That Time I Was On CNN Looking Like a Drowned Rat

To end my 9/11 memories series, let's go back to the two days after the attacks. As I mentioned before, we all returned to work the day after and in the middle of secondary alarms and everything else, my office learns that the President is planning to hold a Day of Prayer and Remembrance at the National Cathedral.

The next day.

And we needed to help with a large chunk of the guest list.

And it's like 4:00 in the afternoon already.

Well, so much for taking a moment to recover from a terrorist attack in your city!

So we go to work immediately. Our job is to contact leaders in religious organizations and coordinate getting their tickets to them the next morning.

And us interns start calling people on behalf of the President.

To this day, that is still one of the coolest moments for me. I called the head of the Salvation Army on behalf of the President. His wife excitedly called him to the phone because clearly *I* was important.

I was 21 at the time.

Living in a two bedroom, one and a half bath apartment with five other girls, in a bad part of the city.

I ate for free at receptions whenever I could and did a food service gig at a football game for extra money.

But for that moment, I was representing the leader of the free world. Ridiculous.

I made only a couple calls before I realized that I could actually serve the cause more with my fast typing skills and I volunteered to take over the data entry portion of our operation as we struggled to find contact information and log tickets in an excel spreadsheet at warp speed.

Hey don't worry about me, guys. Go ahead and call Billy Graham on behalf of the President of the United States. I'd rather TYPE!

Me=not so great at decision making.

We continue late into the night, me typing away hearing my fellow intern yell things like "If Pat Robertson calls for me, tell him I'll be right back!" and we miraculously do pull off our job. We then wake up early the next morning and start handing out tickets.

In the rain.

Because this feat wasn't challenging enough as it is.

Funny enough, one ticket I gave was to my now pastor Mark Batterson. A man I would later camp with in the middle of Ethiopia while we were surrounded by lions and monkeys.

Life is so strange.

Another ticket I gave was to famed Redskins football player, Darrell Green. I literally handed his ticket to him through the window of his car as he drove past me in the rain. That is how frantic this whole operation was.

The last person I remember handing a ticket to?

Jerry Falwell.

So it was quite the day already.

When we finished that task, we ourselves loaded into giant white Martz busses and were taken through the city by police escort to get to the Cathedral just in time for the event to start.

Did I mention this event included nearly every living U.S. president at the time and pretty much every VIP that could possibly get there?

So there was a tiny bit of security. Our buses had to drop us off quite a ways away. So me and my fellow interns trudged, in our suits, in the rain, into the cathedral and were all seated in various spots among the crowd.

Finally. We could relax. And start crying (at least I did) as famous opera singers sang hymns and Billy Graham and President Bush and others spoke.

After it was over, I went to find another intern while other people tried to gather around Presidents Clinton and Bush Senior. As I walked up to my fellow intern Steve, he blurts out "I saw you on t.v.!"

I'm sorry, what was that?

Apparently, Steve was sat behind a column where he could sort of see the stage but also had a television monitor showing the live news coverage of the event. I had been seated on the edge of a row along the middle aisle and apparently, right when my rain-flattened head was tilted to one side as I was crying during a hymn --

CNN panned in on me.

And thus my tired, drowned little face filled television screens across the country for a couple seconds.

Incidentally, that wouldn't be the worst I've looked on television. During Bush's second election, I was at the official election party all night while we awaited the results (which didn't come until the next morning) when I raced home, changed clothes, didn't shower, raced back for the news that we won -- and was promptly interviewed for Channel 1. My sleep-deprived, disheveled mess of a self, babbled on about the win before wandering back to the party. I never saw the footage but I can only imagine what I looked like. Thankfully that channel is only broadcast throughout public schools across the nation and not on regular television...

When we got back to our homes, I was flooded with calls and emails from friends and family members all over the country who had been shocked to see me on the news. Some of my aunts in Washington State said that seeing me unexpectedly somehow gave them comfort in the midst of all the scary, horrifying events that week so I've always thought that was God's doing, because goodness knows why CNN chose me to pan in on me in a room full of people. (And if you ever want to do that again, CNN, could ya give a girl a heads up so she can fluff her hair or something?)

In the end, obviously the events of that week changed every American's life, but it personally changed mine in so many ways. Being at the White House when all of that went down; later serving in the office that was literally creating the new Department of Homeland Security due to the attacks; meeting service members at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who were wounded in the wars that ensued because of those attacks -- it's like 9/11 has been woven into my life ever since. That's why, when Bin Laden was finally taken out, I raced to the White House to celebrate there with one of the girls I interned with so many years before. It felt personal.

And while I don't still have the Jumbo in my apartment, and I'm not sure where the video is of my brief moment on national news, I'll always have these memories of when I was miraculously fortunate enough to be able to be so close to history. And every September, I remember them all again.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/sets/72157627484182135/detail/

More September 11th Memories

So two years ago, I posted my memories from spending my second day of working at the White House being evacuated on 9/11 (here).  But so many other things happened around that time.

First of all, we all went back to work the day after 9/11 happened. But obviously nothing was ever the same and everyone was on heightened alert. I remember walking out of the building on 9/11 but I remember running out of the building two days later when there was a report of a potential car bomb on the street outside. (the funny thing is, I did take the time to grab my lunch before running for my life. Some people make sure others get to safety, I make sure my tuna fish sandwich isn't wasted....) But by then, everyone knew what had happened to our country so whenever something suspicious occurred, people overreacted just in case.

