Nothing to do with Nothing

We are not in session this week, so I will be taking these next few days off from blogging unless something interesting or exciting occurs. We are hopefully going to be let out an hour early each day this week due to a lack in work, thus a lack in drama for my blog.

Remember kids, be cool, stay in school. Oh, and enjoy one of the best online videos I have ever seen...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7761231905389466400

Getting Warmer....

No work for me today (I already knew this last week), which is probably a compensation for being one of the few offices that were able to brave the elements...
Just two things to report on today, first, an interesting article on Collin in the StarTrib, and second, a weather forecast for D.C., things are getting better all the time:




check back tomorrow

Just another Friday

Friday was fine. Not much different than Thursday, but I got the quotes all caught up! That was the extent of the in-office excitement today. Out of the office, members voted on the Iraq resolution and a few are still working and having meetings over the weekend before they head out on their District Work Periods next week.

This weekend: Homework, Museums and Homework.

Calm after the Storm

If yesterday was a roller coaster, today was the scenic train ride. Because we packed all that action into one day, we have nothing to prepare for and thus no work for interns. The rest of the staff was busy however, as meetings were long-winded and schedules delayed because there is now more for people to talk about than ever. I did end up getting my quote compiling all the way to February 6th, and should be up to speed by tomorrow.

After work there was not only one, but two receptions to attend. I almost feel bad, because I have nothing to contribute if anyone is talking about politics. I care, I matter, but my opinion is uneducated and low content compared to the topics talked about at these gatherings. But during my short lull in being able to contribute to society, I was able to take, so I did. I think I took enough for supper and breakfast (not home with me, just consumed while I was there), which is great in a city with $50 haircuts. Tomorrow is the last day of what seems to be a short week, with a long weekend.

A short thank you to everyone and anyone for your gifts and cards for both my birthday and Valentine's Day, I will also be sending a personalized autographed photo of me at my desk. Just kidding, but I will be sending you thank you cards soon, I just wanted you to know I appreciate them all, but haven't found the time (or bought the thank you cards) to do them.

First One There... First One to Leave?

Now that I have my bearings and know most of what I need to know, things get annoying. One of these annoyances is the voices on the elevator. They are pretty specific and include sayings like "2nd floor, going up", "4th floor, going down", and my personal favorite, "this elevator is full, please wait for the next elevator". Before today, I accepted them as serving a disability function, for people who are blind or optically impaired, but today I realized they were probably just put in so people addicted to their Blackberrys don't just work from the elevator the whole day.

Today was the big hearing, I got there a little earlier than usual, and the first line-holder rode the same elevator as I did. I forgot to mention that yesterday the federal government shutdown at 2pm because of projected weather conditions for the drive home, and some schools closing early. The federal government shutting down means nothing to your office unless your boss says it does, and because we are now a Minnesotan office, we won't be shutting down too often, but it wasn't bad (in Minnesota terms) and I was fine with our choice to stay until 9 and be ready for today rather than be there at 4am this morning. Back to the original story, so I was surprised to see this young man there so early, as we received an email this morning (for those of us who signed up to be notified of federal government closure) that read:

Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are OPEN under a DELAYED ARRIVAL\UNSCHEDULED LEAVE policy. Employees should plan to arrive for work no more than 2 hours later than they would normally arrive.

So when I did put away my coat and sit at my desk with no mail to sort (which usually comes right at 9am versus 11am today) the phone calls started coming. Paraphrasing all of them together, they were asking "Is the meeting still at its regular time"? It was still at 10 am, and the room did not get any bigger. We turned many staff and press personnel away, and they weren't very happy with us. Because a member of the cabinet was in our presence, we invited the police who were a little less polite than we could have possibly been, but got the job done a little faster. The meeting went off fine, the phone calls kept coming, and three of us took turns playing bouncer at the front door. This is a dangerous place to be, because while all staff want to get in, some staff need to get in, to talk to their boss, and it is hard to decipher between the two requests. But we are all still alive, even with people presenting us a few angry faces followed by turns and stomping away aimed our way. After that, Mr. Peterson testified before the budget committee, and we did the rest of the afternoon chores when our boss was nice enough to let Gabe and me off at 4:00. So I got my phone fixed, which wasn't able to receive incoming calls, and was home by the time I am usually let off work.

