A week in the life:

Where to start! It's been a long week since I wrote last. A long, good week. Maybe I'll start with this weekend:
On Friday night I was tired from the week and there was NO WAY I was going to be able to do anything fun. So what do two awesome Capitol Hill interns do on a Friday night?? .... Laundry. And I must say, I've never appreciated free laundering this much in my life. I can deal with the fact that I have to pay $1.50 to wash and $1.50 to dry. But with no quarter machines and no corner gas stations, we barely scrape by with the minimum number of loads.
Saturday I got up with the sun (11 AM) to go see Mount Vernon. I actually left at 12:30-ish and began the hour-and-a-half trek, which included the metro, lots of standing and waiting, and a bus ride to the estate. Of course it was beautiful. It was spacious, had a gorgeous view of the Potomac River and its seafarers, and a peacefulness that made you wish you'd brought a blanket to take a nap in the sun. I realized, though, that even the little side trips are a lot less fun alone. Only my family would've appreciated it like me. I got to see George & Martha's resting place, which was very quaint and fitting, I thought. The whole place seemed like a wonderful place to raise a family and play and eventually, die -- as weird as that probably sounds.
After I left, I went to the local mall and walked around, bought a couple of things at Forever 21 and came home. I went out to Bertucci's near the dorms and had a great Italian meal and crashed again from my seemingly long day.
Sunday we woke up kind of early to go to Georgetown Cupcakes, the home of the show D.C. Cupcakes on TLC. We expected to be in a line that went around the block but I guess we showed up at just the right time because we didn't wait long at all. I wish I had my camera cord to post pictures. It was definitely cute but you can tell that they have an enormous response from the public because they have settled for some pretty generic cupcakes, like: vanilla, vanilla-chocolate, chocolate-vanilla, vanilla birthday, chocolate birthday, that sort of thing. They had a few "special" flavors so I bought a carrot cake cupcake because carrot cake's my favorite:

It was okay but the experience was worth it! We spent the rest of the day walking around Georgetown. They also have a new Serendipity (it's the same chain from NYC) so we had frozen hot chocolate, which is one of their specialties.

Dad's coming with the Chamber of Commerce on the 18th for their annual D.C. trip and I'm kind of freaking out. So what... I'm sure you miss your dad, too, sometimes. I think we're going to catch a Nationals game, which I actually haven't done yet.

On Friday I will have halfway completed my internship. We're starting to be assigned more intense projects that are more time-consuming and challenging. Completing them makes it worth it, though. In the last week, I've seen John McCain again -- he was actually in Coburn's office today. And apparently Richard Gere was in the Capitol testifying before the Foreign Affairs committee about religious freedom in Tibet. My suitemate sat in on the committee meeting and had no idea who he was or why so many reporters were there taking photographs. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

In all seriousness, though, I can't imagine working for any other Senator. There are few people here that speak with conviction or overwhelmingly high standards for the nation we live in. He's the only one of his kind and I'll be sorry to see him go in 2016.

"I trust America a whole lot more than I trust the U.S. Congress. We have a $1 trillion deficit of common sense in Washington, and we have an excess of common sense outside of Washington. If you will trust your common sense and look at what we are doing, what you will find is: we can solve our problems; we can come together as a nation; we can fix what ails us; and we can do that without destroying the future of our children and grandchildren."

-Senator Tom Coburn