One precaution taken was that our office was moved to across the street. Apparently where our office was situated originally left it too vulnerable to the street so a week after I came in early and discovered planes were crashing into buildings, I came in early and found-

our office gone.

Yep, over the weekend it had been moved, yet NO ONE THINKS TO TELL THE ALREADY-SKITTISH INTERN! So I eventually find out where the office moved to, and then I spend part of that week helping hand-carry office furniture between the two places. Because that's what interns do. Whether at a dog grooming company or at the most powerful place in the world, you're gunna staple things and you're gunna pick things up.

Jumbos look like this http://www.pbs.org/programs/presidents-photographer/

And here's where I admit to something I probably shouldn't. So there are these giant photos termed "jumbos" all throughout the White House offices of different scenes throughout the presidency.  

And sometimes staff will take them for keepsakes at the end of the term. Well my fellow intern - also moving furniture - decides now would be a perfect time for us to grab one for ourselves since we were already moving things out of the building. Granted, it was not the end of a term and we hadn't asked anyone if we could take them but we figured - eh, staff do this, these aren't even great pictures and no one will miss them. And since the guards were already used to seeing us schlep things across the street, they didn't even bat an eye when we walked out carrying giant photographs.

Well my conscience quickly gets the best of me and I can't take it anymore. There is a jumbo, in my apartment, and I didn't ask permission! So I finally hang it up over my bed and snap of photo to remember it's existence - and I smuggle it back into the White House compound the next day. Clearly, I picked the right profession - that being anything but a thief. 

So we get all situated in our new office space and calm down from the second building evacuation for the false alarm (when, I might add, I passed a lady on her cell phone apparently telling someone that we were all scurrying around again for another emergency, and all I heard was "I gotta get some ICE CREAM I can't HANDLE this sh*@!" which became my second favorite random outburst on that sidewalk. The first being the man asking passerbys for money each day calling out to me down the street "oh here comes a pretty lady!" then when I got close enough to refuse to give him my cash, he spits out "of course not, you're too STUPID TO BE PRETTY!" Ah, D.C. life.)

But back to the office. So after 9/11, the false alarm evacuation, and all sorts of other alarms around the city, such as antrax letters etc. - our office gets yet another scare.

We get our own suspicious letter.

So now we're all back to being evacuated again. We pile out into the street (I did not grab office furniture or a sandwich to amuse myself this time so of course I was impatient for this to just be over with quickly) and we watch as a real-life robot goes back into our office and fetches the letter. I kid you not. I saw that little thing carry it out while we all stood at a safe distance. At that moment, I think a switch turned on in my head that said "you will never be shocked by anything else in your life again after this semester." And we watch the robot leave and we go back and continue our day.

More to come from those crazy weeks in my next post.

And then sometimes I spend my mornings playing in an old prison...

I mentioned HERE that I was considering playing a victim for a local disaster response drill.

After nearly changing my mind the morning of (pillows are so comfortable....) I got myself out of bed and headed out to :

An abandoned prison.

Did I mention that part? That this whole scene was taking place in an abandoned prison/former cold war bunker?

I'm already excited.

So I get there and join a line of people waiting to find out their fate - i.e. what injury their character is going to have. At one point we hear that today's excercise scenario is an earthquake. I start making friends with other people in line, and I near the registration table. And the man asks "how bad do ya wanna be?" and he gestures to signs listing: Red (serious), Yellow (less serious but still bad) and Green (not super serious).

I hear something about "impalement" from the person in front of me so I'm intrigued and just tell the guy that I'll do whatever they need (picturing myself hanging over some fence with a rod poking through my body until I'm found by the rescuers.)

He says he needs more Green people and my dreams of gnarly injuries are dashed.

Actually, first he looks me up and down and says "I'm not checking you out, just making sure you have on long pants and closed toes shoes."

Um, right.

Then he looks at my face, musing about my injury possibilities, and states "well you're too pretty to give you a black eye..."

Am I getting a role or a date out of this?....

And finally he hands me a card and sends me to "moulage" (the makeup area). And then - there's a ray of hope.

"Impaled glass." Excellent.

I walk into the moulage area which is a funny mix of people doing makeup, and people already made up noshing on bagels waiting for the drill to start.

Moulage area

My turn at the makeup table

Just hangin' out. You know, with terrible wounds.

So cheerful to have a giant nail hanging out of her shoulder blade....

We all look like extras from the Thriller video. And everyone's pretty happy. At one point, a lady called out to me "I like your glass!" nodding toward the broken piece jutting out of my arm. I returned with a "I like your hand!" gesturing towards what looked to be missing fingers.

The organizers finally call us together and explain a little bit about the day. The scene is taking place throughout several buildings so it could be hours before we are "found." We're told to be in character all we want when the responders are there but to please not egg it on otherwise as we'll get hoarse and "annoy the people around us."

Ha! Thank you for that, considering we could be listening to "victims" for hours.

My team is taken to our building (exactly what you'd expect when you hear "abandoned prison")and we start picking out our own cell to remain in until we're found.

Nice, right?

The cell I chose

I  started making friends with the victims down the hall as we awaited our rescue. "Oh HEY girl!"

And it feels weird to just be standing in a prison cell with nothing to do so of course I started taking photos of my injury and checking Facebook.

Awesome Gross, right?

And after awhile we are finally told that the responders are getting close. So we all shove back into our cells and I start hearing everyone down the halls start moaning and yelling. Which is awkward so I start laughing quietly and only offer an additional "help!" every now and then out my cell window.

And...

nothing.