With all the drama today (Mr. Petersons testifying was a lot of work to put together I'm sure, although I had no part in it) the rest of the week is pretty mellow. We will not have to work President's day either, which I found out is never a guarantee because national holidays are just "another day" in a Congressional Staff's calendar. This is ironic as the people who make the laws to make something a national holiday may be the only ones (or some of the small percentage) working.

Long Day

I left Longworth House Office Building at 9 pm as we made preparations for THE hearing tomorrow (with Secretary Johanns). Because we are crammed into a Subcommittee room, basically no one will get in. I guess the usual scenario is to fit a couple hundred people comfortably into the large committee room, with the members sitting comfortably on the semicircles in front, facing the testifying party. The over-flow crowd is then able to watch the hearing from our Subcommittee room (the one we are currently using) on the big screen TVs.

Tomorrow on the other hand, we will have about 60 people in the audience, that includes all staff, press, and the Secretary's staff, with the Secretary's table in front, and the 46 Committee members around the 2 semicircles and an extra table for the remaining 10 members that do not fit in the two semicircles.
The reason that we were so late was because a Rice organization was holding a reception in that room, so I was able to have supper, but we were unable to begin restoring the room to its hearing-style protocol until 8 pm.

The earlier part of the day was spent entering quotes into the database (I'm now on January 25th) and running errands. I was able to sneak away for one of our staff member's speaking engagements, where she talked to stakeholders in the soybean industry.

I also learned that lobbyists will pay a kid like me $20 an hour just to stand in line to save them a spot for important hearings like this one. Talk about easy money. I better get to sleep, have to be in early tomorrow to make sure no one reserves a seat.

Johanns Picture

Looks like it's going to be a long night... We have to set up for tomorrows hearing after an 8 pm reception is done, so I figured I would post this now. Have a good evening

Possibly Stopping the Stop and Go

The majority of my day was spent entering in quotes from Chairman Peterson, Ranking Member Goodlatte, Senator Harkin, Senator Chambliss and Secretary Johanns into a database. I think I'm about to go "booted" from my desk as we are in the process of hiring staff, which is now a welcome adjustment. Because I now have projects, the saying hi to people and being nice when I answer the phone every 20 seconds is getting old. If I am moved (its not for sure) I think I will be much more productive than I am now in my stop-and-go routine.

This afternoon I attended a meeting that lasted a little over an hour with some of the people in the top tier of the USDA and President Bush's personal assistant on Agriculture. They gave a preview, or more of an explanation, of what they implied or suggested when they made their Farm Bill 2007 recommendations. This is of course one of many events that serve as a precursor to the full Committee meeting and hearing including Secretary Johanns, which will be broadcast at the link earlier in this sentence. The hearing is scheduled to take place on Wednesday at 10:00 am, and it is a meeting I am guessing I will not be able to attend.

I also realized that I now have full access to the CRS website I was orientated to last week. On the website they have everything that is "current" for this session. CRS also does bill summaries much like THOMAS, but they are more in depth and can provide you with more information.

...back to homework.

