Vingt-et-Un!

Well the twenty-first has come and gone and it couldn't have gone any better. Saturday night was fantastic as four of my JMU pals came up and everyone plus some friends from Butler University came out to Dupont Circle to celebrate my birthday. It was an extremely fun night. The next morning I woke up (feeling surprisingly well) and opened up some great presents from the family and even got a couple from the friends here. Despite not being able to be with family this was an excellent birthday. I have some videos but they are taking forever to add on here. I'll try facebook later.

Last week saw some more substantial work on the supplement at the Center. Ryan's been making me add more to it due to the amount of calls he's getting from the embassies. That and a trip to the Turkish embassy made him rethink how much detail he wants going into the report. Hopefully, I believe it is almost done and should be released online by the end of the week. Now I'm switching over to reviewing the second report, the NATO Threat Assessment. The first half of the report is due out by the end of the week. Ryan wants to get it out before he makes this trip to France next week. There's a lot that needs to be done in a short amount of time, but I like all the work I'm doing. Writing in the supplement has been great and I look forward to seeing that end result.

He's an interesting story from last week. So on Wednesday last week I had to drive Dr. Abshire to the Federal Reserve to meet Chairman Bernanke. I haven't driven since I've been here and the amount of driving I've done in inner-city DC is limited as is, but I've done plenty in St. Louis. Traffic doesn't bother me as much as trying to figure out where I'm trying to get to. So I ran home to get my GPS and a pair of Aviator sunglasses as a co-worker suggested I should wear some when I'm loitering around the Reserve waiting for the meeting to get over with. That way I'll look more like a bodyguard than just an intern in a nice car. And a nice car it was! Dr. Abshire has a tan Cadillac worth more than my life and I had to drive it in DC. So anyway, I was able to make it pretty easily to the Federal Reserve to drop him and one of his assistants off. The hard part was finding a place to park for an hour, but fortunately I did and it was two hour parking so I was okay. I did look completely awesome though. In a Cadillac with gold framed Aviators on, a tie, navy blue blazer, and khaki pants completed the ensemble. I pretty much looked amazing. Anyway, I picked him up and drove back successfully without getting a scratch on the car. And I'm sure I've earned myself driving privileges for the rest of the spring.

So I talked about this week for work. I also have a five page paper due on Friday. I'll start on that tomorrow. Class is taking a trip to USAID on Friday so I'm planning on asking a lot of questions and I might even pack a resume. I need to get a better idea of what Foreign Service Officers do though before I start looking for a job there. I know they get a pretty bad rep here, but let's be honest, the whole diplomatic field gets a bad rep here, it doesn't matter who's president. Wednesday we have class so we really can't go out to celebrate St. Patrick's Day after work, but we might go after class for a drink or two. I'm exciting I now get to join my friends when they go out to bars on the weekends. That will help me relax and be more social on the weekends. So now I'm going to watch the first episode of The Pacific online. I've known about this show since I was in high school, learning about it in the fall of 2006. It was originally suppose to be out last summer, but got pushed back. I always wondered where I would be and what I would be doing when this show came out. Never thought I'd be in Washington D.C. working as an intern. Hope everyone has a good week and thanks for the birthday wishes.