capitol. The normal jewelry, painting, and art booths are there, as well as several West Virginia farm stands with fresh fruit and vegetables. The best part about Eastern Market? The samples. Crisp, fresh fruits, salsas, and hummus out to taste in the beautiful fall morning. I even found fresh figs! (Ever since my roommate Lana gave me some fresh figs last summer, I’ve been looking for them in stores. But, alas, they are exceptionally uncommon. They were obscenely expensive, but worth every dollar.)

I found a good souvenir for myself and a good Christmas present for mom. I would love to go to Eastern Market again.

Heavy laden with our purchases, we wandered down to the Folger Shakespeare Library near the Library of Congress. Not the same as the Folger coffee brand, but the FSL possesses the most comprehensive Shakespeare collection in the world. It IS the Folger that publishes the “Folger Shakespeare Edition” To put it in context, FSL possesses 79 original Shakespeare folios, a collection in England possesses 5. We will try to go back there in October when they present “Much Ado About Nothing” in their old-fashioned theater.

In the afternoon we went to the National Zoo. We saw the pandas (and a baby panda!), some cool reptiles, the cheetahs (my favorite), and a bunch of other animals.

By the time we left the zoo, our legs were definitely sore from cavorting all over the city. We made it home just in time to eat dinner, take a breath, and run downstairs for the BYU game.

You never see pay phones anymore! We took a picture of the archaic relic.

Some beautiful "brain" flowers at Eastern Market

Sep 13-19 or Catching up

Okay. Let's try to review this past week in an organized manner.

Sunday (9/13):We are at church most of the day on Sundays.

And I kind of like it.

I had the luscious opportunity of sleeping without my alarm clock on this morning. I woke up around 8:30 and had a delightful morning until I realized that I was going to be late! I finished my yummy breakfast, hastily finished my hair and ran out of the Barlow to the bus station across the street.

Church was great, dinner was great, and we got to watch the CES fireside with Elaine Dalton. She gave a great talk and I was quite edified.

Monday: Busy, busy, busy. Work and then rush home to cook for dinner group and then rush to FHE to give the lesson and facilitate the game. At 10:30 all of the things I was in charge of--projects at work, dinner, and FHE--were over!

Tuesday: Tuesday was a lot of data basing at work. I had to take breaks from typing so my wrists wouldn’t hurt. Tuesday night my friend Abby asked me to cut her hair. While she has ever reason to trust me personally, she has no reason to trust me cosmetically! But me, being fearless, agreed if she really wanted me to. It looked pretty good, but we have yet to discover if I really did a good job, she hasn’t straightened it yet.

Abby was nervous before she let me at her head with a pair of scissors.

Wednesday: Ten minutes after getting to work, I left for a Natural Resources full committee hearing in the House. Five hours later, I returned.

I will try not to bore you with details about the bill discussed (the CLEAR act, HR 3534), but the Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Salazar testified, so it was a big deal. The hearing was PACKED. Even the overflow room was like Disneyland during spring break.

Sidenote: I ran into one of my friends from the Barlow Center who is interning with Rep. Chaffetz! I got to sit with my friend John during the hearing and it was good to see a familiar face on the Hill.

Probably the most notable thing that happened during the hearing was Sec. Salazar’s announcement of the end of the Royalty-In-Kind (RIK) program. TCS has opposed this program for awhile, and we were thrilled when he announced the end. You can see what we wrote about it here and here. Basically, it’s a program where oil/gas companies can make royalty payments in oil/gas rather than cash, so they play the market and give the U.S. oil/gas when prices are low and delay when prices are high. As a result, taxpayers are out millions of dollars that are rightfully theirs.

I guess another notable thing is that Rep. Bishop (R-UT) literally yelled at the Secretary for not being transparent enough. Salazar joked about his passion, but I'm surprised Bishop didn't have a heart attack.

