Weeks 10 & 11

I honestly think my proudest accomplishment for me in week 10 was to eat a steak that looked almost exactly like the one pictured above. I thankfully got lucky and mine was a little bit more cooked in the middle, but not by much. Dad and I went to a Dairyman's Association dinner and when I saw the steaks come out, I was silently panicking to myself. I really don't like meat and the dairyman are really serious about their meat. I was really worried that if I didn't eat it, I would offend them. But it was actually pretty good, and I left that night without offending any of the dairyman.

These past two weeks seem to have blurred in with each other. I don't remember too much of what's been going on. Last week I sat at the Governor's main office desk for the week. So that was fun for me. I couldn't do much work, because all of my work was at my computer, so I was able to just sit and talk to whoever came through. By the way, I am getting pretty good at being able to carry on a conversation with complete strangers :)

This week was pretty slow for the people in the Governor's office. The Governor was out of town for most of it and it's always busy when he's in. It's nice when he's gone because it seems like I'm able to get caught up on work, but I hate it when he's gone, because then he calls the office so much. I have to be on guard every time I answer the phone, and then whoever he wants to talk to, I swear is never by their phone whenever I try to transfer Governor over to them. So it's pretty stressful for me when I'm trying to make a good impression.

It also seems like the legislators got really busy this week, but it hasn't hit the Governor's office yet. I think it's coming to us this week though. I mainly spent week 11 doing work that needed to be done by the end of April. Since I probably won't be here then, I thought it would be best if I did it before I left instead of just left it for someone else to do. So I wrote up a lot of proclamations and welcome letters this week.

It's been a really good week though. Everyone has been so nice and happy this week, I have loved it and I'm not ready for the session to end. One day Claudia, the main secretary, left about 2 hours early, so I was covering everything for her. About an hour after she left, she called me just to tell me thanks for all my help, and she was being really sweet about it. I thought that was so nice of her and I loved the compliments. However, after I got off the phone with her I realized she had just gotten back from a doctor's appointment and then I started wondering if she had been drugged up, but nevertheless, I still appreciate her compliments and I still believe them to be true :)

This has been making me laugh all afternoon so I had to post a picture. My dad got a new program that allows him to talk into his head set and it will type what he's saying. So all night long he has been testing it out. He says random sentences and then tells it to capitalize a certain word or make it bold or strike some part of the sentence. So far it's taken him much much longer to say it than if he were to actually type it, but supposedly it gets quicker the more he uses it. Let's hope so!

What Jennifer has Been Waiting For!!!

Jenn! I finally have pictures of the Condominium dad and I are staying in! About dang time huh?

Ok, so this is what the building looks like from the outside. Dad and I are on the fifth floor straight above the main entrance door, so our windows face the capitol building. We are only about 2 blocks away from the capitol so it's quite pretty at night when the capitol is lit up.

This is the lobby when you first walk in. This is also the lobby dad had to wait in for 2 hours when I locked him out of the house one night. He didn't mind it too bad though, he just found something to read and sat by the fire patiently.

This isn't our layout, but the look is almost the exact same. Same floors, same furniture, same counter tops. This is a little nicer because they have it decorated a little more than ours and they are at a corner and have windows on 2 sides, but this helps you get the idea of what ours looks like.

Week 9 was sure interesting

This picture is from a rally held wednesday evening formed mainly by the teachers who do not support the education reform plan. This was the largest rally I have ever seen from the 10 weeks I was a page and the 9 weeks I have been doing my internship. They had each person lined up and walk around the capitol. The line was big enough to make it all the way around the block the capitol building is on. I was impressed and sad at the same time. I sat and watched this crowd for about 10 minutes and I found it interesting that so many people outside that capitol building hated this plan and just 20 feet away inside the capitol so many people loved the plan. The protesters outside say the politicians agree with the plan because they want to punish union workers, secure their seat for next election, get money for their campaigns from big businesses and so on. The politicians say the protesters don't like it because they don't understand the plan. They don't understand that we simply don't have enough money to keep things the way they are, they don't understand that you can't stabilize an economy by raising sales taxes, they don't understand what is actually in senate bills 1108, 1110, and 1113. I've been pondering all week about who is actually right. I always expect issues to be black or white, but this isn't. This plan could be the best thing for Idaho education if it goes the way the politicians want it to go, but it will be pretty devastating if it goes the way the protesters think it will and if the teachers think it will fail, they will make sure that it fails. Most people who have called me about the plan know little about it, and if so it's usually the generalized version the press. Some do know a lot about it and are still against it though. And some people call in and think it's the greatest thing ever. I have followed this plan very closely and take every chance that I get to learn more about it, because I feel that it's important that I know all about when people ask me questions, but also because it's interesting to me and I have never seen so much opposition on one side and so much support on the other side.

