Randomness

I had planned to write a blog post last night, but once I forced myself to do my Shred workout (3 nights in a row--27 to go!) and got things ready for this morning, it was late and I had brought home a project from work that I needed to work on. So I never even turned on my computer.

So I will try to briefly throw out some random thoughts that I don't want to forget.

Hmmmm. Like . . . well . . . uh . . .

Instead, how about a snapshot of my day. I started my morning by checking email. Here's my setup:

 

(Does the screen look familiar?)

Then I started picked up where I left off with an editing project--an oral history. Our office conducts a lot of oral histories with long-serving Senate staff (and sometimes senators). The historians transcribe the interviews and then I get to edit them, which can be challenging, depending on the interviewee. Normally, I'll edit them on the computer, but sometimes I print them out and edit the paper copy (the old-fashioned way, I guess.) It definitely gives my eyes a break from the ubiquitous computer screen. Here's my desk setup.

The blue box on the left holds an elaborate photo album of President Obama's inauguration. (Don't really know what to do with it.) The piece of paper taped to the shelf is this year's list of senators whose terms expire on Jan. 3, 2011, with notes on who is retiring, who has been defeated in primaries, special elections, and seats that might be changing parties. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory.

Exciting, huh? I'll check back in later when I start working on something else. How fun--a post-as-you-go day!

It's 10:30 and I'm hungry so I just went downstairs to our carry-out cafeteria to get some breakfast. I finished editing the hard copy of the oral history and now I'm making the changes on the computer.

I almost forgot--before I went downstairs, my office manager asked about our list of senators who have won the Golden Gavel Award. The Senate has a presiding officer, which is officially the vice president of the United States (the president of the Senate). The VP used to preside regularly over Senate sessions, but that hasn't been the case since the 1950s, when Nixon was the VP. When the VP is absent, the president pro tempore (which is an elected officer of the Senate--usually the most senior member of the majority party) officially presides. But the PPT almost always appoints someone else to preside in his/her absence. And that someone is almost always a freshman senator. In the '60s, they started giving Golden Gavel Awards to senators who had presided for 100 hours in a Senate session--sort of a reward for something most senators don't like to do. Anyway, I checked our list to make sure it was up-to-date.

It's almost 1:00 and I'm still working on the oral history transcript. I just took a break to take some forms to the boys' daycare center. It's about a block from my office, and it's so nice to be able to get there at a moment's notice. There are drawbacks, of course--mostly the long commute and the fact that I'm almost 100 percent responsible for their drop-off and pick-up. But being involved in their school and being able to participate in school-day events and even being able to take the boys to lunch from time to time makes it all worth it.

This is my walk to the daycare:

It's 2:00 p.m. and I finally finished editing the oral history. Whew! That took a long time. Now I'm moving on to one of my election lists--Incumbents Reelected or Defeated. Here's my bible when it comes to Senate elections:

I'm going through each election year and taking the class of senators who were up for election that year (the Senate is a continuing body--only one-third of senators are up for election every two years; thus, they are divided into "classes") and noting who retired, who was defeated, and who won reelection (or election in the case of appointed senators). We have lots of lists with numbers, but it's good to be able to look at a certain election year and know exactly what happened.

Now it's 5:09 and I'm wrapping up. By the time I get the boys and get on the road, it will probably be 5:45, and we probably won't get home until 6:30. And so it goes. Tomorrow will be much like today. My boss just told me we need to work on a project tomorrow to find examples of various scenarios for when terms began. So that's how my day will start. For now, I'm done!