At around 12:30 the hearing went to recess until 1:00 and I went downstairs to get some lunch at the cafeteria. Who would have imagined the wonders I found in the basement of the Longworth House building! First, the cafeteria was packed and amazing! (What isn't packed on Capitol hill?) You could get anything there and it all looked good! Since it was crowded to the gills, and I thought I’d get weird stares if I actually tried to decide what I wanted by looking around and figuring out the system, I just grabbed the first packaged thing that looked good and went outside (where I had room to breathe) to eat it.

A LOT of people work in the Longworth building. Also, downstairs I found a coffee shop, a creamery (for ice cream), an office supplies store, and the special private Subway track that runs between the Capitol and the Senate and House buildings. It’s a great idea because if you had to walk from the House to the Senate, it could take you awhile. I bet if I had walked around a little bit more I would have found a dry cleaner and an amusement park as well.

Thursday: Another hearing at work and then tons of homework and reading when I got home. Since I had put off my homework all week (in favor of much more fulfilling pursuits: talking to friends, writing in my journal, reading the news, going to bed early), and I finally paid the price. I had to stay up until two to finish a paper for class.

Friday: We had two great briefings. One by some BYU alums working for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and one by Bart Marcois, the president of the Eagle foundation. Both were engaging, thought-provoking briefings, but you'll have to ask me about them if you're interested because this post is already long enough.

However, after Mr. Marcois' presentation I did decide that I watch too much television/movies. I really don't watch that much, but there is so much more to do!

After changing out of our business attire, we hopped on the metro and went to the Old Town area in Alexandria. It was beautiful! We went on a walking tour, window shopped, grabbed dinner (Thai food---yummy!) and ice cream (cherry vanilla with chocolate syrup), and got back on the Metro.

We went to the Air Force and Pentagon memorials on the way home. Beautiful architecture, especially at night.

Reposing on an ancient park bench in Alexandria. Okay, so the bench probably isn't ancient, but it was next to the older house in Alexandria, so it was pretty old by association.

I am reading the tour book that led us on a walking tour of old town!

The tree lined streets of Alexandria are very beautiful.

Looking into the window of the church where George Washington's funeral was held. (Everything closes at five here.)

A common sight for me, but not so common for you! Abby taking Rachel's picture in front of a classic southern-style mansion/house.

Abby taking my picture in front of a classic southern-style mansion/house. (But you can tell it's southern simply by my damsel-in-distress, Scarlet O'Hara pose.)

Most of the girls who went to Alexandria (a few were shopping down the road)

Waiting for the Metro.

I didn't know she took this picture, but it's candid, so I like it.

At the Air Force memorial. It is hard to pose with artistic concrete.

Lynne and Abby tired after a really long day of walking many places.

An AMAZING guy we saw playing crystal glasses in Alexandria! He is very very good. I got his business card, just in case I ever need a man who places crystal glasses.

Second day in Philly or Sep. 12

We left Valley Forge pretty early and got to Philadelphia before nine. We went over to see the Liberty Bell first of all. It was okay. Mostly just a bell with a crack in it.

We toured the Constitution Center, a new multi-media museum in Philly that is AWESOME. My only complaint is that they didn’t let us take pictures (if we wanted a picture taking the oath of office, you had to pay for it. Lame.) There were videos, touch screens, audio telephones, and many other things chronicling the history of the constitution and how it applies to us individually and as a people. It was very well done. I imagine that more new museums will be structured like this in the future in order to satisfy the A.D.D. video game generation too restless to read paragraphs on the wall.

We toured Independence hall next, the building where they signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution. It was cool to see the building even though the only thing that was original is Washington’s famous chair with a “rising sun” on it. And the fact that National Treasure filmed a bunch of scenes there. Our tour guide looked like Benjamin Franklin, but told us that he actually impersonates John Adams. (Apparently there are a lot of Ben Franklin impersonators in Philly. Whoda thunk?)

