much delayed DC update
Man, there's just so much to catch y'all up on. Lemme do my best. But in short, things are going pretty damn well!
I've pretty much settled into the internship housing. It's not cheap, but within my budget, and pretty cool! It's located just a couple of blocks from the Capitol Building, four blocks from the Capitol South Metro station. My commute isn't bad. About 30 minutes with one transfer and about 8 blocks of walking. There's a grocery store of sorts two blocks from here. It's more of a liquor store that also stocks groceries, so the selection and prices aren't so great, but it's convenient enough that I end up just going there most of the time. There are better places within an eight block walk, but I guess I'm too lazy to trudge bags of groceries that far. Some of my roommates choose to have Safeway deliver, but I'm not ordering enough groceries to make that worth it.
The roommates all seem pretty cool. It's three floors and twelve of us so far, six guys and six gals (the last guy just moved in today). It's been more than ten years since I've had roommates, so I was a little worried about the adjustment, but it's been fine. It's not too crowded, and I have my own bedroom. We all seem to mostly get along just fine. There are times when everybody seems to keep to themselves, and times when everybody starts socializing. Kinda fascinating from a sociological standpoint, actually. I am, of course, the oldest, but as always, my age doesn't seem to be an issue. And there is one other grad student. Plus there are four more ladies who live downstairs who sometimes pop by to visit. So far, we have a confirmed couple between one of the downstairs gals and one of our male roommates, but nothing else (yet -- the summer is still young).
I had the first week free to give me a chance to get my bearings and explore. Saturday I arrived in the evening and just settled in. I was somewhat annoyed to find that the bed was not twin, as WISH had told me when I specifically asked. I only paid about $15 for my twin sheets at Target, so this was not that big a deal, especially compared to the fact that I hadn't slept in a twin bed since my college days (many, many, many years ago). I also had a gift card to Macy's, so I just used that on Sunday to grab some decent full size sheets. So I just had to put up with one night of minor discomfort, and wasted $15. No big whup.
And Sunday, after I dropped off the stuff from Macy's, I finally met up with Rachel (yay!).
The next week I spent at various museums at the National Mall (all of which are free), as well as taking bunches of photos. I've uploaded a handful so far to my Flickr, but my main photo-processing machine is my PC at home using Picasa, so you'll have to wait till I get back. The Air & Space Museum was probably my personal favorite, me being a little geeky kid at heart. It was also the only thing I remembered from the last time I was at DC when I was like 10, and I have to say it was a bit smaller than I remembered. :) I also thoroughly enjoyed the National Gallery of Art, especially the modern art wing, where they had a Kandinsky, a handfull of Matisses, and some Giacometti sculptures, as well as a ginormous Calder and awesome architecture I think by I.M. Pei.
We do have excellent WiFi and broadband Internet, which is way sweet, and cable TV. But no Speed Channel. The past few races have aired on Fox, but I decided to go find a Formula One fan group in the area, and they watch the races in Alexandria, not too far from a Metro stop. They've had pretty good turnouts, anywhere from 10-20 folks, so that's been cool, and it's great to be able to share the race experience with others, which I haven't done since Erika moved out.
Cato has been a wonderful experience so far. It's not exactly what I expected, but nothing ever is, and I'm not really sure what it was I had expected. Two things have kinda struck me. One, it's very much just like an office environment, and I spend most of my time at my desk in front of a computer. I don't know what I pictured a think tank would be like, but I thought it would be different, somehow. Secondly, the folks there aren't particularly that social. I mean, they're not anti-social. But for the most part, most of the policy analysts and fellows don't interact with us interns that much, and some of the research assistants seem rather socially awkward (which, I suppose, I should have expected, given that many libertarians are quite geeky). And most of my work so far has simply involved reading.
But I think I am starting to make a good impression, handling my assignments fairly promptly and professionally. Most of them have been pretty straight-forward, although I have a rather open-ended one to get Jim Harper up to speed on the various private identification and authentication schemes out there. I know Erika has always been trying to convince me that my tech background will be an asset and not a liability, but I'm seeing first-hand that it's definitely the case. My computer expertise has also been handy in a few other cases, and it was also a reason I snagged a small assignment to create a libertarian search engine for the big veep, David Boaz (although that was also because I keep up with a lot of blogs, especially libertarian ones).
The interns have also taken a bit of time to warm up, but it's getting there. It helped when the four Koch fellows showed up, as one of them sits next to me and we seem to get along quite well. Plus we had a party last Friday, which was more fun than I expected. I was hoping Rachel would make it, but she bailed because she was too tired. Still, she's been showing up to the softball games, which have also been fun. I'm still rusty, but at least I haven't gotten conked on the head by any fly balls either.