No responders actually come in for quite awhile after this begins. So people fall into an almost predictable routine and I hear many rounds of the following:

"Help!"
"We're in here!"
"I'm trapped!"
"Hello?!"

all coming out of cells that I can't see from inside my own cell, so it feels like we are dogs aimlessly barking in a kennel together. I continue to occasionally offer my own barks of "help...?" out the window and the whole chorus repeats itself over and over.

"Help!"
"We're in here!"
"I'm trapped!"
"Hello?!"

I start chatting with some people about how they got involved with disaster response in between more rounds:

"Help!"
"We're in here!"
"I'm trapped!"
"Hello?!"

At one point, we hear "there's smoke at the end of hall, but don't worry, that's part of the scenario!"

Oh good, this is getting even creepier!

The rounds start to vary.

"Hello!?"
followed by a sad:
"they forgot about us...."
and at one point a:
"I rescind my offer of kittens!"
To which we all laugh and then go back into character.

I occasionally here yelling coming out of other buildings around ours and another guy working the drill walks by, looks in my cell and says "sheesh, what you really need to worry about is that toilet!":

So I change my routine and yell out "HELP! I USED THE TOILET!"

It made him laugh anyway.

Finally, our actual responders arrive. I get into character and start yelling for help and try to make it a bit of a challenge for the responders to "treat" me, because that's what we are there to do.

And I can tell one of the guys treating me is already a little out of his element. So then a deaf woman came into my cell trying desperately to distract the responders. The flustered guy holding my arm gets more uncomfortable until his safety glasses fell right off his face.

I start hoping I'm never actually in need of rescue from this guy....

They get me fixed up and slap a card on my wrist and a duct tape label on my shirt and send me on my way to the medical area set up outside.

And while outside, I notice more makeshift supplies include:

A box of feminine products that are being used as bandages.

Which, hey, in a real disaster, community volunteers use whatever is available. Still made me and another responder laugh though. And made me thankful my wound was already bound by cloth and not with whatever was in that bag....

I sit down and wait for the fireman to come.

Oh right! Another thing I forgot to mention. Actual hot responsible fireman participated in this drill with us.

After awhile of sitting in the "Green" area, a responder comes over and asks my group for a volunteer. Being curious, I raise my hand and we end up jogging over to the Red area.

Where I'm told to hold on to this guy:

That is a man who did get a card telling him he'd be completely impaled with a rod going through his abdomen.

Lucky.

So now me and another lady are supposed to keep him on his side by holding him. Awkward.

Finally, the fireman arrive and this whole thing is taking longer than we expected so people are slowly starting to break character. A plate of sandwiches comes around and even though the scene now looks real and scary like this:

"Victims" are now starting to happily chomp away at food as if they weren't impaled like this:

And I sit a little while longer to admire the fireman  to play my role but eventually the entire drill goes over the allotted time, and I decide to leave (I have homework calling, afterall). And "impaled man" and his family also decide to leave. And as we walk away from the carnage behind us, in our fake blood and torn clothes and duct tape, we pick up our sandwiches and complimentary reusable grocery bags, and go back to normal life.

Probably hoping harder than ever that we never have to actually be rescued in real life.

Unless, of course, it's by those fireman.

Playing the Victim...Literally

I've decided I want to get back into the disaster management world in some way (see my Hurricane Katrina life HERE and my uncanny knack of ending up near disasters of all kind HERE and really across this whole blog.) It may be as a volunteer or it may be a project at work, but dang it - I am an adrenaline junkie/disaster chaser! (which is the description a Red Cross staffer used last week when he was describing to me the typical personality of people he works with.)

So then I get an email at work that there is a simulation (something like this) taking place in the near future where first-responders need "victims" to practice with.

So I volunteered to play one of those victims.

Now, granted, this may be a really silly idea given the fact that I have to get up at an ungodly hour on a Saturday and am only getting paid with lunch. However, I'm looking at this as a way to experience the emergency response world again (since I miss it and I've yet to be contacted by another organization sending people to help with the Oklahoma tornado recovery. The answer is yes - I do sit around in my spare time and hunt down new activities. Because no, MOM, I can't just "sit still for once!" I'll DIE.) Plus I'll also get CERT credit (Community Emergency Response Team. I'm supposedly a local member of one but have yet to get direction about anything.) This is also a way to potentially connect with people in that world again, which could open doors, who knows.

Also -- I'll be put in makeup representing gnarly injuries and I'm supposed to act out scenarios. And who doesn't want to start their weekend that way?

The final reason I'm still considering doing this (even after I tried recruiting friends to join me and was met with either "are you crazy?" or blatant silence) is because I know from past experiences that you just never know what butterfly effect, chain of events reaction you set off when you just do something.

People ask me about how I get involved with different things and I want to say you just have to do things. You have to show up. You have to try new things, volunteer to work for free, show up. I've had so many people say they wanted to get involved with something too but when it comes down to setting an alarm or leaving their house, they bail. And then they wistfully talk about "living vicariously" through other people's adventures. You can find your own! They don't have to be extensive, they don't need to take you out of your city or cost anything (although I've found that eventually the need for more adventure does end up taking you out of the city and costing something if you're as addicted as I am. See: every post on this blog about international travel. Ahem.) But seriously, just try something.

