Lightspeed.

Only because I feel I am too packed full of updates, because I am too blessed not to share with you all how great things have been going, and because I feel a sense of moral obligation to keep my friends and family updated on my life, am I staying up past 1 a.m. to complete this blog post. I am going to try and let these pictures do the talking in their chronological order...but I DO like explanations. We'll see how this goes.

September 26th: Orioles baseball game.

I went with an old friend, Bryan Bendall, who just so happens to live out here and attend the same ward as me. We ended up getting amazing 5th-row tix behind home plate. Here is our happy group (before the rain).



Ok so I just had to add this because we asked this guy behind us to take a cool pic with the field in the background to show off how close our seats were. He marveled at his picture taking ability, and even took two pictures, saying "This is a desktop picture for sure!" I was excited to see the results...and THIS is what we got. Forget that there were two other people leaning in and smiling for the picture! Cracks me up. Might as well have been at a Little League game behind us.

It began to really pour and we were rained out of the game. Pretty fun, though.

September 27th: Gettysburg (and my 21st birthday)

We took a "field trip" with the whole group to Gettysburg. It was a rainy kind of day, but the weather cleared up enough for us not to get rained upon. Here are some photos in memorium:


The view from a lookout tower.


We were having a photoshoot on the same lookout tower in which we made bizarre faces at the camera. This is when we fell to the floor in hysterics because we were laughing so hard.


The view from Little Round Top.

September 30th: Lunch with Senator Lugar

Senator Lugar, Ranking Member of the Foreign Relations Committee, took me and my fellow interns to lunch. I got to shake his hand. Stand next to him on the "Senators Only" elevator. Ride the subway with him to the Capitol building. Crowd shoulder-to-shoulder in the teeny elevator on the way to the Senate Dining Room. Sit as his right-hand man (or woman) as we crowded around a large table. Break our bread together (well, cornbread muffins, to be precise) and share a heart-to-heart about the economy, the Nunn-Lugar Act, the Global Food Security Act, U.S.-Indian relations, and his farm back in Indiana. He even pulled out my chair for me to sit in. He was as down-to-earth as any old gentleman, and liked to talk as many older people do. I was very impressed with him and his genuine personality and the time he took to mingle with the pee-ons (aka, us interns). It was lovely.



Then he took us up to his hideaway office, where he has his own treadmill and a shower. We took this picture just outside his office. I thought maybe putting it in B&W would make me look less tired...I don't think I succeeded. Really neat, though. It was even cooler to sit in the Senate gallery the very next day and hear him talk about the U.S.-Indian Nuclear Agreement and vote later that night on that and the economic plan.

October 1st: The Senate voted on the Bailout Bill. Or "Rescue Plan," whichever you prefer.

I stayed with some of my fellow Senate intern friends from BYU till 10 p.m. to watch them vote. We got to get a peek at Sens. McCain, Obama, Biden, Dodd, Clinton, Kerry, etc. from the staff gallery seats. Pretty cool to be part of history (even if I am just an intern bystander).


A couple of weeks ago when the weather was warmer.

October 4th: First day of General Conference

I absolutely loved it! Couldn't get enough of it. That night we had a girls' night and took Sister Blanchard, one of the couple missionaries, out to dinner for her b-day in Georgetown and had a night on the town without the men. We also got to go to a Jim Henson Smithsonian exhibit the afternoon before, which was way too fun. Not only did it deepen my respect for such a creative genius, but it made me miss childhood, reminisce at how wonderful Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, the Muppets and just Kermit the Frog are. LOVED it.


Me in Georgetown for the girls' night out. Notice how I am standing in front of my favorite place on M Street--Barnes & Noble

This is a random picture of my roommate, whose family is in town. We walked around DuPont Circle that night after picking her up from being with her family at their hotel. We randomly decided she had to wear this anchor in public, since she lost some bet a few weeks ago. I don't know why we made her do this, why she actually did it, why I took a picture of it and why I'm putting this on here. Just humor me.


October 7th: Olympians at the White House?

I was just minding my own business as I walked to work today (oh yeah...side note: I have begun to walk to work every day. I don't know if I've mentioned that before, but I absolutely love it. It takes an hour to get there when I'm walking at lightning speed in my skirt, and it is one of my favorite parts of the day now, other than my head hitting the pillow at night). Anyway, I was just walking along, twiddling my thumbs as I walked past the White House, when I saw all these people in clone jackets. Then I noticed their clone jackets all had Olympic rings on one side and "USA" on the other. They looked like old fogies, so I dismissed them as former Olympic athletes that I would not recognize.

Not so.

One of the last people to scurry along with the Olympic jackets group was a small-ish person. I did a double take when I saw it was none other than Olympic gold medalist Nastia Liukin. I LOVE the Olympics. LOVE them. I watched them every night, especially gymnastics, and yelled at the TV when we won. I nearly cried when Michael Phelps won his 8 gold medals (OK, not really), and would stay up in the wee hours to watch the replays of all the sports.

Did I mention I LOVE the Olympics? Anyway, seeing Nastia Liukin was so cool and I wasn't about to just go on my way! I was pretty stoked. I waited patiently as she signed some poster of herself for some man, and then while her giant body-guard man grabbed her luggage and barked some orders. Thank heaven for my tourist tendencies of always carrying my camera in my purse. I got a picture with her, and who cares if it made me late to work? It was too cool!



She is TINY! 5'3". I look like a giant next to her. Anyway, I called Alex right then and told her how cool that was. Maybe it wouldn't be so cool if I weren't so obsessed with the Olympics. I concluded that the US Olympic team must've been on their way to meet the president. That's a legitimate guess, right? Does anyone have info to back me up on that one? The White House, the people all in Olympic jackets...it seems to make sense.

I decided to walk home from work today. It was a beautiful evening. I took my time and snapped pictures as I walked home. This is my city:


The Capitol from the Senate side.


The Washington Monument.



The Lincoln Memorial.



The WWII Memorial, Washington Monument, and Capitol all in one.

OK well now that I think I am about to die of exhaustion, I hope that my brief memoirs are satisfactory. At the very least, I am content with having written down what I've done in the last week so I won't forget. I hope everyone is doing well, keeping up on the election (presidential debate tonight, anyone?) and their current events (GENERAL CONFERENCE!!! Washington Post! Economist! Wall Street Journal! Read them!), and doing wonderfully as autumn sets in.

I know I'm loving every minute of it.