Then we had a few hours of free time. We went to go get real Philly cheesesteaks at a place called “Jim’s.” We heard that really Philadelphians had their steaks with steaming hot Cheese Whiz instead of slices. Being fearless, I accepted the challenge. It was very good and greasy. See the picture below.

We wandered back and see a few other historical sites. Benjamin Franklin’s grave, the tomb of the unknown soldier of the American Revolution, the old town hall, and the first house of the Supreme Court. We went back to the visitors’ center and leisurely perused the gift shops (something that was actually very refreshing).

As I was ordering a yogurt parfait with fresh raspberries to keep my blood sugar up, (I had almost fallen asleep in the History Channel documentary we went to.) I heard a woman scream behind me. I turned around just in time to see a large black woman face plant on the cement floor and start seizing. She was with a group and it sounded like she has had seizures before, but it was still chaos for a few minutes. I decided to stay out of it. I told the clerk behind the desk to call 9-1-1 and in about four minutes the paramedics were there and she had relaxed a little. I won’t forget the sound of her hitting the floor. The most terrifying part of the whole thing was how powerless and shocked everyone was. It took a second for everyone to figure out what to do. At first we just watched her, and then realized that we needed to help. The question was, how? What is there to do, but call for help and wait for them to come. She already had people around her, holding her on her side, and people directing traffic away. I felt a responsibility, but I also felt that sticking around would have been less helpful. So I left.

After a great, greasy pizza dinner, we got on the bus and our professor’s nine-year-old son announced the movie we would be watching on the ride home with an acre-long grin on his face: “National Treasure.” The bus exploded! We have all been aching to see National Treasure since we got here. N. Cage cavorts all around D.C. and Philadelphia and we have been almost everywhere he goes! We saw independence hall and the liberty bell today, but it was almost cooler to see them on the movie again! Because we’d just been there!

Independence Hall. The building in which they (the founding fathers) signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution.

Ind. Hall after messing on my computer.

Abby and I in front of the great American symbol of freedom, the Liberty Bell.

This picture is hilarious, so I left it in. Scroll down to see what it was supposed to look like.

Chatting with the lifesize statues of members of the Constitutional Convention.

Waiting to go into Independence hall. (l-r Mark Williams, Prof. Goodliffe, Elder Ellsworth)

Prof. Goodliffe's adorable son, Ben. He was sharing all of his goldfish with the starving college students.

These two college students decided to reward Ben for being so generous. They ate their goldfish like synchronized raptors/dinosaurs. Ben loved it.

Our tour guide who looked like Benjamin Franklin but actually impersonates John Adams.

In the room where the Constitution was written.

Sepia version of sitting-on-a-bench-in-the-building-where-the-Supreme-Court-first-met

My genuine Philly Whizsteak

My traveling buddies. (l-r Rachel, Jennifer, Leslie, Abby)

Digression

Today, instead of catching up on my blog/journal, I wrote two lengthy, chatty, deliciously detailed letters to my dear friends on missions.

Even though my conversations with my good friends were, by definition, one-sided, it was still good to spill my thoughts and let them know what is going on in my life. In my mind I could hear their reactions/voices/laughs.

Tomorrow I will come back to the real world, go to work like normal, and catch up on my journal. But today, I am content to listen to the rain patter against my window and proverbially put my head on my friends' shoulders.

Even thousands of miles away (soon to be many more thousands as they leave the MTC), it's good to know that good friends will always be around to lift you up or help you feel loved when all you feel is alone.

September 11, 2009 or Traipsing through Valley Forge (but we had shoes, unlike Washington's troops)

We just got back from our weekend trip to Philadelphia. It was packed with fun, rain, grease, and George Washington! Don’t worry, I will explain all of those and how they relate in a minute.

First, a travelogue.

We left D.C. around 8:00 a.m. and watched BYU’s “A More Perfect Union” on the way up. Since I didn’t take American Heritage, I have never seen it, and I actually really liked it. It was very appropriate for the weekend and I learned more about the constitutional convention.