It's definitely not all glamorous and you won't like everything you try but if you're open-minded you always learn something. And often make new connections. I sometimes just shake my head in disbelief in looking at chains of events in my life and it makes me want try more new things to see what new strange ways my life expands later because of them. Below is just one example:

-I heard about an all night food serving gig for the people investigating and cleaning up the Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks.
-While doing that, I met "P"
-"P" later joined the military and routinely asked me from far away places to show his military friends around DC as they moved here one by one
-(I thus took over P's friends and made them mine *Evil laugh*)
-One of those friends, "T," was in my friend group when I met a new friend "M" and brought her into the group
-T and M are now married
-They have Baby H

Thus -- Baby H would not exist had I not given up a night of sleep to serve food in the parking lot of the Pentagon in 2001.

See what I mean? Mind. Blown.

Ok, yes you could argue that if things are meant to be, they'll happen anyway. But I can't tell you how many ridiculously convoluted lines runs through my life that start with random first-steps and I feel like life just gets richer the more it expands.

PHEW! I did not realize I would go off on such a tangent but short story long -I think I'm doing this weird paint-your- face- act- like- you- have- an -injury -hang -with -strangers thing on an early weekend morning. Because who knows, maybe the course of my life will change because I showed up.

...Or maybe I'll just get free lunch and the knowledge that I started my Saturday 87% more strangely than normal. And that works too.

http://takomapark.patch.com/articles/washington-adventists-hospital-fills-with-fake-disaster-victims#photo-8185926

Event Planning Adventures Continued

So we left off with my arrival at the hotel at our venue. I'm pretty sure the suite I had was bigger than my actual apartment, and I took no time before wrapping myself in the plush robe and enjoying the amenities. I also took advantage of the fact that you could choose from an assortment of cartoon characters for your wake up call. Having Shrek belch in my ear first thing starts the day off with just the touch of class I enjoy.

Anyway, the first day of the event actually went fairly smoothly outside of the usual bumps - starting late, explaining the cues, dealing with an angry Swedish man who refused to stay put because he was convinced someone would steal his computer that was already on stage....you know, the usual stuff.

The next morning started our first full day and held much more excitement. Beginning with the fact that despite me leaving the "do not disturb" sign on my door, the maid still came in. Awesome. I now need to leave a tip just to buy her silence since she inevitably saw the cat things lying around my room (although I doubt she ever actually saw the cat, seeing as Chloe spent her time there in terror, slunking between hiding behind the curtain and hiding behind the bathroom door. My little disfunctional baby. Sigh.)

I get to the event venue and work around until it's time to be backstage. We have an eclectic group of speakers each year so it's always interesting overhearing the conversations that take place in the green room. Like when I heard a former governor tell a southern tycoon that they need to get "43" down to his place sometime soon. "43" being -- George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States. Ah, you gotta love politics.

Sometime that morning, I was told that one of our speakers -- who has recently had a slight falling out with our organization - had not been heard from and we weren't even sure he'd still be coming.

He was due on stage that afternoon.

Awesome.

Thankfully, he does arrive but we feel like we need to handle him with kid gloves and we've also heard that he's a bit of a diva anyway. He's a billionaire, I suppose they often get that way.

I deploy one of my volunteers to bring him down the hall, and do you remember when I posted about my first Advance job HERE and the guy I'm working under tells me he had to tell someone to go sit in a corner because they started to freak out on game day?

I nearly had to tell my volunteer to go sit in a corner.

He's already flustered being the "handler" for Needy Billionaire and apparently Needy asks for food. So my volunteer comes out frantically and I calmly tell him that we have sandwiches just for this type of situation.

But Needy doesn't want a sandwich. He wants hot food.

So my volunteer goes racing to another part of our venue to find a plate of hot food. And he comes racing back to where I'm standing outside the green room and -

he drops the entire plate. Shattering on the ground. Right outside the door of the green room.

And he loses it.

This is an attractive, intelligent, successful young man and he flails his arms and curses and sputters at me "this has to be cleaned up! Now!"

You don't say?....

So now I'm trying to calm him down, hoping Needy Billionaire doesn't charge through the door and step on broken dinnerware, calling on my headset for a clean up crew and someone to fetch more hot food, and up walks another VIP speaker-

a former White House official who has to step over the mess to get into the green room.

So far, this is going so well....

And did I mention the headset? Yes. Throughout the entire event, I felt exactly like Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner scene where she's walking around with a smile and all chaos is breaking loose backstage so she's barking out orders through her teeth on her headset like so:

http://www.gathertogetherevents.com/blog/2012/12/10/a-day-in-the-life.html

I have to admit, it was fun. Not quite as fun as the Secret Service type ear pieces we used during Presidential events back in the day:

I'm smirking because that is NOT my vest...but I was wearing a cool earpiece, trust me....

but fun nonetheless.

So this day also included:

- technical difficulties on stage
- a speaker whose staff had told us needed a bowl of only red M&Ms (turns out they were joking, but we didn't realize that at first...)
-me and my client fearing that she'd slip and call an important General "J Meister" to his face, or some other funny name we had been jokingly using for him in an effort to dispel nervous energy
and
-me nearly forcing an aide to march into the men's room and retrieve a Senator who had been in there forever and was supposed to go on stage.

At least I didn't have it as bad as the AV guys, who could hear everything once someone had their lapel mic on. At one point they apparently all looked at each other, one saying "what's that noise?" while the other somberly answering "The Congressman has gone to the bathroom..."

Another day in the life of event managers.

And we had one more day to go....

More Adventures in Event Planning

So yes, once again I got roped into planning a large event for my client. As I've said before, I do a lot of different things at my job and because I used to do Advance for President Bush (seen HERE), I always end up being asked to plan events every now and then as well. I always end up with funny stories and sadly I can't tell them all or I'd never work again, but I'll leave the details vague and tell you a little bit.

