Business Cards and SOTU

So I've only been here for three weeks but I get the message. Everyone in DC has business cards. I mean everyone. In the first two weeks of my internship at PLEN and listening in on the panels, I think I heard about the importance of business cards at least once a day. It doesn't seem to matter if you're working or not, everyone has personal business cards. So while delaying the over 200 pages of reading I have for school, I played around on a couple sites and now I have my own business cards. I haven't handed any out yet, so we'll see. Hopefully they'll help me make more connections.

As if I needed more proof that I have moved to DC, I watched the State of the Union tonight. I've never watched it before but I felt like I had to. I'm guessing there will be much discussion tomorrow. Since I don't have cable, I watched it online and got the "enhanced" version with slides. I didn't keep it as the active window the whole time but I did at least listen.

For those of you who don't know, I moved to Washington DC. After 10 years enjoying the sun and amazing year round weather in California I decided I wanted seasons again. I'm already questioning the sanity of this but I keep reminding myself, I grew up in Minnesota and it's a lot worse there. In general though, I am enjoying this version of winter. It's a nice balance for me.

Of course, that's not the only reason I moved. I have also decided to go back to school, sort of. I am taking a class (Children in International Development) and a seminar (International Affairs) at American University as part of their Graduate Gateway Program (GGP). As part of the program I am also interning at the Public Leadership Education Network (PLEN). The GGP is designed to give the student an opportunity to determine if the selected area of interest is where they want to work or study and decide if they want to go back to school for their masters or get a job next. By participating in the program I get a boost in my grad school application by proving I can actually do grad school work and potentially make connections to get me a job (to maybe help pay for grad school).  

Snow Day!

I thought that after I left high school I was never going to get another snow day.  I guess if I still lived in Minnesota maybe I would have gotten a couple cold days this winter, but I'm an adult now so even that.  In all seriousness, the thought of a snow day today never crossed my mind until I checked my school email.  Then double checked the website and saw the above notice.  Then after that I triple checked by emailing the research assistant for my class this evening and she confirmed.  It's true.  Washington DC has snow days.  Class was cancelled for maybe two inches of snow today, and that's the total accumulation on the ground as of 6:00pm.

So what did I do today?  I caught up on reading for school, wrote a short paper, watched Netflix, goofed around on the web, cooked, and twiddled my thumbs.  I got a bit stir crazy sitting inside so I decided to walk the three blocks to Starbucks.  I got there a little after 4:00pm only to see a sign on the door notifying me they were closing at 5:00pm instead of 8:00pm due to severe weather conditions.

I guess this is the same a multiple definitions of black ice.  There is the Minnesota definition of exhaust frozen on the asphalt so you can't tell if the road is slippery.  Then there is the California definition for when there is light rain and the roads are slick from all the oil beading up on the road.  I'm sure there are other definitions from around the country, but when you grow up in Minnesota a light rain causing black ice or 2 inches of snow causing a snow day just doesn't make sense to me.  A new city, so many new things to learn.