It's Friday night already? What? Today went by so quickly! Had a brief (and I mean brief) tour training this morning, then answered phones and did research all afternoon. Didn't really get much of a chance to look over the START treaty stuff, so I brought it home with me for the weekend. My first official Capitol tour went astoundingly well...i'm really excited to do more! I have three scheduled next week, so I'll get lots more practice.  

Starting the half day schedules on Monday, which means I won't have to be at work until 1 pm. Excellent. 

Sorry for not writing yesterday!! Didn't really do much that was noteworthy...took a class on how to best utilize the Congressional Research Services, and got yet another ID card for that.

Today was pretty hectic, surprisingly. Went to a hearing this morning with David Walker about the federal budget deficit and unemployment. It was pretty interesting, learned a lot about the differences between short-term deficit and structural deficit. Some random kid sat down at my lunch table (the other interns went at one, but I had to be on front desk duty then) and it turned out he was full of a lot of advice about law school. Pretty interesting guy.

Hannah (another intern) and I are going to a START treaty hearing on the 17th (yes, the one with Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates). As a precursor for that, we were assigned with creating a briefing for Senator Udall. To give you an idea of how challenging of a task this is: we have to take over 150 pages of information and facts and sum it up in ONE page. It's going to be quite a chore. But fun!

The interns all got invited to this big intern thing at a bar (Madhatter) Tuesday night after work. They'll have FREE DRINKS and refreshments, as well as (supposedly) good company.  I love being 21 :). We're all going to head over after work...I'm actually pretty excited.

My first VIP tour is tomorrow as well. Really nervous, seeing as I still haven't been trained. But I figure I know enough to get by, and they gave me a cheat sheet of sorts that I'm allowed to take around with me. So that's nice I suppose. I'm still the only intern who has been assigned tours, which is inflating my ego a little too much... but oh well! I have five as of today, including my parents :).

Today was slowwwww... the Senate is in recess, so there wasn't really much exciting going on. We did have a ton of people calling in about the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act though. It was kind of interesting to see how misinformed people were - they all got their information from a mass email (not sure what the original source was) that claimed that BP was only going to pay the $75 million dollars required by the cap. All the calls were constituents who were mad that tax money would be used to help clean up the mess. Though BP is legally bound to only pay the $75 million, they have publicly stated multiple times that they will cover all damages. The legislation really looks to prevent limited liability in the future, although it would give BP's claim further validation by essentially making their promise legally binding. It's a mess. Trying to explain all this was crazy, so I eventually gave up.

I went to the Library of Congress today and got my Reader's Card, which allows me to do research there for the next two years. Maybe i'll get inspired and do some hardcore research, who knows. The card is really official though. My picture and address are on it and everything.

I'm still a little nervous about the VIP Capitol Tour that i'm giving Friday...still haven't been trained yet! It's a little disconcerting.

Oh, and the best part about being in recess? Jeans every day and we get out an hour early. Yesssssssss.