Snow, Work, and Procrastination....

So its been a while since I last posted... Sorry! I guess I haven't had anything really interesting to blog about so I've put it off in hopes of finding something good.

Headaches are gone and all is well. YEA!

Next week, I have an interview with Representative Gerry Connolly from Virginia. I wrote a couple analysis papers on his campaign last semester, so it will be great to sit down and talk with him for fifteen minutes!

Last week, my class met with Grover Norquist, a hard core Republican against any increase in taxes. He has been on Fox News and stuff like that. He called me a communist but it was interesting (not me personally, Democrats in general). Very persuasive... by the end I was agreeing with some of what he was saying.

Monday was a snow day! Yes, it snowed a grand total of 4 inches and basically everything shut down. They really don't know what to do when it snows. The plows started going when there was only a quarter of an inch. Yes, they tried to plow a quarter inch of snow. Watching people from my window was interesting - snow equals umbrella weather. I just don't get it. Its supposed to be 70 degrees again on Saturday.

Work has been good, slow, but good. I've mostly been working on research and writing summaries of things like the SCHIP bill, a conference review, policy issues, etc. I gave my office a PowerPoint tutorial today.

Good news! I have not lost my ability to procrastinate! (Seriously I'm pretty good) My seven page paper that was due on Wednesday got started at 7pm on Tuesday night. I had a good reason for procrastinating! The Bachelor finale was on and the guy is a total jerk. Jason proposed to Melissa and dumped Molly, then three months later, dumped Melissa on national TV and immediately asked Molly back. Ridiculous. Melissa is better off without him.

Jake will be here in15 days! I am rather excited... Since you all have asked, he is good, working hard at school, working on the paper. We talk everyday at least on the phone, or we Skype with our webcams. I will have the whole week off when he is here (my boss and the other girl, Jennie will be on spring break with their families so Anne is closing the office). It will be fun to do some sight-seeing with him!

Coming up in homework assignments, I have to write an editorial for my midterm. I think I am going to write about the "War on Cancer" declared by President Nixon and the Iraq War. While I do not support the Iraq War, I think its ridiculous how we make such a big deal about the Iraq War, the people who have died, and the billions we are spending, but then we have been at "war" against cancer for thirty-some years. We lose 500,000 people to cancer every year! And we spend a ridiculous amount of money on cancer research, yet the war is still not won.

Yeah, so that's been my exciting life. Rep. Connolly, Grover Norquist, snow, work, procrastination, Jake, and homework..... Over and out!

Neurology is weird...

So I got the results of my MRI and while they say it is all "structurally normal" (aka: no tumor), it all looks really abnormal to me. Not abnormal like I think there really is something wrong that they just aren't seeing, abnormal like some of the pictures look like my intestines are in my head. My limited understanding of anatomy was that intestines are in the torso, not in the skull. There are 558 images, so I won't post all of them, but here is an example of what they see in my head and call "structurally normal". (Yes, this picture looks like a brain, but some of the other 558 don't at all)

Monday, I had a nice day off for President's Day. Because I only work 4 days a week (classes are on Wednesday), this week turned into a three day week. So Monday, I woke up a little later (8:30 is now later) and went to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The museum is very well put together, very interesting, but extremely depressing. They have a room of shoes that people wore while in the concentration camps before they died. The smell really gets to you. I only made it through two floors before I decided I had made myself sad enough for one day and would do the rest another time. Since its free, I can go back whenever and take in another floor. After being thoroughly depressed, I took a walk around the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial. It was a little cold (about 30 degrees) but the walk will be absolutely beautiful in early April when the Cherry Blossoms blossom (that sounds weird). I was shocked to see ducks swimming in the lake when it is so cold out. I thought it was funny so I took a picture. From there, I walked around the FDR Memorial which is basically a series of waterfalls, none of which are on in the winter. Again, something cool for the spring.

What else.... Some of you have asked how the apartment is. While its not Versailles, it isn't bad. My room is pretty small and the bathroom is not very big, we actually have a pretty big living room and a decent kitchen. I share a dresser with my roommate, so we each have 3 drawers, but we have separate closets. The kitchen has a refrigerator, stove/oven, dishwasher, garbage disposal, and microwave. We even have a little balcony.

