Better Late Than Never...

It is after 7pm on my day off and somehow I find myself sitting in my office trying to get all of my work done so that I can have Saturday off as well (watch out Hershey, PA - here i come). Today was quite the adventure which I feel the need to share with the world (mainly the non-DCers).

Today Leann took the interns on a tour of the capitol (totally cool of her, seeing as how she has a real job and all). Well, we were supposed to meet at the Metro station at 9:00 and be at Leann's office by about 10. Well, Paige and Joey both need to buy really big watches that have huge digital faces or something because at 9:50 they showed up the Metro station. We finally made to Union Station and were supposed to walk down Delaware to C Street and Leann's office building is on that corner. Well, I'm a little directionally challenged and couldn't find Delaware, so we took the long way around. This wound up being the best idea I had all day because we got to pass the CSPAN building. I'm perhaps the only dork in the world that would think this was cool, but to me it was super cool.

Instead of giving a blow by blow of the tour/afternoon I'll just give a short list of all the cool things we did/saw:

Ted Kennedy's office - Leann works right across the hall, so that was cool

John Kerry's office - We just got to walk by, but still cool

Sammie Young's office - Sammie is Chief of Staff for the Secretary of the Senate (or something cool like that) so he has this really cool office with an amazing view of the mall

Trent Lott's chair - I got to sit in his chair in the place where the rules committee meets

JFK's office - We got to see the office he had when he was a Senator

The Caucus room - A super cool room where they held hearings on things like the Titanic sinking, McCarthy, Iran-Contra, Clarence Thomas, Vietnam. Also the room where JFK announced his intention to run for the presidency.

Two cops with every type of weapon strapped to their bodies, carrying machine guns in the Metro (gotta love whole terror level thing)

I finally received my invitation to the Bush inauguration today. It's a couple of months late, but I guess W is a little slow in all areas.

I also learned that each state gets to have two statues in the Capitol, rules being that person must be dead and have had some major affiliation with that state. Paige and I have decided that we are going to petition to have one of Tennessee's statues be Elvis - you don't get more dead or more famous Tennessean than that.

On two completely different notes than each other or from this post:

I got tickets to see Andy Roddick play tennis here in DC! Yea for Jacque Holton, her friends, and weddings.

We leave for Richmond on Sunday with not enough chaperones or vehicles, and without a youth minister. That is why I'm still here on a Friday evening. Please keep us in your prayers as Neil, Paige, Lisa and I try to transport and keep up with 31 teens! I love my job!

God made dirt, and dirt don't hurt

Some of you are expecting me to comment on Wegman's and/or the new Batman movie, and I promise I will - just not today. I did promise to post the links to the two videos that we keep quoting all the time, so without further ado...End of the World (viewer discretion advised) and 'Amburgers and Wootbeer.

For real though, I would like to tell all my non-DC area friends about the wonders that are the Fourth of July on the Mall in Washington. We left Fairfax about 11:45 and arrived downtown a little before 2. We walked around for a while, we played in a fountain and then my feet got really dirty - as graham says, my feet were "oozing funk". We played frisbee and hit a couple of women who didn't speak english - that was really embarrasing. The Beach Boys and Gloria Estefan were playing on the capitol steps and there was a folk festival thing going on - it was super cool. We hung out in the shade for most of the day, but when it got dark we went out and sat on the mall right in front of the Washington Monument. When the fireworks went off the monument was in the foreground with the fireworks behind it - it was the coolest thing ever. Seriously, I'm not of the overly patriotic persuasion - I like politics, but not always america - but this was so cool. It made you feel like you should be singing "I'm proud to be an American" or something.

The highlight of the afternoon (besides all the cool patriotic stuff) was the cheesecake. A few hours into our hangout on the mall a couple of the girls decided that cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory sounded really good, so they got on the metro and went and picked up some cheesecake. We were sitting and the foot of the Washington Monument getting ready to take a bite of a creamy piece of strawberry cheesecake and my cheesecake fell off my fork onto the grass. I would like to say that it happened in slow-motion, but it didn't - between talking on the phone, talking to the people around me, watching the people play frisbee and trying to consume cheesecake - i probably wouldn't have even noticed at all except my for the fact that my fork was empty. Well, you can't leave a piece of cheesecake on the ground even if it is covered in grass. I proceeded to pick it up off the ground, pick the grass out of my $6 dollar piece of cheesecake, and eat it. Yes, I ate cheesecake off of the ground at the foot of the Washington Monument - i have no shame.

I now bid you a fond farewell - I must go practice my "ricky retardo" accent while playing frisbee with the jr high girls on our picnic.

Coming Attractions: Wegman's, Batman, Serengetti Eddy and the whole VBS drama thing, Bread & Chocolate....