We'll begin the day before the event started, when I did my final meeting with our vendor and the staff at the venue we're using. I arrive 10 minutes early, very pleased with myself, and I start to park in the garage and discover -- every single spot is taken. At least until the very top, many floors later, where I finally park and make my way back down to the venue -

which is busting at the seams with a cheerleader competition.

I'm going to need so much coffee, stat.

I had forgotten that the reason we couldn't start our event sooner was because this cheerleader group had taken over the place until midnight the night before our event. I push through the girls (who are doing splits in the hallways, doing headstands, wearing ribbons and stage makeup, being trailed by their stage mothers with southern accents....) and I go to two different coffee machines -- both not working.

I'm going to start crying.

I realize I'm now late for my meeting, so I turn down the hallway towards the room I'm supposed to be in, and there's a guy guarding that hallway, asking to see my "bracelet" - I assume it's a cheerleader event thing. So now I'm late, coffee-less, and I can't get to my meeting.

I then realize I don't have a number to call my vendor, she tries to call me but it doesn't work, I finally call one of her staff who try to find her, and someone from the venue finally calls me.

This is all while I'm still attempting to get coffee, so I wander into an atrium where I see a cheerleader literally climbing up a pole in the hallway, and I ask where I can get coffee. I'm pointed inside an area where there is a buffet. I look at the tiny cup for coffee and see it costs three dollars and I'm filled with indignation. I'll just wait here while the venue staff comes to get me and they'll get me coffee for free, surely. I'm a client afterall.

So I'm waiting to be rescued, I get my coffee, start adding cream and -- I overfill my cup. It's right at the edge so I bend down to slurp it (I've lost all sense of pride at this point) and of course the whole thing spills everywhere. Meanwhile, I get another call and the venue staffer can't find me. So I have my phone between my ear and shoulder, my purse and papers are half-falling out of my arms, I'm bent over trying to mop up cream and still slurp down my coffee --

And so sets the stage for the week.

The venue staffer finally sees me and I'm hovering inside the buffet area inexplicably because I want to get her to tell  me to just walk out with my coffee and not pay. She doesn't get it. So I finally leave the barrier, at this point stealing the coffee, and I look at her as if it just crossed my mind and say "woops! I guess I need to pay for this!" she still doesn't get it. Finally I say "unless you think it's ok...." and she finally gets it and says "just take it, it's fine." Sheesh. And we wander down more hallways (this venue is HUGE. and did I mention it's FILLED WITH CHEERLEADERS?) and I walk into a room with, oh, about 25 people around a table, all just looking up and now staring at me. And I kid you not, my vendor introduces me -

and they end the meeting.

I. am going. to scream.

Most of the group leaves the room (as we hear cheerleader chants in the hallway as if they are getting ready to sacrifice one of us) and my vendor's like "I just wanted them to see your face so they know we are all one team." I'm thinking, 'sure, that's worth me driving all the way here and going through that traumatic coffee/cheerleader situation, and then driving all the way back home.....'

This is starting off so well....

We do end up going over a few more things (thankfully) and I go back home and pack my stuff because me and my core staff are going to stay at the hotel at the venue throughout the event to make it easier since we will be needing to do stuff there at all hours anyway.

The problem is, I have this:

That's Chloe. Well, when she was a baby, but this conveys her personality -- a little psycho. I love her, but she's super tempermental and when I'm not home enough for her taste -

she pees on my things.

Sigh. So I decide to smuggle her into the hotel with me and keep her there during my event.

Smart, right?

So we get back to the hotel that evening and I pull up in front and the bellhops surround my car.

Crap. Can't let them see the pink duffle bag with airholes containing a feline in the backseat.

I quickly jump out and am like "oh, let's get the trunk first!" thinking I'll rearrange the inside of my car so they can quickly grab the boxes of event supplies in the front and not have to look in the backseat.

And did I mention it freezing and insanely windy? So when I jump out, everything goes flying. My hair, my clothes, bags, etc. And the bellhops are frantically trying to hurry so they can get everything on the cart and back inside. So we are running around each other, trying to grab things, unable to see at times -- it's ridiculous.

At one point one of them just ask if they need to grab the stuff in the back and I quickly brush it off and hope they don't realize it's an illegal cat. I finally feel like we're all set so I jump back in my car -- and one of the bellhops starts calling out to me.

The wind has somehow shoved part of his coat into my trunk, which is now closed.

Why. Why do the weirdest things happen to me at the times when I'm already stressed.

He is also dumbfounded and actually says, with disbelief "that's a first...." So I set him free and finally drive off, contraband cat in tow, to the garage and this time the cheerleaders are gone and I park on the bottom floor and head in. (that will be an important data point later).

And so begins my week.....

Tunnel ----> Light

I'm essentially a week away from being done with this semester/year of grad school - hooray!!

But that means that this week, I'm still crazy and don't have time to post much. I will, however, give a run down of yesterday for your enjoyment.

Yesterday:
Halfway through the work day, a coworker hands me a letter, asks if I think it looks "sparkly," then informs me it did NOT go through the usual inspection it should have and that he found it rather suspicious.

After he hands it to me.

Sooo - 2:00pm: receive possible anthrax exposure.

4:35 pm: Head to class - late, as usual.