When the movie was over (and when I simply wasn’t interested in the movie), I leaned my head against the window and watching the rain fall on the Virginia/Maryland/Pennsylvania countryside. It rained the entire day. When we got to the Freedom Foundation, we got “oriented”, our keys, settled into our dorm/barrack like rooms and immediately set out exploring. It was definitely still raining and about twenty minutes walking around the grounds everything from the knees down was completely soaked.

Here are some pictures from the grounds of where we stayed.

A statue of Washington praying. (Even though we learned later that Washington never knelt when he prayed, I still liked the sentiment.)

I support Washington praying, whether he stood or knelt. If I had 12,000 men quartered in Valley Forge for the winter, I would pray pretty fervently too.

The lamppost makes this picture super artsy.

We had a good lunch (Philly cheesesteaks), then set out for our Valley Forge tour. At this point, I had decided to change to sandals and capris, that way, my pants wouldn’t get soaked and sit against my cold skin. I could go traipsing around in the wet grass, then come back to the bus and actually dry off (skin dries faster than corduroy).

Our tour guide was very animated and very excited to be our tour guide. I was very impressed with his cache of specific, detailed knowledge. It was very interesting. I learned a lot about Valley Forge that I didn’t know before. We couldn’t complain about being cold in September, because we had warm rooms and a very mobile bus to go back to. It just seems like the spirits of the 3,000 men who died there that winter would remind us that we were in Valley Forge and many, many people suffered unimaginably horrible things.

Yet they stayed with Washington. It made me wonder who I would follow to Valley Forge and not abandon. I could probably count on one hand the number of people on this earth that I would trust so completely and so blindly. I imagine that he must have been a very remarkable man to incite such fierce loyalty in the war and then later on in the country. Washington was absolutely instrumental in the forming and success of our country. I don’t know if he was charismatic, imposing, or just a man who commanded the respect of everyone in his company, but people listened to him. And he had the blessing and burden of being the one people listened to. Poor guy, he just wanted to go back to Mount Vernon and live with his wife in peace, but civic duty kept calling him away from his comfortable home. During this trip (and Mt. Vernon earlier in the week) Washington has grown on me tremendously and I am now very interested in his life. And he has won my respect also.

Our Valley Forge tour guide. He led us out of the warm bus to the cold, wet field to teach us a little bit about history. He was great and very entertaining.

This is a good view of the canon (and Malcolm)

Fashion matters most when staying warm is involved.

Artsy rain/statue picture. The guy on the horse (not Washington) has a very strange story. You wouldn't believe it if I told you, but in short, years after his death, his family came to move his bones to their estate a few miles away. His body was remarkably preserved, but the box they were going to put him in was only big enough for his bones. So they had to boil his body in order to cut the flesh away and fit his bones into the box. Weird weird weird.

A real coal train! (As novel a sight as anything else we saw!)

Another artsy fog picture. The trees are beautiful and who knows where the tracks lead? What is around the next bend? The possibilities are endless.

A view of some of the huts that the troops built that winter. They used all of the trees within a couple of miles for housing or firewood.

A cute cute baby that was traveling with us. How can you resist that face?

Some beautiful stained glass windows we saw near Valley Forge.

We had an hour before dinner when we got back. Some people brainwashed by history went back out in the rain, but a bunch of the girls sat around in the lobby with blankets and hair dryers trying to defrost our toes. Guess which group I was in…

After dinner we had the privilege of hearing from General George Washington. He really came and addressed us! It was great! A very entertaining hour and a half. The actor was certainly not a novice. He was not a poser. He was not inexperienced. “George” had a very vast knowledge of his life and was witty to boot. At the end, the actor dropped his façade and addressed us as himself. We got to ask questions about him and his life and about his knowledge of George Washington. This man knows everything there is to know about George Washington. He really was fantastic. For example, he explained where the cherry-tree urban legend started and explain that in his professional opinion, George Washington was not a Deist. Washington was deeply religious, but didn’t go to church. He wasn’t a Deist, because he believed that God has a hand in the lives and destinies of men.

