Catching up on the week

This last week flew by and with the inaugural happenings things have been a little hectic. But I still want to catch up on the end of the week as there was a few happenings.

Thursday-

On the walk to work I saw the most amazing site! People were loading groceries into the sidewalk in front of one of the pubs on Pennsylvania ave. The buildings are stacked so close that it makes sense that trucks can't just off-load in the back. But at the same time I had never really thought about how they got groceries/kegs into the pubs. The hole in the sidewalk led to the pub basement, random but it was kinda a light bulb moment.

Joining the office was another new intern- Linsay- she is from bend originally and going to school out here, so she only interns on Thursdays and Fridays. So far she seems cool.

One of Oregon's own lost their life in Iraq and there was a service for him in Medford this weekend that the congressman attended. The congressman presented a US flag to the family. The flag comes with a certificate from the Architect of the Capitol certifying that it has been flown over the Capitol building. Unfortunately the certificate had a typo so we had to walk back over to the flag office. When we got back we realized the corrected certificate had another typo...so I ran back to the flag office, which is in the basement of the capitol, to get a corrected one. This had to be done before the congressman left for his flight.

Earlier in the day the GOP Economic Recovery Working Group held a hearing on the stimulus and the recession. Lindsay and I went on behalf of the office to take notes. The first two witnesses were Mitt Romney (governor of Massachusetts, and former presidential candidate) and Meg Whitman (CEO of Ebay). Romney was really tan. Their testimony was interesting but basically summed up to tax cuts for businesses. The US has the second highest business tax next only to Japan. The second set of witnesses were several well known economists, Bill Beach, Grover Norquist, and Adam Davis (I think that was his name). They all had some really good ideas about recovering the economy, it was really neat to be in the room and listen to them discuss their ideas. Here is a link to the press release about the hearing: GOP Economic Recovery Working Group

To end the day I attended a NOAA briefing for our natural resources staffer. The NOAA folks discussed the final rule on ACL's (annual catch limits) and then the fisheries disaster relief rule that they just released for review. It was all pretty technical, not much juicy gossip at a NOAA briefing.

After work I joined some of the staffers from the office at one of the local pubs for a happy hour. It was good to go out and get to know the people I'm working with a little better, glad we didn't start till 9 on Friday though.

Friday-

After a glorious 9am start it was a quiet day. The congressman was back in the district and with inauguration coming up everything had slowed way down. I got off early and wandered home, only to wander back out to Georgetown later with my roommates. The bar we hit was pretty nifty and my roommate come to find out won a happy hour there so I am guessing I will soon be back.