Prom, work, and class

Where to start? I last updated when my parents came up and we took a day trip to Manassas, which feels like a very long time ago! I guess I'll try to cover the major events.

Last Wednesday was the annual AEI black tie event at the Washington Hilton. Interns are invited along with a guest, so I brought one of the guys in the house as my date. I had to get there early to "work", but the work turned out to be nothing at all. Dick Cheney was supposed to be there, thus requiring metal detectors, tickets, photo IDs, and more, so interns had to make sure everyone had a ticket and that people knew where to go and how to get to the bathrooms. However, the VP didn't show, nor did his wife, so the interns didn't have to work as front-doormen such specific times.

So.... that was fabulous. I wore a long black dress, put on legitimate makeup, had a four course dinner, hung out with fellow interns, danced a few times to Sinatra. Good times. I have a few pictures on flickr. It's www.flickr.com/jamie-lowe. (The best part is that my friends have no idea the pictures are online!)

So what else can I share? I feel like I'm so far behind on the blog. This past weekend my friend came up from App to visit. I had a great time. We walked around the city, went to the beautiful Library of Congress near my house, saw a movie, went to Chinatown for dinner, explored a little more, and went to the bookstore. (Yeah, we're nerdy.)

I really wish I had pictures of the LoC. They have 500 miles of shelving! At least, I think that's right. It sounds crazy. So many books, nearly every one ever published here. I can't fathom storing all of those. They had one of the three old copies of the Gutenberg Bible, remarkably enough. They also had some state-of-the-art exhibits about expansion into North America. I think the display is on loan from another museum.

Work is going pretty well. I'm actually taking tomorrow off because I have some friends coming up from home again. Fortunately for me, the ACC tournament has started and Carolina plays tomorrow at noon. I'm really hoping I have a chance to watch it. There are some other people up visiting this weekend and I think several of us are going out to watch the game. Fridays in DC are pretty relaxed, particularly in government agencies, so most of them have the opportunity to take a couple of hours off.

Speaking of which, go UNC for beating Duke last weekend!!! What a great game. It's always so satisfying to win over the Blue Devils, and no matter where I've gone even in the world, people recognize the rivalry between our schools. I've met dozens of interns since I've been here and none of them have quite the same rivalry for any sport. The interns at work talk about basketball, rugby (random), and lacrosse. A lot of them are from Northern schools, so lacrosse is a bigger deal. I actually had no idea it was so absent on the West coast. Sometimes I simply forget how large and diverse our country is.

I guess I should say a word about work and classes. I have a paper due tomorrow, but it's almost completely done. I'd finished it last night but in a late-night stroke of stupidity I saved it as a temp file because I'd downloaded a copy from my gmail account. For whatever reason I couldn't find the updated temp file on my computer no matter how many system-wide searches I did, so I had to rewrite the bulk of it. Fortunately that didn't take too long. It's all about how to solve Social Security - piece of cake, right? At least it's ten times easier than healthcare. As interested as I've become in entitlement program reforms, I don't think I have the economics or health policy background to get any grasp on how dire the situation is or exactly what it would take to fix it.

Last Thursday I had class with our professor based at UNC. He flew up to talk to us about our internships and hear about how our DC experience is going generally. We then went to Brookings to meet with researchers at their health policy center, which was interesting. A lot of what we're doing here obviously revolves around health policy, Social Security, entitlement programs more generally, and the budgeting process as a whole. All of these areas overlap and so many organizations in DC alone focus on these issues. As a result, there's a lot of opportunity for us to visit with experts from across the political and institutional spectrum. Of course Thursday we also found out about Eve Carson's death, so that put us all in an entirely different mood. My thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends and everyone back at school - it's definitely a difficult loss. She was an incredible person and I was lucky to have known her.

Today we had our usual class at the Ronald Reagan building, during which we talked about longterm disability insurance. It's definitely not something I think about every day and it's a difficult issue. It's starting to get late so I don't really want to go in depth. Plus, I'm not sure many other people out there share my enthusiasm for discussing government insurance programs.

Maybe I should make a list of all the speakers, lectures, and events I've attended since I've been here. It would probably come in handy in the future, especially if I want to do more research in these areas and need contacts. Maybe if I have some free time this weekend I can try to tackle that.

Speaking of this weekend, a couple of my friends are visiting for a couple of nights! I think I already mentioned that, but I'm really excited. I haven't been to the zoo yet, so if the weather is nice I think that's one place we'll visit. Maybe we'll go to the Portrait Gallery, Chinatown, National Mall, National Geographic Museum, and I can show them where AEI is. If we have time for all of that, of course.

Oh - cool thing that happened yesterday. I was walking home from work and randomly ran into two of my friends from Carolina! They were outside the Library of Congress near the Supreme Court, and it was pure chance that I was walking that way! So I brought them back to my house and then we went to Chinatown to get some dinner. It was a lot of fun, so I'm glad that we ran into each other in a city this size. What are the odds!

Okay, my internet connection is going crazy. I'm going to have to wrap this up. I hope everyone is doing well!