After “the General” we went downstairs and had some ice cream. We stayed downstairs and talked, laughed, and told stories for hours. It was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. I’m grateful to have good friends here. For those who finished their ice cream early, there was a game room upstairs with everything from Trivial Pursuit, ping pong, foosball, guitar hero, and the wii available to us. Before I went to bed I participated in an “around the world” game of ping pong. I’m not sure what it was called, but we rotated and every hit was by a different person. If you missed twice you were out. Our professor even played with us!

General George Washington! He was part actor, part historian. He has definitely made the life of George Washington his life work. He told us later that being George Washington is his full-time job and he loves everything about it but the hair. Hates the hair.

The General teaching Marydawn the Minuet. He was very gentlemenly. Even though he was "appalled" that she wasn't wearing a floor length dress like a "real lady."

September 10 or the Washington D.C. Temple

This morning I worked on a TCS campaign contribution database. I found out which individuals contributed to Senator Cochran’s (R-MS) campaign and how much it was. It’s actually pretty sweet. If you go to “opensecrets.org” you can look up individual campaign contributions of anyone in the country. I looked up all my professors at BYU (by searching employer) and all of the people in my home ward (by searching zipcode). It’s very interesting to see who donated to whom and how much they spent. I was surprised by what I learned!

Then, I had to look up which PACs donated to Cochran’s PAC. And then I had to look up which individuals donated to Cochran’s PAC. There are campaign finance laws, but there are many ways to get around them. For example, you could directly donate, you could donate to a PAC, and you could donate to a PAC through your employer’s PAC. Some people did all of these things, Senator Cochran received approx $100,000 from individuals/companies to which he later awarded earmarks. Only in this election cycle.

Then, after lunch my supervisor had me go to a markup in the Senate buildings. Thrilled, I quickly walked down to the Capitol.

For those of you who have never seen the House and Senate office buildings, they are

P-A-L-A-C-E-S

Beautiful stone floors, beautiful hallways, beautiful committee rooms, beautiful EVERYTHING.

I got to the building, and waited in line for the meeting. (An observation, when I waited in line for the House hearing, most of the staffers in front of me were women. In the Senate, most of the staffers were men.) Once I got in and sat down, I noticed that the three middle-aged people sitting in front of me were all wearing pink. And they were pulling out sharpies to make signs. * Sigh * I didn’t want to be sitting behind these people, I wouldn’t be able to see anything! So I moved across the aisle.

Remember how I spent the whole morning on Cochran’s campaign? Guess who was the Ranking Member of the defense appropriations committee? I got to see Cochran!

The committee meeting was uneventful, I saw one of my friends with Senator Bennett from afar (he’s TALL). The pink people were actually the most exciting thing happening there. As soon as the meeting adjourned, they all stood up and started shouting “shame! Shame on you!” and “healthcare not warfare” and other infantile remarks. I know that if I want to get someone to pay attention to me, the first thing I do is drape myself in pink and try to guilt them into listening to me. It was very entertaining. They got really worked up.

I went straight from work to meet my ward for a temple trip. Ward temple trips are quite rare (to the baptistery) and I was very, very excited to go. I looked forward to it all day. I was hungry and tired, but it didn’t matter. It was wonderful. We had about 40 people, 10 of which were helping run the baptistery by witnessing and recording etc. The D.C. temple is very beautiful and the baptistery is no exception. I had a wonderful time and even though it took a few hours to travel to and from the temple, and I have a ton to do tonight, I don’ regret going at all.

The Washington, D.C. temple. (Which actually is in Maryland.)

I have a postcard that looks exactly like this!

09-09-09 or Congressional Hearing on H.R. 2227

Nine years of consecutive digits on at least one day of the year. Where did they go?

I graduated three years ago, on 06-06-06 at 6:00 p.m. If you can believe it, these past nine years have been filled with three years of middle school, three years of high school, and now, three years of college. I wonder what the next nine years hold?

