A Brilliant Weekend

Several of us passed up happy hour plans on Thursday after work in order to partake in the house plan to have wings at H&D and return home for a cozy night in to avoid the storm that never really hit. Once again, *THE BIG PLAN* fell through. I'm not sure why this surprised me, but I wasn't about to stay in while I had my brand new vest on. So, several of us decided to hit up an Irish Pub with live music. This wasn't my first choice, but I went along for the ride. Once everyone else agreed with Kristine and I that we needed a bit more liveliness, we hit up Union Pub. Bartender Lance (a fellow Iowan) was working, and he was very excited to see us. We pretty much made the bar the best place to be on The Hill for the rest of the night. We sang and danced the night away with the help of a few quarters from Lance for the jukebox...and by a few, I mean TWO ENTIRE HANDFULS. Thanks buddy!

Friday morning class was ill-appreciated once again, but it is always good to hear the highlights of everyone's week at work. Doug was nice enough to bring us chili for lunch before having a few CHIP alumni come speak to us in the afternoon. This was a great activity for me, as it made me really think about seriously networking in DC and consider finding a job out here for a while after I graduate. However, the biggest piece of advice I took from the afternoon was to make a plan. As of right now, I'm plan less. So, I'm going to start working on that...gradually.

On Friday night, we began planning our trip to New York City for the weekend after Easter. I think about half of our group is planning on going now, so that should make for an interesting adventure. The planning and some intense conversations prevented us from going to bed early before our big trip to the WHITE HOUSE early Saturday morning. The Wesleyan girls and I were extremely excited though, so we fought through the sleepiness.

Our directions turned out to be incorrect, so we were a bit rushed to make it where we needed to be. The guards at the front gate were able to calm us down and give us some great advice on who to find inside to answer all of our questions. Ralph turned out to be a great resource, as did pretty much everyone else we asked our million and one questions to during the tour...except for that last police guy before we exited that told Abby that President Lincoln died in Ford's Theatre. She's a history major; she knew better.

We wanted to get the most out of our experience, and we made sure we did! Using our God-given resources and Midwest charm, we made friends with nearly everyone we came in contact with: Ralph, Rob (who doesn't like working for the secret service and is leaving at age 27), tall guy (who almost let us take an illegal photo on our phones), sunglasses guard (who wanted to tell us where the missals around the WH are), Lester (who gave us his card), and Officer Willie D (who gave us his number). We're hoping this contacts will help us out at a later date :)

Sidenote: All of us were surprised as to how lax the security was for us to go on the tour. We were never asked to show our photo IDs, nor were our names ever checked off any list. This was quite crazy, especially after the background check we were told we had to have done on us before we could visit the White House.

After our White House tour, we met up with Pat & Mike and went to a Georgetown basketball game at the Verizon Center. The Hoyas were victorious, and the game was a great place to relax and get away from the madness of 510 C for a while. However, we were EXHAUSTED by the time we finally made it home, so we called it an early night.

Today we went to church (our favorite priest, Fr. Burn, had mass!), attended the KC breakfast (and met the inspiration for my blog title, David from England), visited the west building of the National Art Gallery, and saw the Constitution. I will spare you all of the great details of these events, as this blog is nearing novel length. However, I did learn that Constitution really does lower down into vault storage every single night, just like in National Treasure. I'm living out my favorite movies and loving every minute of it!