4:40pm: First set of escalators to the metro train: broken

4:50pm: have to switch trains and find that the second set of escalators I have to take are: also broken

5:00pm: get off metro, realize I didn't bring anything to eat, so I stop at a street vendor and buy animal crackers and Ritz with peanut butter. For dinner.

5:20pm: I'm sitting in class and bite into the animal crackers, realizing: they are terrible. Possibly poisonous. Should go nicely inside my body with the possible anthrax from earlier. I have to throw them away, thus I'm down to "dinner" being -- Ritz with peanut butter.

7:45pm: finally able to leave class and need to somehow sprint in the cold half a mile away to meet up with friends.

7:46pm: my classmate graciously offers a ride with her boyfriend who is picking her up and will be driving close to where my friends are.

7:47pm: classmate informs me the ride is a van with no seats.

7:48pm: I'm riding through D.C. perched in my work clothes on top of a stereo speaker in the back of a van.

7:50pm: I meet up with my friends and instantly report that I just hitched a ride there,  on top of a stereo speaker in the back of a van. I'm very pleased with myself. My friends are vaguely confused but not surprised.

10:00pm: Friends and I head home and on the walk back to the metro, have a rousing conversation about how pedestrians in D.C. need to watch for cars even if said pedestrians have the right of way.

10:10pm: My friend Laura finishes ranting about how if a car hits her while she has the right of way, it serves them right and they can pay for her funeral. She then starts to cross the street, stops last minute and says "ugh, I don't have enough time on the walk sign to make it afterall."

10:11pm: BAM!

Two cars ram each other full speed in the intersection we are looking at.

I know, right??

Now, by this point, I'm getting fairly used to being first on the scene of accidents as I mentioned here. So I jog over to the car full of people frantically trying to get out because the car is smoking (and, as shown here, I tend to run toward danger, rather than away...cuz I'm smart like that....) and I'm simultaneously pulling out my phone to call 911 while mechanically cooing at the two girls now sitting down on the asphalt, freaking out. "mm hmm, you're ok honey....um...you're going to be fine, yada yada...." (Kidding, it was more heartfelt than that but this whole scene is starting to feel very routine...)

Thankfully, no one was really hurt, just shaken up. And since me and my friends didn't really see how the accident happened, we leave and continue on, now a bit jumpy ourselves.

So Laura heads one way, and my other friend Sean and I head to the metro. And the train stops and we start to get on -- and only half the door will open to let us in.

What is up with tonight?

I finally get to my stop where I get in my car to drive the rest of the way home, and as I'm heading over a bridge, I see a car swerve around something in their lane and I realize it's a big orange construction barrel. No sign of construction. Just one big random barrel on its side. Why not.

I reach into my purse to report it - and realize my phone is still in my coat pocket from the last incident...

Sheesh....

I finally get home and get ready for bed, trying to think positively about having a short work week and the semester being nearly over.

I just hope the light I see at the end of the tunnel isn't just another car turning into oncoming traffic.....

Katrina Part 3.

And so we continue the story of the first and only time I've been in the back of a police cruiser.

As I said, life was frenzied (so frenzied that one day, while I was living on a tour bus with my male coworkers, I open the door into the tiny bathroom on that bus -- right into my boss using it. That is the definition of Awkward, just so you know). And I barely left the area where we were living and working. Until one night I was invited to dinner with a group of people that included a Cabinet Secretary. So I figured it was ok to actually leave, after ensuring all my duties were taken care of. And I don't even get into the restaurant before I get a call on my cell phone that something needs to be taken care of right then back at the emergency ops center. So I frantically look at my friend who had invited me to the dinner and he jumps into action to figure out how to send me back.

So he commandeers a police car.

I had to admit, I was pretty impressed. Some of us had official flip-top badges so he might've flashed that, who knows. All I know is the next thing that happened was he and the group went with the Cabinet Member, and a nice helpful policeman let me into the back of his car and he whisked me back to my home base.

The only other time I tried to leave for actual downtime, I was nearly accosted by a local yelling at me that I was with the government and had the gaul to just be out having dinner. I'm pretty sure my exhausted, over-worked self started tearing up at which point my coworker sat down with the man and explained how hard we'd been working for many days and that we were simply trying to decompress for a second. They ended up being buds and I gratefully got to actually finish that meal.

And I mentioned other random "politicos" running around. It became this funny game of connection, where I'd be getting emails from DC on my blackberry to go find so and so on a corner outside the JFO who I'd never met but was another politico and needed help navigating the area or something. Even after I left and returned to DC, I'd get calls on my cell from others who had just gone down for another shift, and I'd be standing in the middle of DC trying to explain to someone what road to turn on in Baton Rouge. Insanity.

But before we go into my return to D.C., there's one other person I met while down there that is pretty funny.

Jesse Jackson.

For whatever reason, he felt the need to insert himself into the operations down there, which at the time I found really annoying. And I remember walking past his aide one day in the EOC and his aide asking me if I wanted to meet Mr. Jackson.

I said no.

Which was probably considered rude but I didn't care at the time. However, later, he ended up near me again and my coworkers and I decided to go ahead and snap a photo. It's blurry and I'm smirking -- pretty representative of how I felt right then so very appropriate:

I went on to interact with other folks and continued to work until my direct bosses were sent back to D.C. with short notice again. I wanted so badly to stay and even had one of the military liaisons offer me a place to sleep on a naval ship he was living on right off the coast, but in the end, I knew I needed to go with my bosses.

Then they almost left me.