… but… before my thoughts get too nebulous and spacey I will get back to business.

Today was exciting.

Fifteen minutes after I got to work, I left the office the walk down the Longworth House office building, down the road by the Capitol. As I walked down the street carrying my laptop, adorned in my suit, and having a “professional, non-silly” expression on my face, I hope that some people thought that I was a serious Washingtonian with serious business. It was fun to pretend that I was.

I walked back a few people with portable sound systems and cardboard signs protesting abortion and something about the military. I didn’t look too closely.

Something interesting about the House building: there are elevators marked “Members only” that only members of Congress (and I assume their staff) can ride in. I’m sure there must be a better reason than just outright superiority, but I certainly felt like I was less of a person because my representatives in Congress didn’t want to ride with the “plebeians” on the elevator.

I got to the hearing half an hour early and there were already ten people in line. I went to the Energy and Mineral Resources subcommittee hearing on H.R. 2227 (The American Conservation and Clean Energy Independence Act). Basically, it is a bill that opens up a lot of now-closed areas for off-shore drilling in order to finance America’s “transition” into clean, renewable energy sources. Decreasing our dependence on oil/gas will be very costly, and we simply don’t have the money right now. One representative called this energy policy “the Apollo of our time.”

The hearing was really interesting. The procedure was very interesting to me. It was very formal and proper (Everyone recognized the chairman for holding the hearing, and “yielding” time to the chairman. The chairman recognized everyone as “the gentleman’s time has expired” or “the gentlewoman’s time has expired.”), but it was very oppositional and antagonistic at times. The Chairman and the Ranking Member (different parties) disagreed in their opening statements, before the hearing had even begun! And I’m surprised the guy from the Sierra Club didn’t run out of the hearing room. He took a beating.

The Ranking Member referred to an article I had just read the day before about the double standard in litigation for windmill and oil/gas companies. (Oil/gas companies have to pay millions because they kill a few hundred birds a year, but each windmill kills approximately one bird a day.) I knew what he was going to say before he said it!

The hearing went for about two hours and eventually declined into a solid thwapping of the Sierra Club. But it was very interesting. I hope I get to go to some more.

Observation about politicians: at least at this level, they are very smart, funny, and charming (most of them). They fight with each other all day everyday, but they’re still friends. I take that back. They don’t fight. They disagree. I think it’s great that our political process is so adversarial. Someone always disagrees and we always get to see the other side of the issue. And wars aren’t started over it. America is one place where you can agree to disagree, and it’s great.

Oh and they’re always promoting their own agenda or their party’s agenda. As you would expect. Half of the time they would “ask a question” when really they just wanted to show that they were right. I expect all of these records are kept and they will always be responsible for what they said, even in committee.

When I got back I had enough work to do to keep my busy for the whole day without getting bored—a first!

I cleaned up my notes from the hearing for my supervisor (she wanted to know about revenue sharing—something that they didn’t really talk about at all). And then worked more on the defense committee appropriations requests for FY10. Today I entered the requests for the Ranking Member, Senator Cochran from MS. I thought Inouye had a lot! Cochran had almost $700 mil and I’m not even done yet! Tomorrow I will match up campaign contributions with earmarked handouts.

I went to dinner group and then seriously debated whether I should go to Institute or watch President Obama’s joint address to Congress. I really had a moral dilemma. I was all set to skip Institute and watch the speech, when social pressure caved in and I decided I should go to Institute. Two hours later (after class and talking with some people about politics), I came back upstairs and I can’t find a video of the speech anywhere! C-span’s website is overloaded and it isn’t loaded on YouTube yet. Curses! I’ll just have to read about it tomorrow….

September 8 or Worked on an Earmark Database

I know, I know. I couldn’t come up with a better name than that.

But today, like so many other days, I went to work.

In the morning, I worked mostly on the same stuff from last week, but then Laura and Steve gave me something new! Hooray! I was about to volunteer to clean out the fridge downstairs.

