Back to Work

After a few weeks of needed and deserved rest, we were able to use it all up and become stressful and tired again. This is only the beginning. Today was literally 12 hours in the office, I left at 9 pm. 1 and 2 am are probably not unattainable feats as time rolls on. This sounds absolutely awful to someone who has never heard of staying at work that late. But then again, starting work at 9 am has its tendencies to eat away at evenings and nights more quickly. The work we were doing was important, and needed to be done. It wasn't as stressful as it was time consuming. Of course I would say what it was if I could, but it is just better at times when we are left alone to do our work and finish the product before having people criticize us (not that we would be criticized for this work, but, well, everyone needs a little privacy).

This week will have a few hearings. Tomorrow's is on the market structure of the livestock industry will probably be drawn out as you can imagine the many geographies and industries that want to have a say about livestock policy.

One minor emergency was changing out of letterhead in the office. Because of one spelling mistake as well as two recent name changes (a marriage and a nickname preference) we decided to print new letterhead because it is so early in the session. We then had to dispose of all the old letterhead because while most people could probably figure out the small changes that were made, it could potentially cause some confusion. If not confusion, it could cause angers by Members of Congress that were particular about the way their name was presented, which in a formal setting such as ours I totally understand. Especially when many people do not know who their Representative is, so if they were looking for Tim, and saw Tiim, they may keep looking for somebody else.

One thing about being in the center of it all is that we are always watching the news. While many people may not have heard much about the shootings at Virginia Tech until the evening news once they were done with work, we had most of the story early, just as CNN started reporting. It is such a small world on the Hill (because everyone knows someone from somewhere) that a few people in my office immediately reached out to friends that were on or near campus at the school (which is relatively nearby) and we had heard a facsimile of the explanation finally provided later in the afternoon by officials and reporters about 6 hours earlier via cellphone. Everything that happened today was of course a tragedy, and I was disappointed that the media even thought to question the level of security on campus and decision not to cancel classes early in the morning. I think they can wait a while longer before raising blame for an uncontrollable situation. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families affected, and hope to never hear of a similar tragedy again.

Well, it's past my bedtime and my alarm tomorrow can't be moved any later.