Moving on. . . ha I have had the new job for a week now and everything has gone quite smoothly until today. I sit at the Governor's secretary's main office desk for usually 2 hours a day, but today I was there for about 5 hours. Within the first 3 hours I had four incidents dealing with constituents where the Idaho State Police had to step in and help me. Up until today I have never had an issue like that, I couldn't believe I had 4 all in one day. 2 of them turned out to be nothing and just harmless people, but 2 of them scared me. The first guy was asking where the governor was at and just acting really suspicious and would question me and then repeat everything I said like, "Oooohhh, so the governor is in a meeting right now, hmmm..." "Oooohhhh so the governor will be back in his office on Monday then." He was just acting really suspicious and crazy, he said some crazy things. Ha the police officer that was in my office at the time didn't get a good look at him so he was questioning me about what he looked like. And you know how that goes, once someone asks you what they look like, you all of the sudden can't remember, yeah that was me today.

Then later that day, the officer who has an office next to mine left early for the day and then thirty minutes later a real crazy lady came in. She thought the twin towers was a conspiracy theory and hated the government and started yelling and swearing at me and just saying some awful things. I didn't know what to do because my security guard was gone. I have a panic button on my desk that I can push, but she wasn't violent, just crazy so I didn't want to push it unless something happened, but I was still pretty nervous because I was the only one in that office. Luckily another lady walked in so the crazy lady left shortly after, but the security guard across the hall saw her storm off and called my desk and told me all the secret codes for everything incase that happens again I'll be prepared :) ha

Week 8

This week was by far the busiest week I have had as an intern, but I'm afraid this week might be even busier. Our special assistant for Health and Welfare got a job in Washington D.C., so last week was her last week. Amy, the secretary in our office, my mentor, and my favorite person ever, took over her job, which meant I took over Amy's job. But I don't have an intern to do the job I was doing, so now I am doing both jobs and although we didn't officially start our new jobs until today, we were busy trying to learn our new jobs. I found out about this only about a week before, so I had so so much to learn before the switch. This was like a job now, not an internship. I had to change my mentality too. Before I was just there to learn, but now I am there to work hard and do the best I can. Before, if I didn't know something I could just ask Amy, her desk was about 5 feet away from mine and she was always willing to help out, but now she is really busy with her own job and clear across the office, so I have to be on top of my game. So I was busy learning everything preparing for this week and it was a crazy week anyway. The capitol was FULL of high school and middle school students protesting the new education reform plan. It is perfectly fine if people go and protest, but these students got a little out of hand and were very loud and very disrespectful. One guy in my office told me he had a new name for the Capitol, "Daycare for a Day" because students were running around everywhere, even sliding down the banisters. So that was a little unnecessary.

I did have a really fun week though, everyone in my office is great and always so appreciative of the work I do. Wednesday I went out to a really fun dinner with my dad, all the new senators, a lobbyist and the Pro Tem. The lobbyist was trying to set me up with his 26 year old son the whole night though, because his son is engaged to a girl his wife doesn't like, so he's trying to break that up, and I guess he thought I was the girl to do it. I told him I was going to stay out of that. Right after the dinner I found out David and Katie had their new baby, baby Jack :) Friday night I went to Bannock Counties Lincoln day, Saturday morning Bear Lake's Lincoln day, and then stayed after for a meeting with Superintendent Luna and the teachers of Bear Lake to discuss the education plan. That was pretty interesting as you can imagine. After that we went to Logan, to see new baby Jack and he is so so adorable and then headed down to Provo for baby Liam's baby blessing on Sunday. It was so fun to see everyone there and all the little kids I just loved. Em and I had a date that night and when we got back we were locked out of the house, but didn't want to ring the door bell and wake up a child, so we just slept in the truck, except we didn't get much sleep. Sunday was Liam's blessing and he looked so cute in his vintage outfit. Then it was back to Boise. It was a great weekend and went by way too fast.

Today was a lot better than I was expecting. I was so nervous I was going to be lost all day, I worried about it most of the weekend actually. But it went really well. This morning when I got ready I made sure to put on heals and pearls so I would be confident the whole day, and I was. It worked! I was busy, but nothing too bad and I felt like I knew what I was doing the whole time! Hopefully it stays like that the rest of the week.