We've also been attending quite a few seminars, like 3-4 per week. About a quarter of them have covered topics I already knew quite well, but I've learned quite a bit from the others, and just being in the same room and listening to guys like Gene Healy, Tom Palmer, Roger Pilon, and David Boaz is just an absolute treat. Tom Palmer, who runs the curriculum, is especially awesome. And it's his talks that reinforce for me that I am in the right place, voicing opinions that mirror mine quite closely. He is very critical of Bush, talked a lot about public choice theory and rent-seeking (which jives with my long-time interest in campaign finance, although most libertarians -- Palmer probably included -- don't like the idea of campaign finance reform), and even talked about how we ended up with a two-party system because of our first-past-the-post voting system (something that I rarely hear libertarians talk about even though that's been pretty firmly established by political science and is a big reason libertarian ideas are held back so much).
The social life has been a bit slower than I had hoped. Then again, I had rather hoped that I'd be hobnobbing with the libertarian and DC blogging elite by now, which was, admittedly, rather unrealistic. I've been spending most of my socialness with my fellow interns (there's about 25 of us) and my roommates, plus the Formula One fans on race day, some time with fellow FEE folks Tom (who goes to GWU) and Tanja (who works at Cato) and of course Rachel, who moved into her new place in Arlington last week and starts at GMU law in the fall. Divya from SJSU is also interning in DC, and I'll be meeting her for lunch on Monday. So it's still been quite social. I'm getting out, having fun, and seem to be consuming more alcohol than I was during the school year (not having exams or papers to worry about on the weekends seems to help).
Anyway... I think that mostly covers it. I do still get some mood swings and hit highs and lows (last week was quite low, for some reason). It concerns me, as it's clearly not linked to a certain something that I don't yet have access to here. So it might have to do with the normal stress of being in a strange new place and job, or that I'm not going to therapy out here. Dunno. But on the whole, my mood has actually been quite good. Although some things haven't met my expectations, others have exceeded them, and time has been flying by. I can't believe it's already been almost a month. I'm getting mixed feelings, in that I do miss home and my friends there, but I also don't want this to end. I guess that always happens. And I'm pretty sure DC will be prominently featured in my future somehow.
I've pretty much settled into the internship housing. It's not cheap, but within my budget, and pretty cool! It's located just a couple of blocks from the Capitol Building, four blocks from the Capitol South Metro station. My commute isn't bad. About 30 minutes with one transfer and about 8 blocks of walking. There's a grocery store of sorts two blocks from here. It's more of a liquor store that also stocks groceries, so the selection and prices aren't so great, but it's convenient enough that I end up just going there most of the time. There are better places within an eight block walk, but I guess I'm too lazy to trudge bags of groceries that far. Some of my roommates choose to have Safeway deliver, but I'm not ordering enough groceries to make that worth it.
The roommates all seem pretty cool. It's three floors and twelve of us so far, six guys and six gals (the last guy just moved in today). It's been more than ten years since I've had roommates, so I was a little worried about the adjustment, but it's been fine. It's not too crowded, and I have my own bedroom. We all seem to mostly get along just fine. There are times when everybody seems to keep to themselves, and times when everybody starts socializing. Kinda fascinating from a sociological standpoint, actually. I am, of course, the oldest, but as always, my age doesn't seem to be an issue. And there is one other grad student. Plus there are four more ladies who live downstairs who sometimes pop by to visit. So far, we have a confirmed couple between one of the downstairs gals and one of our male roommates, but nothing else (yet -- the summer is still young).
I had the first week free to give me a chance to get my bearings and explore. Saturday I arrived in the evening and just settled in. I was somewhat annoyed to find that the bed was not twin, as WISH had told me when I specifically asked. I only paid about $15 for my twin sheets at Target, so this was not that big a deal, especially compared to the fact that I hadn't slept in a twin bed since my college days (many, many, many years ago). I also had a gift card to Macy's, so I just used that on Sunday to grab some decent full size sheets. So I just had to put up with one night of minor discomfort, and wasted $15. No big whup.
And Sunday, after I dropped off the stuff from Macy's, I finally met up with Rachel (yay!).
