Back in D.C. again!

I pretty much forgot that I had a blog! There are so many things going on here that I'd like to be able to share more personally than posting it all on Facebook, so I suppose I'm back in the blogging world!

I moved to Alexandria, VA about a month ago and just finished my third week as the staff assistant in Randy Neugebauer's (who will be referred to as RN in this blog) office, Congressman of the 19th District of Texas. So far I'm really loving it. It's completely different this time around now that I'm not actually living on Capitol Hill. The area I live in is pretty great, though. I'm just a few blocks from Old Town Alexandria (please google and google image it!). It's such a quaint colonial area full of shops and restaurants and pubs. There's also a harbor with all these boats that offer rides down the Potomac or to Mt. Vernon. Yes, I live very close to Mt. Vernon! Here is a picture of my cute little townhouse. It's the middle greenish one with my silver car parked in front.

This was during the snow "storm" last weekend- we got somewhere between 5 and 7 inches! However, as I'm sitting here writing this, we are preparing for the D.C. "snowpocalypse" where there is an expected 20+ inches of snow coming in the next 24 hours! My roommates are so great, by the way. Brianna is from Cleveland and works for Dept. of Justice, and is just the bubbliest, funnest girl. She is probably going crazy living in the house, though, because she lives with two Ha(y)leys from West Texas! Which brings me to my next roommate: Hayley is my other roommate from Childress, Texas and graduated from Texas A&M a few years ago. It's great having someone from my hood up here! She works for a cosmetics company, Benefit, and our basement is FULL of make up samples. :-) Love it.

On to my first few days in the office. RN is such a nice man. He's so smart and really cares for his constituents. I mean, he really really cares. He is so passionate about communicating often quickly with everyone in the district. He comes in every day to my office to say good morning and usually stops by to say goodbye when he leaves. That's a little unusual for a congressman to be in such frequent contact with the staff. The office is set up strangely- there's actually two separate offices, so I hardly see everyone on the staff. In my office, the front office, there are 3 desks: mine, the intern's, and the scheduler's. Our office is much livelier than the back office because we have guests coming in all the time and the TV is always on. Usually it's on CSPAN or Fox News, but we occasionally watch Bonnie Hunt, Ellen, and Dr. Oz. Just being honest :-) Here are some pictures of my office:

From top to bottom: My desk is on the left, back by the window. We have a great view! We often raise the blinds and the window to let some fresh air in.  The middle picture is the line I wait in every morning outside my building. We have to walk through security and show our badge and send our bags through a scanner. As you can tell, it is often rainy. The picture on the bottom was taken just a few steps back from where I was standing in the middle picture. The Capitol is just right down the street. It's a beautiful area, and I love walking outside.

Good story: on my fifth day of work, I was just sitting at my desk, going through some emails when 3 Capitol police officers ran in and just kinda stood in the entry way. After about 15 seconds, they said, "Did someone call for us?" We were perplexed. Turns out, I hit the panic button that's under my desk with my knee on accident! HA! I had no idea it was even there! It was quite embarrassing, but funny enough to laugh at myself and tell everyone what happened. I'm so paranoid about hitting it, though!

 Here's me on my first day of work with my business card!

A big thing I've been anxious about during this whole moving process is finding a church here. I've visited a few, and I found a great church in an area called Falls Church in Arlington. I found the church's Website and saw that there are several elders that leaders in the church from Texas and Nashville (ACU, Lipscomb, Harding alum). I sent the preacher an email introducing myself and asking for some church guidance, and he ended up forwarding my email to several others around my age in the church. They were all so kind and welcoming. They invited me to a game night of theirs last weekend, which I went to, and I had a lot of fun with them. The guy who hosted the game night graduated from UT (Texas) a few years ago! Tara, the sweet girl from Tennessee who invited me to the game night, actually works a few doors down from me. I really enjoyed the church service there, but I am just not sure if I will continue to attend a Church of Christ while I'm here or if I want to branch out to something a little different- mainly with a more contemporary worship service and a band. Nothing at all against the Church of Christ- I absolutely love it. This summer when I was in Nashville and attended Harpeth, I was able to worship in a whole new way because of the music and modern service. I loved the worship band and the passion of the congregation. However, the Church of Christ in Falls Church (the one I have been describing) is full of the absolute nicest people. They have all given me home phone numbers if I ever need anything and have welcomed me into their church family. I guess this is just that stage in life where it's time to make some grown up decisions about ME. Where do I want to be, what do I want to be doing, where do I want to work, what church do I call home, etc. Whew, it's so exhausting.

Now that I'm a bit caught up on blogging, I will get back to my snowed in weekend where I will be catching up on LOST season 5! Very excited. I'll share pictures of the snowpocalypse (snowmageddon?) Please submit your storm name of choice. Love you all!