My New Vocabulary

If you hear me say things like calling someone a "good egg" or describe something as being "lovely," please excuse me. It's not my fault, it's all Holly's.

And if I hear something scandalous and I giggle like a little girl, don't blame me; it's Holly's fault.

I officially adore my supervisor in this internship...so much so that I've picked up her mannerisms...all three of us interns have. It's creepy, but in a good way.


So, this internship has definitely made me kinda question my career paths. I've been seriously considering going into archives just because I love playing with really old stuff, but the PA House archives is not as in-depth, and it's a lot more of just simply keeping political stuff safe in case a lawyer needs to figure out legislative intent and so forth. Not very exciting, in my opinion. We've been working on processing some political papers from one of the recently-retired reps for the past few weeks...and even that's not very exciting. It's mostly weeding through crap-tons of form letters that he sent out in response to constituent letters to him. So, mostly it's organizing and preserving a bunch of crap for posterity. I've pretty much gotten pretty disillusioned with the whole archives experience -- kinda agreeing with all the people that respond "that sounds boring" to me when I explain what I've been doing this summer. The oral history research was boring; processing Calendar & Amendment room records was boring; and reps personal papers isn't much better.

All of this disillusionment has kinda changed after today; we went on a "field trip" to the Archives and Special Collections room at Dickinson College...and holy hell have they done so much cool stuff with what they have. First of all, they have some super-cool rare books in their rare books collection -- beautiful bindings, completely awesome stuff. Second, they have Dickinson's personal library that was donated soon after Dickinson was founded in the 1780's. And when I say this collection is awesome, I mean it's one of the coolest things I've seen in a LONG time. It includes books from the 1500's that had been in Dickinson's family for a few generations. The coolest part: they actually let students, faculty, and visiting researchers actually touch those books in the collection that haven't been digitized yet. The archives also has some other cool stuff: fraternity yearbooks from the 70's (think Animal House on speed), House of Commons Debates from during the time of the American Revolution, James Buchanan's papers (he's a Dickinson alum). And they're doing such awesome things with it...a lot of stuff is searchable online...and what's not, at least has a finding aid online. It's an archive that's actually used by researchers. Unless I work in one that is actually used, I think I'll go nuts.

Nader and Shockey

Silly post, but there are two major happenings this week that I haven't talked about.

1.

Ralph Nader was in the Rotunda today in a speech about how Bonus-gate affected his campaign in 2004 (Democratic staffers on taxpayers' time worked to keep him off the ballot) and how he's gonna sue Veon and DeWeese and all those fun people for all his court costs. But yeah, first time I was ever this close to a presidential candidate so I'm pretty excited. We also got to play in the Speaker's library today -- he has one hell of an office.

2.

Jeremy Shockey finally got traded to the New Orleans Saints (2nd and a 5th rnd. draft pick). Super disappointed that the three-way deal where we would have gotten Jason Taylor feel through, but I'm happy for the salary cap room and ecstatic that he won't be dragging down the team after his off-season hysterics.

Ocean City, MD 2008

It was and it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Major blow-up occurred on Saturday & avoiding happened the rest of the weekend. But the little one was adorable, and it was awesome hanging out with my cousins and uncles and aunts.


All the cousins, girlfriends, friends, potential step-siblings -- pretty much all those at the beach that were 21 and under. Yes, we did all eat dinner together. And yes, there was a total of 22 of us including adults. Indeed, it was good fun.

Back: Matt, Shawn, and Stephen holding Brian, Kory, Ryan, Brian
Front: Angela, my cousin Alyssa, Me, Brooke, Nicole, Jess, Alysia







Some super-fly cats. My cousin Matt, his gf Angela, me, cousin Steve, and my brother Ryan.









Here's the little man, cheesin' like always. This is the kid who just three short years ago would scream bloody murder the second his toes hit the sand. Now you can't keep him out of it and the water...the little daredevil.

Yeah, and I carried him the whole way up to the car so he didn't burn his feet...and the whole time he told me he missed Stephen and that Shawn was the best cousin...but yet I <3 this kid to death.





Pissed cause he didn't want me to take his picture (and he has sand all in his ass). The little genius made himself a slide in the sand by scootching his ass down with his feet. It got even better when he made people pull him down by his feet. Poor kid was so sandy in so many places he just stood outside the bathroom crying for me to hurry up and get out of the shower.




Some good things definitely came out of the weekend. I saw Stephen for the first time in like a year and got to make fun of him for everything possible...that's just how we do. I hung out with Angela a lot, and she's super-awesome. I had a LOT of people tell me that it's okay to feel what I'm feeling about my mom/parents divorcing/school stress/etc. and that made me feel better. And I've developed a borderline obsession with Baringer's sparkling White Zinfandel. This coming from a hearty red wine girl. But it's so girly and yummy and delicious (even though driving home with the remnants of a 3-glasses-of-wine headache is no fun at all).

