Friday: Since its the summer and people who work get no summer vacation-work ends at 1 on Friday. Yahoo! My grandfather took me out to lunch at his restaurant, the Caucus Room. We walked in and after being guided past rooms filled with dark suited lobbyists, we sat down and a man immediately came up to our table. "Welcome. I'm not your server today but I would just like to express how happy I am to see you two here on this lovely afternoon," he said with quite a smile. "Just wanted to let you know that your presence has been acknowledged." Wow, I thought. What had my grandfather slipped him? He went on with more compliments, even though this was the first time we had ever met him before. "Well, thank you so much, what's your name?" I asked. "Pleasure," he said. "...its got its ups and downs" Then, our waiter came over and introduced himself as Dallas Henderson. I told him I was from Dallas and his eyes lit up as he told me his family was basically the reason Dallas is a city today. "My last name's Henderson. Henderson County? Ring a bell? Yep. That's me" This, of course, led to many stories about the Henderson family as well as short converstions about Texas weather, the Cowboys (ew), and the Mavs (yum) It was a loooong lunch but made for quite an interesting and humorous afternoon

Saturday: Photo day. James day. Great day.

Sunday: I went over to a friend of my mom's house for lunch and fresh air during the afternoon. I probably hadn't seen her since I was in her wedding (I believe I was all of 6 or 7) so it was GREAT to see her again. After catching up on family things, I was able to talk to her 7 year old daughter and 10 year old son over lunch. After hearing some great stories from everybody and sharing my opinions on things such as colleges, theater, art, politics, media, etc. her 7 year old turned to me and said "man, you're complicated." Ah, yes, the perfect compliment. I took pride in that but could only muster a "guess so" before we all erupted in laughter.

Monday: Staff meeting. A ton of people were out of the office on Monday so I actually managed to get a spot at the conference table again (scoreboard!) Brooke was in charge of the meeting and she went around the table asking if anybody had news. Since there was barely any, I quickly became bored with the situation. Then, out of nowhere, the Senator says "Well I just want to know if Grace is keeping everybody in line up there." Wha? Who? My name? Keeping in line? Were they crooked? "Oh, I'm working on it, Senator!" is what came out of my mouth. Laughter. Phewph. Easy Crowd. Man, that kept me on my toes for the rest of the day.

Later on, I met Joey and Robert for lunch. After a week of awkward elevator rides, meeting new faces, and learning my way around Pennsylvania Ave...it was nice to have two wonderful people reminding me so much of home. It was like having lunch with two Bunkys (thats a compliment, I swear!!) St. Marks and Fantasy Football. The two things they know so much about and are so much fun to hear about. It relieved my homesickness for at least an hour. Later that night was the Fiona Apple show at Wolftrap (a great place to see all kinds of shows!) I was shocked to see so many people there. I mean, when she opened for Coldplay in Dallas...everybody complained and didn't like her performance. I was SO happy to see that people in DC appreciated her a little more. She had everybody wowed.

Tuesday: Got a new project to work on. WOOHOO!!

Today: I got my first project almost finished. Thank goodness. I've found that just by finding the audio tape of some CNN Interview with Charles Curtis or the DVD of Ted Turner on David Letterman can make me more excited than if you had put a whole cheesecake in front of me. Seriously, I have dance parties whenever I'm finished organizing all the BETACAM from 2001. it's GREAT!

Oh dear. Just thinking about organizing Senator Nunn's BETACAM makes me sleepy. G'night.