My First Briefing

In the tradition of my blog, my title refers to something that will not be addressed until much later in the post. I begin with the weekend, which I have managed to not recap until now. Friday was a work day. I didn't really do much else. Saturday was a long day. I woke up early enough to go to the farmers' market behind our building. I purchased a few enormous Gala apples, which were delicious. I also bought a loaf of pumpkin bread, which has really been a fantastic treat over the course of this week. After farmers' market, a couple of us went down to the Ellipse to take a look at the White House. You can't get especially close anymore, but it was nice to get a view. Afterwords, we managed to hurry through the American military exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It was the first time I had been to the museum since it underwent a major, year plus long renovation. I think it is safe to say that they are not entirely done with the renovations. We managed to make it back in time to watch the ND game. The game did not really go according to plan. While we pulled off the win, it was not pretty. In fact, were it not for a stroke of luck at the end of the game, we would not have managed to win. In other news, Iowa won comfortably over Arizona, even though I was unable to watch it. By the time we got through all of that, we decided to hang out at the apartment for the night. We started watching the HBO John Adams miniseries Saturday night, which we are continuing to watch tonight. Sunday was a nice, relaxing day. I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and do my homework on the National Mall. It was nice to actually be outside for a change. Unfortunately, while I was doing my homework, the Pack lost to the Bengals. While I'm sure the two were unrelated, I still take a little of the blame on myself. That night, after Mass, we watched "All the President's Men" with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. It was for one of the classes that I'm not taking, but I really enjoy the movie so I watched it anyway.

On Monday at work we had a special visitor to the office. A lady named Helen from Dubuque, who is a big time Braley supporter and one of my regulars from the Y was in DC. She stopped by to say hi to the staff. It wasn't a real big deal, just a nice change of pace. Not much else exciting to report from Monday at work. After work, I had to finish my paper that was due for philosophy tonight. I also got to watch the Indy v. Miami game on MNF. Indy won while only holding the ball for less than 15 minutes. Also, Dallas Clark's big receiving night sealed my fantasy victory.

Today at work I attended my first briefing. It was pretty cool. I mean, the briefing itself was kind of boring, but the fact that I got to be the representative for the office was kind of cool. It was a briefing on One Web Day, and the initiative for universal broadband service. Other than that though, it was really just a standard day at work. We had class again tonight. As usual, by the end of the class, my head hurt and I wasn't sure what was going on. My general understanding is that morality and law are connected, but it is not necessary that they were connected.

I think that pretty well sums up the last few days. Like I said, we are watching the Adams miniseries, and he was just elected vice president. This reminds me that the stuff we watched over the weekend made me want to watch "1776". Alas, that is for another day.

Jes