Sunday, June 17, 2012

Tuesday-Thursday

Here's what was supposed to post on Thursday night when I couldn't get the internet to work: 

Hello faithful readers! (Are you out there?? ha) It’s been a few days since I’ve posted—sorry about that—sleep had to take priority. Here’s a (long) update.

Tuesday:
The Odd Life of Timothy Greene. This was an exciting day because it was the first time we DROVE instead of BUSSED closer to DC. My cousin lives near the East Falls metro station, so he let us park in his neighborhood (Thanks, Matt!), so that we could stay in DC past the time the last bus for Leesburg would be leaving (6:55, lame). The reason we wanted to stay was after work that evening Leslie and I met up with 3 of the other missionaries to see a free preview screening of a new Disney movie (people though, not cartoons). The movie was supposed to be supportive of adoption, which, of course, is a beautiful alternative to abortion, and is called “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.” Well, it was a lot of fun seeing a movie with the other interns, and most of the other people there to see the screening were from adoption groups, so it was neat, but I have to be honest: 1) the movie had very little to do with adoption in my opinion, and in some ways could even be construed as pro-in vitro fertilization, and 2) just as a basic movie, it wasn’t very good. However, I’m sure many of the theatergoers that night would disagree! Leslie and Lindsey even cried! which sorta made me feel like a heartless woman for not having deep enough emotions, ha. But really, I guess I just have too critical of an eye for movies. This one didn’t impress me at all, but I’m glad it’s out there making an impression on others!


Wednesday:
We parked at East Falls (by my cousin’s house) again on Wednesday, but for a different reason: we missed our bus. By like 30 seconds! It pulled away as we were walking up. Alas, good thing we had another option.

My first constituent letter! I got to draft a response letter to a piece of constituent mail, on the topic of contraception, so that was really interesting. It was about the proposed bill, H.R. 2659. The bill really wasn’t controversial, it just says that pharmacy employers must dispense a contraceptive immediately if in stock, or place an order immediately, and that they cannot harass or intimidate women seeking contraception. Even as a pro-life legislator, Andy Harris couldn’t disagree with that. The highschooler who wrote in had misread the bill, though, and thought that it also provided that pharmacies cannot refuse the contraception to a woman who cannot pay for it. In fact, the bill stated that the pharmacy could refuse to dispense the contraceptive if it couldn’t be paid for, or if it were unlawful to dispense without a prescription.

Lovin’ the home life. Wednesday evening we enjoyed tilapia for dinner (Maureen is a GREAT cook, and very generous—she cooks for us nearly every night!). Maureen and Dan are also big fans of ice cream, and we’ve shared a bowl or two on a regular basis over the past (almost) two weeks. The relationship between those two is just beautiful. We watched a little CSI last night. Often talk about the news together. Dan obsesses over Nola (we found out recently Nola is actually considered “Dan’s dog,” even though Maureen is the only one who walks her). Whenever Nola walks up to Dan he always fawns over her, usually starting with “Hellooo Nola!” It is SO nice to come home to a warm home like this every night. And doubly nice to share this home and internship experience with Leslie. She is becoming a great friend! We get along very well and have a lot of fun together.
Thursday, today!:
Intranet Quorom! This week Congress is not “in session,” so that explains why it’s so slow and there is less to do. We did spend 2 hours in “IQ” (intranet quorum) training, basically to learn the software that the majority of the House uses to keep their offices organized. It’s actually amazing software, and I’m not even a computer geek! It’s very user-friendly and intuitive, with a screen that is not overwhelmingly cluttered—yet it records immense amounts of data and information. It’s really impressive.

Debates. Fun times. We went to a debate this evening put on by the Heritage Foundation between a liberal and a conservative on the topic of a Liberal Bias on College Campuses. It came with free pizza! The liberal speaker was much more dynamic than the conservative, but they both had good points. It was less of a debate and more of them taking turns to talk for 15 minutes. Basically the conclusion was that yes, academia and higher education is predominantly full of liberal professors. BUT, to what extent is this a problem was the source of disagreement. The liberal sees bias as something inevitable—we all have bias, he says, and that is good. If everyone at a University thought the same way we wouldn’t really be learning. There seemed to be a discrepancy in the debate to me because the liberal really did hit the nail on the head with his stance (it’s only a problem when freedoms are not being protected, i.e. when conservatives are treated unfairly), but he definitely doesn’t represent the majority of liberal professors out there.

Perhaps more to come on all these thoughts later. I’m getting a little wordy here. To sum up, it’s been a good week so far!
Love y’all!
Cathy

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