Sigh. The exit happened so fast that they couldn't find a flight out of Baton Rouge and instead decided to drive to Houston and fly out the next morning (or maybe my boss did it on purpose because of the bathroom incident....). I literally jumped into one of the suburbans as they were heading out.

And that's how my Katrina experience ended. As abruptly as it started, full of emotion.

God Speed, Sandy responders.

Katrina Part 2.

So thank the Lord, Sandy didn't devastate the DC area like we feared, although it obviously did terrible damage in other areas so our thoughts and prayers are with those digging out now that the worst of the storm is over. Since I still have power (and I should be working on someone's annual work assessment but don't want to) let's continue with my Katrina story.

We had just landed and were about to find out where we'd be living. Turns out, we managed to get music tour busses -

off the Ozzfest tour!!

Shut. Up.

Because any hotel rooms rightfully went to the victims, those working the response had to get creative with their own housing and someone, somehow, got several busses, some of which did in fact come from that tour. I was simultaneously feeling awesome and scared of STDs all at the same time.

And here's where one of my favorite "Internal Homing Device" moments occur. Since I frequently run into people randomly connected to my life, it shouldn't surprise me too much when it happens. But this one was extra random. The bus I ended up living on was driven by a man who I started talking to one day.

I was in charge of a lot of the logistics for federal staff so one of the many things I did down there was organize sleeping arrangements for folks, including coordinating when our "homes" -- aka these giant busses -- could go get gas, where they should park, etc. I also put multiple rental cars on my credit card in the heat of the moment just to get staff moving before I later found out the government has a fleet of cars at much easier disposal. You can't say I'm not mission-oriented and resourceful. But you can say people need to tell me these things beforehand!! Ahem. Not that I still have resentment or anything....

So I'm talking to this driver about logistics and of course I have to mention that this is not my first rodeo when it comes to living on a tour bus. I told him my friends are musicians and I ran off with them briefly once and slept on the top bunk and sold merch at their shows.

And he knows! them!

He blurts out the name of the band and I'm like "YES! How do you know them?!" Because this band is from a tiny town in Tennessee and they play bluegrass -- not exactly the same as saying "yeah, NSYNC - you've heard of them too?!"

And he pulls out his cell phone and shows me that in his contacts is the driver of my friends' tour bus -- the driver who I used to go to church with. The driver who is the uncle of one of my ex boyfriends.

Small. Freaking. World. I tell ya.

Anyway, moving on to other funny connections. During Katrina I was still working in a political position and when you're doing anything that involves politicals, you end up running into people you know, even though you are now in a totally different part of the country than usual. And the same goes for the disaster response community. A year or so before Katrina, I helped in response efforts for a series of hurricanes that hit Florida. So I met people "in the field" during that who I would see again running around the joint field office (JFO) in Louisiana a year or so later.

But the politicals were funny. Because people were getting sent left and right down there to do jobs they normally don't do from all different types of federal agencies. And some were self-deploying without orders so they'd just show up and be like "what do you need me to do?" while they bedded down at night on the floor in the JFO. And they'd ask me what to do. These guys were Assistant Secretaries of the Departments of Important Things and they were asking Me, a girl who felt barely out of college still.

Upside down world.

But it was cool to see these powerful people ready to do whatever was needed and to see everyone's compassion and intensity. I distinctly remember the day I landed and walked into the "Red October" (the name for one of FEMA's  "mobile operational command vehicles" that I spent a lot of time in. It's basically a semi-truck that turns into a command center with computers and stuff - very cool.) to find one of my friends whose normal job was to communicate things to congressional staffers but he had been in Louisiana since the storm hit - and he was clearly running on pure adrenaline. He raced through telling me how he couldn't sleep at night because he would think about the people who might have water up to their chests, and how if he goes to sleep, will they have water up to their necks? And he wasn't a first responder so his work didn't directly affect anyone being flooded but he felt that responsibility nonetheless. And that set the tone for what I continued to see around me.

People were high on adrenaline, urgently searching for anything to do to help, fear and sadness behind their eyes. I remember thinking about the national guard units who got back from Iraq only to turn around and have to defend their own community from the mahem that was ensuing among their neighbors. How policeman and fireman had to focus on the job at hand not knowing whether or not their own families were alive. I remember the first-hand accounts from my coworkers who went into the Superdome and how they needed professional counseling as a result of what they experienced inside. Completely unfathomable that this all could happen so quickly in a major U.S. city. So incredible.

But I promised not to get in too deep with these posts. So back to my lighter experiences.

We were in and out of mobile units, JFOs, and emergency ops centers (EOCs) that basically all looked like this:

http://research.archives.gov/description/5695304

It was a frenzied mix of first responders, civilian staff, media, military, the Mayor, the Governor, and the occasional cabinet secretary or the President himself. I started running into people I had worked with (or dated...) before. My days were so unpredictable that one minute I was getting a Hep A shot in the back of a tractor trailer, the next I was driving down streets in Baton Rouge getting Subway sandwiches for then FEMA director Mike Brown. The next minute I was giving the shoes off my feet to a coworker who was spontaneously about to take a helicoptor tour of New Orleans and she needed closed-toed shoes to confront whatever disease-ridden waters they might land in.

I barely ever left the compound we were working in, until the one evening I did --

and ended up in the back of a police car.

Stay tuned....

Me and Hurricanes: Katrina, Part 1.

We have yet another crazy weather situation heading towards D.C. right now.