I worked on transferring information from Senators’ websites (they are required to disclose the earmarks they request) to our earmark database. I did some data entry and had to interpret the long, adjective-filled description of what exactly the Senator was requesting money for. I worked mostly on Senator Inouye from the defense appropriations committee today. When I finished, he had requested over $330 million dollars for defense related project in Hawaii. And some of the descriptions of the requests sounded like quotes from a defense lobbyist’s mouth. It was like reading a catalog for military equipment. “This state-of-the-art ______” will improve this and that and be absolutely vital to this or that. If warfighters don’t get this technology now, they will regret it in 10 years. Etc. etc.

It’s amazing how you can write an entire paragraph with very specific nouns, but not really say anything. And it’s amazing how little you have to specify to get $10 million. If I want a $2,000 loan I have to sign away my firstborn child, but if you are a ranking member of the right committee you have hundreds of millions at your discretion. And if you assign it all through earmarks, it doesn’t have oversight or any competition. It’s a pretty sweet deal, unless you’re a taxpayer.

But I digress.

Not much else happened. We had a staff meeting at work, and it was cool to hear them talk about news as it happened throughout the day. I read the front page of the Washington Post while I ate breakfast, but if I hadn’t checked it again at lunch I would have been totally behind.

Also on the way home today the metro train in front of mine broke down, so we were at “L’Enfant Plaza” for half an hour. Good thing I had my book. With the combination of staying a little late at work and the metro trouble, I got home a little after seven o’clock. I sat down, took a deep breath, and before I knew it, it was time for dinner group.

I went downstairs, had a lovely dinner with my Barlow Center friends and had a good talk with the ones who stayed a little late. After talking with them, and then talking with the people in the lobby, I finally made it back to my room (still in my work clothes) at ten o’clock. And now I try to catch up on my blog-erific hobby of mine. (If you get behind, it’s hard to catch up.)

Keep your ears tuned for tomorrow. I go to my first hearing on the Hill.

September 7, 2009 or Biking 40 miles to Mt. Vernon. In the Rain.

After a very fitfull night of sleep (for me), 16 of us departed from the Barlow Center at 8:00 a.m. (That in itself is a feat.)

We went down to the same place we rented kayaks and rented 16 bikes, locks, and helmets. Some people didn’t want to get helmets, but I convinced them because they were only a dollar. I took them by the shoulders, looked them in the eye, and in a half-joking tone said, “isn’t your brain worth $29.95?” When they replied yes, but they don’t cost $29.95, I said, I know isn’t it great, they’re only one dollar. I hope you think your brain is worth that.

Then we were off. It is 18 miles one way to Mt. Vernon from Washington D.C. Why did we decide to bike? Around mile 15 I was asking myself the same question.

Luckily it was delightfully overcast and just the right temperature for strenuous activity.

We took the Mt. Vernon Trail (which is appropriately named because it ends at Mt. Vernon) from the rental place (near Watergate hotel).

Mt. Vernon was very cool. I paid more than I’m used to for entrance (I’m used to free), but the facilities were very nice, and the museum was very interesting. Pictures were rarely allowed (we weren’t allowed to take any pictures in the mansion or the museum), but I can testify that it is a very pretty place. I can see why General Washington (as he was referred to at Mt. Vernon) liked it.

The house itself was very beautiful and just off the banks of the Potomac. They showed a short video about Washington’s contribution to American history that dramatized his courtship of Martha (who was a widow). The whole time I was very impressed with their relationship. They carried lockets with pictures in them and wrote to each other when they were apart, but Martha tried to go with General Washington everywhere she could, including to war.

They never had children, but they raised Martha’s children from her previous marriage. Also, when Martha’s son died in his twenties, they took his children into their home and raised them as their own.

We saw George Washington’s dentures, the original George Washington kneeling in prayer painting, and the tombs of Martha and George.