Family shit again

This whole beach thing is getting to be more of a headache than it's really worth. All my mom's begging that I should go down for a weekend and stay through Monday seems to have been completely self-serving. I gave in, kinda as a favor to her...thinking a little that quite possibly this may be the last vacation I will take with just my mom. Really, she just didn't want to have to get Ryan back up to York for summer school stuff. Plus, her boyfriends going, as are two of his daughters and their friends. It may be petty, but I'm really beginning to think that she'd rather them be there than me. I have yet to spend time with just my mom this summer...she's always with her boyfriend or at least one of his daughters is over. I'm really not dealing with this well, especially since it was just kinda thrown at me tonight...and she wasn't even going to tell me. Ryan told me, not her...and I'm not happy about it. I can't stand that I'm expected to make sure they're entertained, and as selfish as this may seem, I don't want to have to share my family with them. I see my cousins once, maybe twice a year, since we've mostly all headed off to college and stuff...and I really just want to spend some time with the baby of the family (I guess a 4-year-old isn't much of baby though...he's growing up too, too fast) by myself. And I know I'm going to end up being the only one without a friend/significant other along.

Just another vacation that is going to require another vacation when I get back. I'm frustrated, and I know I can't talk to my mom about it. Sometimes I just want to print out all the shit I've written about this whole situation and just give it to her because she doesn't make time to listen. I'm tired of being told to "check in" on Ryan, etc. etc. when she's not going to make herself available to hear what I think. I'm tired of being the adult, I'm tired of worrying about my brother and how's he's dealing with all of this...I'm just sick and tired of it all.

Harrisburg Senators Game

Here's a few pictures from our outing on Thursday evening. Saw an exciting (not) Senators game...in addition to watching two 5-year-old boys (brothers?) open-mouth kissing on the bleachers. Gotta love Harrisburg. And Jami was asked (twice!) to try and win a date with one of the Senators entertainment employees. It just made me more excited for the Revs game where I'm actually going to have money for (way-too-expensive) beer, and there's fireworks...and I'm a sucker for fireworks.





Me, Kate, and Jami at the Senators game


















Sunset over the top of the "stadium" on City Island. Beautiful, thanks to the super-cool settings on my new Nikon CoolPix S210. New camera = awesome promotion pictures from PAT's D.C. trip this year!


And the archives is getting a new boy employee on Monday...crazy! Poor guy's gonna be alone in an office with a bunch of women. He'll get tired of hearing "Here, lift this to that shelf" really fast.

Shit Hit the Fan Today in Harrisburg

I'll talk more about this later...but meanwhile, check this out. Indictments were handed down today around noon...and one's a current legislator! It'll be interesting (and disheartening, and sickening, especially as a PA taxpayer) to see what else comes out as this (hopefully) far-reaching investigation continues. Needless to say, there's a LOT of tension in Harrisburg right now. A total of $1,285,250 spent on these bonuses. It just makes me sick to my stomach to think that people could do this...especially since they were elected to be representatives for the people. I know I may have been really naive about politics until this point, but I really feel like I've been slapped in the face.

Political musings

So, I have become totally and completely politically cynical during this internship. As interns in the PA House Archives, we got to sneak up on the House Floor and watch session a few times, including right around budget time. For those of you not experienced in PA politics, the state budget hasn't been completed on time in forever as a result of many things...sometimes because someone is unwilling to negotiate on some element of the budget (which sometimes threatens school operation, leading several school districts to think about shutting down schools until the budget was actually completed) but this time, it was because leadership in the House had waaaay too much control over what went on in the budget. The rank-and-files didn't even see the budget until after the due date this year...even though the Governor and the leadership had reached an "agreement" on the budget long before that. And they say the US Congress is even worse! It just makes me wonder how "important" these elected figures are. Even if they want to "reform" the process, they have something like 200 other members who want things to stay the same, especially when it comes to retaining their perks -- tax-free per diems, car lease reimbursement, 3 session days each week, summers pretty much off. It's cushy, there's no question about it, and they make a hell of a lot of money.

Even worse, I've been keeping up with the election news for the president...and I have to admit, it's getting more and more ridiculous. No one's talking "how's"...both Obama and McCain have a lot of things they'd like to do, but it seems like each plan they come out with either gets changed within a week due to media criticism or at the very least, a majority of "experts" say that said plans are just not feasible--especially in what I see to be the most important issue in this election: the economy. McCain wants to balance the budget...but he doesn't quite have the means to do so (and has a ton of people who feel 'entitled' to programs that might need to be cut). Obama, in my opinion, has no freaking clue. I don't know...hopefully, come November, something remotely relating to real policy will come out, be it in debates or speeches, whatever. I just don't feel comfortable voting for someone that is extremely talented in attacking the other candidate but unwilling (or unable) to articulate their plans to solve problems in this country.

Various Pictures from the Weekend that Went to Hell Fast.

This past weekend was the lighthouse weekend. It should have been fun, but what it turned out to be was 4 very crabby people in a car at once. At least I got some good pics!




Middle Ground Lighthouse in all its Independence Day glory. It really is like the sweetest party house on the face of the Earth.












Redneck Yacht Club?













My personal favorite of my fireworks pictures and I don't even think these were the ones we were actually setting off from the pontoon boat. I kinda dig the railing in the foreground and the lights from (maybe) Norfolk. Taken about 20 min. before they all lost power (suckers!)