Only 30 days until Jake comes out to visit (March 20)! Then my mom and dad will be out here for about a week beginning April 12. I booked my flight home for May 2nd - should arrive by noon! Its weird to think that time is flying by, but our internship midterm evaluations go out next week and are due the first week in March.

I do miss home, but I wouldn't say I'm homesick or depressed or anything. Carly called me yesterday at work because she thinks I should come play. How do you explain to a three-year-old that you can't right now because you are a thousand miles away? It was cute though.

Well, I hope I supplied you with enough graphic images for a little while. I'm not sure what I will do this coming weekend, but hopefully I will get out and do something fun. I'll try to post again over the weekend or early next week! Until then...

Over and out!

Three day weekends are happiness...

So its Sunday evening in the middle of a three-day weekend. President's Day means no work so I'll take it. An extra day of relaxing sounds quite nice right now.

Yesterday, I got my MRI. All went relatively well. I wasn't a big fan of the IV they stuck in me to give me "contrast" but otherwise it wasn't too bad. They are pretty noisy machines and you just have to lay there for a while. Mine took an hour in all - thirty minutes without contrast, then I got the IV, then another thirty minutes in the machine. I don't know my results yet, but I will find out when I visit my neurologist on Tuesday morning. They steroids they put me on aren't really helping the headache. She said that they usually work, but knowing me, of course I will fall into the 5% that it doesn't do the trick for. Oh well.

While I did not get to spend Valentine's Day with my amazing boyfriend, I did get a very nice present. Jake went the jewelry route and sent this to me from Kay Jewelers. I am a very lucky girl.

Today, I did some grocery shopping and found a Target! I was really excited that I didn't just have to get stuff at CVS like I have been for a month now. I also got my hair cut - it needed it. I think its cute!

Tomorrow, I am planning on doing some sight-seeing stuff for the first time in a while. I am thinking of hitting some of the monuments and memorials and maybe spend some time at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Oh and one more exciting fact: Jake and I are at the half-way point to seeing each other. I left 33 days ago, and in 33 days he will be out here!

Over and out!

Up on the Hill....

A quick medical update for you and then on to some fun stuff.

I saw a neurologist on Tuesday. She spent almost an hour with me and I explained everything to her. She put me on steroids and gave me an order for an MRI. The steroids are making me very hungry all the time. I woke up twice last night for a snakc. I have the MRI scheduled on Saturday, not the ideal way to spend Valentine's Day, but I'll take it. From that, I go back to the neurologist on Tuesday. I'm fairly confident all will go well and I am happy that she is doing everything to check out all possibilities.

Today, I went to a House Budget Committee hearing on the Hill. Serveral representatives were there. One of the representatives, Gerry Connolly from Virginia's 11th District was there. I wrote a paper on his election last semester. Well I caught him on his way out from the meeting, explained who I was and told him about the paper I wrote. I asked if he would honor me with an interview for a class project this semester (we are supposed to interview 5 people about their jobs). He said he would love to, but only if he can read my papers. So that was exciting.

Valentine's Day is Saturday and a couple suspicious calls from Jake make me think he has something up his sleeve. I just don't know what yet. I'll keep you posted.

Over and out!

In my life....

Alright so not too much to update on... but I wanted to fill everyone in on a little something. I've been having really bad headaches (actually one headache that won't go away) for a week and a half now. I thought it was a migraine at first, but my migraine medicine didn't work and I still can't get the headache to go away. So long story short, I'm seeing a neurologist on Tuesday. I'm not too worried. I think they are going to put me on stronger medicine, maybe do an MRI, and all will be well. I just wanted to keep my bases covered.

Other than that, work is work, not too much to report. I'm going to Delaware tomorrow (Monday) for employee orientation.

Today it is a beautiful 67 degrees out. I'm going out with my Godfather, Rob tonight who is in town for a conference. Should be a fun evening!

Over and out!

One more thing....