Also, we learned that General Washington’s greatest legacy to the American people is that he stepped down from office. He refused to be king, and then resigned from the office of the President after two terms. If he hadn’t done that, the political tradition of our country would have been completely different.

Sadly, I didn’t get many pictures because I didn’t want to swerve into oncoming traffic. I mean, I am pretty coordinated, but juggling handlebars, water, and a camera seemed to be a bridge too far.

Also sadly, many many bugs tragically ended their lives today, on my face. It’s not tragic that they died, but it is tragic that they decided to kamikaze into my eyes, nose, or mouth.

Remember the rain from last night? It found us again, but strangely we didn’t care as much. It’s amazing how many things you don’t care about when you’ve biked 34 miles and you only have two to go. Rain, appearance, and general hygiene are all included in the “not important enough” category.

About the bikes. If you pictured us all on fancy ten-speeds with handle bar brakes, think again. Picture us all on bikes with handlebars that could fit a basket (some had baskets), just one gear, and reverse-pedal brakes. Yes, not only did we bike 36 miles to and from Mt. Vernon, we did it on single-speed dinosaurs. Some of them were falling apart. One girl’s chain came off several times, and then her handlebars got loose and turned upside down. My seat gradually sunk down to the base of the bike. At the beginning of the ride, I was able to fully extend my legs when I pedaled. At the end, you might have mistaken me for one of those tall clowns on an oversized mini tricycle. Knees up to my ears.

But I am glad I went. We traveled mostly along the coast of the Potomac, but saw some beautiful Virginia cities in the middle. When you slow down, you are able to see a lot more of the country. Some moments of the bike trail were indescribably beautiful. Albeit, forcing each shaking leg down in a downpour, just focusing on the next pedal, doesn’t help you appreciate the bucolic atmosphere, but those moments were shortlived. Many more beautiful than painful moments came out of our trip. (Although I bet many painful moments are yet to come.)

And I’m proud of us. 16 moderately-fit people did a very athletic thing and we all survived.

And even biking on the single-speeds was fun. I haven’t ridden a bike like that since I was a kid.

When we got home, we peeled ourselves off our bikes, wrung out our clothing, and did our best to learn to walk again. After dinner, we ran around getting things together for FHE. Ben (my co-chair) gave a really good lesson about asking questions, and then I led a round of “get-to-know-you” bingo. Or “bing” as we called it, because there were four columns instead of five (I thought five was too many). I instructed everyone to get up and talk to as many people as possible to get to know them, and then brought everyone back together to play the game. I said a statement (e.g. this person lived in Portuguese foreign language housing and shares a birthday with Dr. Suess) and then they put a skittle/m&m on the square with that person’s name (Marydawn) on it. The prize was toilet paper. We all need it and we all suffer without it, so it couldn’t fail. Afterwards, the Burtons provided many, many donuts for us to partake of.

Now, I am carefully sitting on my bed, trying to avoid the huge bicycle-shaped bruise on my tush. I imagine tomorrow will be fun, gingerly sitting in my seat at work, carefully walking up stairs, and prying myself out of every position held longer than five minutes.

But, it’s okay. I kind of like it. It’s nice that I did something that was hard for me. It was nice to push myself and succeed.

General George Washington (he was 6'2"), Martha (she was 4'11"), and their two grandchildren. And me.

In case we got confused as to which part of the property was historic, the movie theater and pizza hut or 250 year old house...

The beautiful bowling green in front of the mansion. (It reminds me a Pemberley!)

I want porticos when I grow up and have a mansion.

Me and the mansion (no pictures inside at all, but it was very beautiful).

View of the Potomac from the back porch.

An artist's concept of what General Washington would have looked like in his early 30s. Did you know he was a surveyor? I took surveying, and the equipment has changed a lot, but also it hasn't changed that much...

I thought this cartoon was cute.

Washington died unexpectedly at age 67.

I, surprisingly, didn't die on the 18-mile ride home, but I was thoroughly soaked. You can't really see the contrast, but the front half of my body is dripping.