It's Like Christmas!

I'll get to the Christmas part in a minute, but for now I'll just tell you a little bit about what's been going on lately.

This week at work has been fun. I've been doing more research for exhibit labels. I got to go on a tour in the Archives of the museum. At a meeting for all of the Smithsonian staff working on the maritime exhibit that I'm working on. In front of all of the upper-level staff members, one of my supervisors told everyone that I was doing a lot of very helpful research, and that I was very efficient. Then later, she even suggested that I extend my internship! Oh my goodness! That's so awesome! It's a big deal! I won't say that I'm not sorely tempted. But I definitely felt honored to have received such an awesome compliment.

Yesterday I ran out of projects to work on at around 2:30 in the afternoon... Which meant that I spent the rest of the day poking around my office, which is in one of the rooms in which they store a lot of the maritime objects, as well as all of the books and periodicals that they use to do research. So, needless to say, my office has some pretty awesome stuff in it. Since I've been working there I have learned all of the terminology for sailing ship rigging, as well as numerous random facts about brigs, barquentines, packets, steamboats, tows, etc. So yesterday when I had nothing in particular to work on, I pranced over to one of the bookshelves and pulled a book off entitled, simply, "Rope". So, now, I can tell you all sorts of ways to use rope and why people make rope one way and not another way, and how you make rope, and what to do with each kind of rope, etc. etc... I know, I'm a nerd.

Last night one of my roommates, Biz, and I went to a short-film festival in Chinatown. It was pretty interesting, lots of strange, yet sometimes moving short movies. One was about the life of a pencil. It was hilarious. Apparently pencils are very enthusiastic about their lives when they're born... I had no idea!

We didn't get there in time to see the 9:30 showing, so we went to an Irish pub to waste a few hours until they showed them again. I had two pints. One Guinness, and one Harp. (In my humble opinion, which has no hint of beer snobbery at all, I think the Harp was fantastic! Light yet flavorful. Yum. Chris, you would like it.)

This morning I finally cleaned our kitchen. It only took an hour or two.

(Here's the Christmas part). So while I'm cleaning I hear the doorbell ring. I answered the door and to my great surprise, there in the arms of the DHL man was a giant box. And it was for me! I ran inside clutching my package racking my mind trying to figure out what it was. I hadn't ordered anything. No one had told me anything was coming. So I really had no idea what it could be!

My roommate, Jason, opened it for me. We sat at the kitchen table and excitedly cut open the box. I had no earthly idea what would be inside. As I waited for the unveiling, I suddenly had the same feeling I had when I was a little kid waiting for someone to give me a Christmas present. Once we opened it, my glee was only surmounted by the sheer quantity of items inside! Inside were 6 packages (6 packages!!!!) of 8 boxes (8 boxes!!!!) of single serving breakfast cereal!! The good kinds, like Frosted Flakes, Corn Pops, Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks, Honey Smacks, and (drumroll please) Cocoa Krispies!!! Oh how great my joy! It was from my Aunt! I was so excited! So, thank you, very very very much for my wonderful amazing stupendously exciting present. All of my roommates thank you too!

Well I'm off to go see the sights in DC! I love y'all!