I can't believe I forgot this:

Jake bought his plane ticket to come see me! He flies out Friday, March 20th and will be here until Sunday, March 29th! He will celebrate his birthday out here too (March 24)!

Only 48 days! (Yes, we are counting....)

A long overdue update

Sorry it has taken me so long to get a post up here. I've been meaning to for the past few days but haven't had ten minutes. Actually, that isn't entirely true. I certainly could have Wednesday or Thursday night, but I had a bad migraine and spent my evenings trying to remedy that. No fun. In October, the doctor's gave me Imitrex for them. I take it when I feel one coming on, but I can't take it more than once every three weeks. It dulled the pain a little on Wednesday night, but wore off by Thursday. I discovered Excedrin Migraine is awesome. Well, I'm fine now and this blog isn't entitled "Amy's Many Medical Mysteries" so I suppose I should get to the point and talk about what I've been up to in Washington DC.

I started my internship at Nemours last Thursday (the 22nd or 23rd, which ever was a Thursday). The office is brand new so everyone is still getting the hang of how to make the copy machine work and we are still operating one computer short and off the network. But, I've been getting some stuff done. Mostly, I have been working on the graphic details for a PowerPoint presentation my boss has to make to the CEO and the Board of Directors next month. I have also done some research for a few meetings - one was about Health Information Technology (which is like Electronic Medical Records) and another was background on Congressman Ander Crenshaw from Florida (we are building a new hospital in his district). This past Thursday, I went to a Senate hearing on improving quality in health care. The expert "witnesses" basically said Health Information Technology is a huge part of it.

Not to scare anyone, but medication errors are really common in offices/hospitals that don't use electronic medical records, because no one can read doctor's handwriting. Fact of the day: 98,000 people lose their life due to a medical error in the United States every year. So make sure you know what you are taking and how much you should be taking. And be thankful if you go somewhere that does electronic medical records.

So in addition to working on small projects and going to hearings and such, my main job is going to be to establish a advocacy communications plan for the company. When SCHIP passed this week, we had a lot of Nemours people (doctors, etc) e-mailing us to let us know... as if we didn't know. So I will be working on establishing some plan of how we can do internal communications within Nemours, and externally for other health policy groups, legislators, whoever.

Wow. That's a lot to take in. Sorry for being so long-winded. But there is still more.

My classes started this week. On Wednesdays, I take two "classes". One is an actual political science class that I think I like and the other doesn't qualify as a "class", at least in my mind. My roommate calls that one "BS101". No joke. That one is "Internship Seminar," and we basically sit around for two hours discussing our internship and developing a Professional Development Plan (what do you want to do in the next three months) and a Cognitive Map (reading log). They told us we all need business cards. I could barely hold the laughter in. I'm not paying $30 to get 500 business cards printed with my work phone and e-mail that will do me absolutely no good in three months. Call me cheap but I don't see the point. My actual "class" seems okay. I like the professor; he teaches at American University. It's about public policy and we get to do formal debates, write a 5-7 page research paper about and political policy topic (ie: abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage, etc). There are other assignments, but those are the big ones. Shouldn't be too bad.

What else... I went out to dinner with Kelly, my friend from high school and her boyfriend, Kyle on Friday. I was super craving a bacon cheese burger so we hit Chilis because it is cheapest and fairly close. Local, only in DC restaurants are ridiculously expensive (about $30 for dinner). But if you find a chain restaurant, especially outside of DC (like Arlington) its reasonable.

Last Friday, I went to the funniest show ever. I seriously almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard. It's called Capitol Steps and its basically a live, musical comedy show about current politics. Its put on by former Hill staffers and they satirize the people they used to work for. The four liberal "Supreme Court Justices" sang Staying Alive. They poked fun at President Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, former Pres. Bush, Larry Craig, Blagojevich, Elliot Spitzer, Joe the Plumber, etc. Definitely recommend it.

Today, I've just spent my day doing laundry, cleaning my room, the bathroom, nothing too fun. I made pancakes and bacon for breakfast! Nummy!

Alright I absolutely promise to write more often so you don't have to read this much again. I apologize. Until then, over and out!