The next week I spent at various museums at the National Mall (all of which are free), as well as taking bunches of photos. I've uploaded a handful so far to my Flickr, but my main photo-processing machine is my PC at home using Picasa, so you'll have to wait till I get back. The Air & Space Museum was probably my personal favorite, me being a little geeky kid at heart. It was also the only thing I remembered from the last time I was at DC when I was like 10, and I have to say it was a bit smaller than I remembered. :) I also thoroughly enjoyed the National Gallery of Art, especially the modern art wing, where they had a Kandinsky, a handfull of Matisses, and some Giacometti sculptures, as well as a ginormous Calder and awesome architecture I think by I.M. Pei.
We do have excellent WiFi and broadband Internet, which is way sweet, and cable TV. But no Speed Channel. The past few races have aired on Fox, but I decided to go find a Formula One fan group in the area, and they watch the races in Alexandria, not too far from a Metro stop. They've had pretty good turnouts, anywhere from 10-20 folks, so that's been cool, and it's great to be able to share the race experience with others, which I haven't done since Erika moved out.
Cato has been a wonderful experience so far. It's not exactly what I expected, but nothing ever is, and I'm not really sure what it was I had expected. Two things have kinda struck me. One, it's very much just like an office environment, and I spend most of my time at my desk in front of a computer. I don't know what I pictured a think tank would be like, but I thought it would be different, somehow. Secondly, the folks there aren't particularly that social. I mean, they're not anti-social. But for the most part, most of the policy analysts and fellows don't interact with us interns that much, and some of the research assistants seem rather socially awkward (which, I suppose, I should have expected, given that many libertarians are quite geeky). And most of my work so far has simply involved reading.
But I think I am starting to make a good impression, handling my assignments fairly promptly and professionally. Most of them have been pretty straight-forward, although I have a rather open-ended one to get Jim Harper up to speed on the various private identification and authentication schemes out there. I know Erika has always been trying to convince me that my tech background will be an asset and not a liability, but I'm seeing first-hand that it's definitely the case. My computer expertise has also been handy in a few other cases, and it was also a reason I snagged a small assignment to create a libertarian search engine for the big veep, David Boaz (although that was also because I keep up with a lot of blogs, especially libertarian ones).
The interns have also taken a bit of time to warm up, but it's getting there. It helped when the four Koch fellows showed up, as one of them sits next to me and we seem to get along quite well. Plus we had a party last Friday, which was more fun than I expected. I was hoping Rachel would make it, but she bailed because she was too tired. Still, she's been showing up to the softball games, which have also been fun. I'm still rusty, but at least I haven't gotten conked on the head by any fly balls either.
We've also been attending quite a few seminars, like 3-4 per week. About a quarter of them have covered topics I already knew quite well, but I've learned quite a bit from the others, and just being in the same room and listening to guys like Gene Healy, Tom Palmer, Roger Pilon, and David Boaz is just an absolute treat. Tom Palmer, who runs the curriculum, is especially awesome. And it's his talks that reinforce for me that I am in the right place, voicing opinions that mirror mine quite closely. He is very critical of Bush, talked a lot about public choice theory and rent-seeking (which jives with my long-time interest in campaign finance, although most libertarians -- Palmer probably included -- don't like the idea of campaign finance reform), and even talked about how we ended up with a two-party system because of our first-past-the-post voting system (something that I rarely hear libertarians talk about even though that's been pretty firmly established by political science and is a big reason libertarian ideas are held back so much).
The social life has been a bit slower than I had hoped. Then again, I had rather hoped that I'd be hobnobbing with the libertarian and DC blogging elite by now, which was, admittedly, rather unrealistic. I've been spending most of my socialness with my fellow interns (there's about 25 of us) and my roommates, plus the Formula One fans on race day, some time with fellow FEE folks Tom (who goes to GWU) and Tanja (who works at Cato) and of course Rachel, who moved into her new place in Arlington last week and starts at GMU law in the fall. Divya from SJSU is also interning in DC, and I'll be meeting her for lunch on Monday. So it's still been quite social. I'm getting out, having fun, and seem to be consuming more alcohol than I was during the school year (not having exams or papers to worry about on the weekends seems to help).
Anyway... I think that mostly covers it. I do still get some mood swings and hit highs and lows (last week was quite low, for some reason). It concerns me, as it's clearly not linked to a certain something that I don't yet have access to here. So it might have to do with the normal stress of being in a strange new place and job, or that I'm not going to therapy out here. Dunno. But on the whole, my mood has actually been quite good. Although some things haven't met my expectations, others have exceeded them, and time has been flying by. I can't believe it's already been almost a month. I'm getting mixed feelings, in that I do miss home and my friends there, but I also don't want this to end. I guess that always happens. And I'm pretty sure DC will be prominently featured in my future somehow.