The Weekend is here, finally

Today was pretty busy for a Friday. While I worked on summarizing the testimony, the phone rang, people came for meetings and the mail came four or five times. While I was able to get my testimony summary done by the end of the day, all the little things I do really add up to the time taken away from doing the original, usually bigger, tasks. While that part of the day was normal, we were able to attend an orientation class from the Congressional Research Service. This is, to me, a really interesting organization after all. Yet, there were still at least three kids in the nap club by the end of the 45 minute session. What I was able to get out of it was useful: starting Tuesday we will be able to use all the functions of CRS. That is, CRS has no public motivation at all, it's only research is for Congress and their staff. They do a large amount of research, from 1 page papers to 300 page reports. They have a staff of over 700 people, who are experts in basically every field there is. While I was thinking, this would be great to have for college, she came right out and said it. Because you are staff, you are able to do research. They don't care who its for, why, or what its about, they just want the details so you can get the best answer. Most of the time when you need CRS you can call the hotline, because you will be looking for a fact or a quote. They also have the reports, as I mentioned earlier, which can take up to six months to compile. There are two resource rooms for CRS, one in both a House Office Building and a Senate Office Building, as well as the whole Library of Congress. This is of course the largest library in the world, and something I need to do some exploring in. Back to the resource rooms, the instructor said that we, as college kids, can stockpile all we want. I hope to, over the next six months, pull out the drawer on agriculture, and empty it. We really have a lot of access with this new license, but we still have limitations. We cannot check out any of the resources, and we cannot demand deadlines, but our staff (and the members) can do both. So now research becomes even more fun, other people can get quick answers for you, and you can take all the credit. Hopefully, by the end of this I have enough to get A's on the rest of my papers through college.

Speaking of college brings me to this weekend: I plan to study, as much as humanly possible (MacroEconomics, it's not boring, but it's not fun), and go explore the rest of the time. Have a good weekend everyone!

Not a Teenager Anymore

From 9:00 to 10:30, nothing, nothing to do, no mail to sort, and no projects to start. From 10:30 on, we were moving. It started off with a meeting to plan a meeting, then we got ready for the meeting, which was complex because there was so much going on around the meeting that wasn’t part of the meeting at all. Luckily, that meeting was Gabe’s job, because I didn’t understand it, nor did I want to. I had bigger fish in the sea, I was to sit in on the Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Agriculture hearing, which the Agriculture had joint referral on, and take notes like a mad man. Unfortunately the laptops computers were not being issued at this time, so this meant back to good old pen and paper, something I rarely use, and my penmanship shows it. But two hours later, the hearing should have been done, and I was keeping up, but getting exhausted. We were saved by the bell when we heard buzzers ringing and pagers going off announcing a 15 minute vote, followed by ten 2 minute votes. This projected 45 minutes of voting turned into two hours. Needless to say, I did not make it back and would be surprised if the Members did either. So when I got back, I did the jobs I should have been doing during the hearing, and started typing everything I had written. When it was about 7:00, I finished that and began summarizing the submitted testimony. Now by this point, neither Gabe nor I had time for lunch, and I didn’t have time for breakfast, which I will get into in a minute. So when asked if we wanted to move furniture tonight or tomorrow morning, we decided to finish it up tonight and lump all the business into one day. I made it home by 7:55 PM, my latest night yet. But I’m sure it’s not the latest I’ll ever be.

This morning and last night were a different story. As I said yesterday, I fell asleep after I got home, and woke up at midnight. I now remember before I went to be the first time, getting a little shock when I picked up my phone, and one of the buttons not working. Well I found out this morning it wasn’t just a button, it was my ringer. I now cannot receive any calls, and the convenient alarms I use were MIA as well. So, I finally fell back asleep at about 4:00 AM, even though I tried for hours before that, and woke up again to see 9:05 on my alarm clock. Not the best sight to see when you should be to work by 9:00 AM. But, I made good progress with getting ready (and my hair froze straight up on my run to the office) and got to work by 9:40. Luckily my phone can still call out, so they knew I was going to be late. I guess this is what being 20 is all about. Now that I’m no longer a teenager I have to face the battle of just getting out of bed in the morning. I got a lot of great stuff for my birthday, but to be honest, a new phone wasn’t on my list.

Tomorrow Gabe and I will be taking an orientation class so we can have access to the Congressional Research Service’s (CRS) information, which will hopefully speed up a lot of projects. The CRS class would sound like a great way to get out of work, but this is: 1. A class, and 2. A class put on by people who research. 3. Research for Congress! …it might be a long day.