You know how disaster prone I am, and how I'm even getting stalked by bad weather at my races now (tornado during my first attempt at a marathon, and then another one brewing during Tough Mudder). I originally started this year planning to do the Marine Corps Marathon tomorrow which would've been so typical given D.C. is now prepping for Hurricane Sandy to hit us. But I ended up deciding against the race so I'm now left to just prep me and Chloe and think about the thing I always think about when I hear the word Hurricane -- Katrina.

As part of the disaster trend in my work life, being a part of the response to Hurricane Katrina was the second in a string of incidents I worked on (the first being 9/11, the subsequents being H1N1 and an Oil Spill. Some people like a nice, stable work environment -- me? Dangerous levels of chaos please! Which could also describe my dating life at times...but I digress....).

There are so many, many things I could say about what I experienced and learned through that disaster but that starts to get heavy and possibly too revealing of people I worked alongside. I will, however, tell you some of the more funny parts about my own personal experiences during the response.

Before Katrina made landfall, I knew I was likely getting "deployed" down to Louisiana but that was about all I knew. In the end, I was basically given less than a day's notice, left work that afternoon to pack, and jumped on a plane the next morning.

First of all, I was told to "pack for a month" but to plan on being gone "indefinitely." I was also told we didn't know what the conditions were. So of course I go crazy, pack way too much, and foolishly pack things that required electricity...like a hair dryer....and a small portable fan.

ahem.

Yes, I endured much ridicule for that one. In my 20-something year old brain, I was thinking - Louisiana is hot. We probably won't have AC So my coworkers will love me for bringing this.

Except you know why we might not have AC? Because there might not be electricity. Which is what my fan ran on. Sigh.

So there I am with my giant suitcase at the airport and I discover our transportation for the day is -- a private plane. Various corporations were donating anything they could think of for the response efforts so the group I was heading down with just happened to be heading down on a very nice plane courtesy of a professional sports team. Which was so strange because as soon as we got off the plane in Louisiana - we were going to be sleeping on a bus. Private plane ---> sleeping on a bus. And so began the Upside-Down world I lived in during that time.

And let me reiterate that my stories here are just the interesting or humorous parts of my experience but I in no way mean to belittle the enormity of that tragedy or sound like I'm bemoaning any of the conditions. I gladly would've slept on the floor, gone without food, stayed there for months -whatever to help. I'm so glad I was able to be a part of the response in a tiny way. Now, onto my ridiculousness....

No Place For A Pony

This past Saturday, I rolled out of bed, headed out the door to meet friends for brunch, walked into my parking garage and found:

My Mustang had been stolen.

At least that’s what I thought had happened. Turns out, I was towed. Which is a story for another day (when I’m supposed to be doing homework but I procrastinate and blog instead, which is how this blog gets written most of the time) but until then, I thought I’d reshare why my brain went immediately to theft for those of you who missed the original post here.

See below. And feel free to share in the comments if you’ve ever had anything stolen – would be nice to know I’m not the only one who has this kind of “luck”….

Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Mustang Sally

You all may have read the account HERE of the time I reported my Mustang ("Sally", of course. She looked similar to this:)

stolen after forgetting I had driven it to the gym. But that wasn't the last time I'd report that car stolen.

Many of you know that I miraculously landed my first job out of college at The White House. Trust me, this was God's doing, because I actually had to ask someone who Dick Cheney was when he walked past me shortly after I got to DC. I was THAT oblivious about politics and this career path literally fell in my lap in spite of myself. Anyway, during my 2nd week on my job - where I'm trying desperately to act smart and capable - my car gets stolen from Union Station. And the joys do not end there.
I'll back up to when I parked to begin with. I was awaiting my official parking pass to use the garage at work, so I parked at Union Station and took the metro. That morning, as I parked next to BMWs and Mercedes, I looked at my steering wheel "Club" and thought, "I'm being paranoid. Who is going to pick the Ford to steal?" and I put the Club in my trunk.... When I got back that evening, my car was gone.

And the police and insurance company gave me no hope of recovering it since they believed it'd be sold to a chop shop immediately, so I got a rental car through my insurance. By then, I could use the garage at work - which is valet. So you drive down into the garage, then just exit your car with the key in it and the (mean!) garage attendant parks it for you. Easy enough! I jump out and walk across the street to my office, get through Secret Service, up the elevator, to my desk...where my phone is blinking.

And on the voicemail, is an IRATE message from the garage attendant YELLING something difficult to understand. But I hear "key in the car" and I hear "you locked the doors"....

So I scurry back over to find a LINE of White House staffer cars behind mine who can't get in the garage, and I have to face Mean -Now Livid- Garage Man, and call a locksmith.

And you know what is easier to break into than my generic rental car? ABSOLUTELY EVERY OTHER CAR IN THE WORLD. I can't even remember the model, it was something akin to a Ford Probe, and the locksmith is DUMBFOUNDED. He CAN NOT break into this bad boy and he even tells me how he's had no problems with high-end vehicles, how there are certain points in a car you can compromise, but nope! Not this one! This one has thought of EVERYTHING and you can not break in.

So he breaks the door handle to finally help me. On. My. Rental.

And at this point, I'm feeling so embarrassed/frightened that I would've smashed the window and slid in Dukes of Hazzard style if it would get Garage Man to stop glaring at me. So I pay the guy. And walk back to my office.

And since I'm still trying to put on a charade of dependability, I begin to brief my boss on the day's tasks. And she stops me. "What's wrong with you? You've broken out in hives."

I didn't even know I COULD break into hives, but apparently red splotches had creeped up my neck towards my face as I'm trying to suppress the stress of the morning.

And I burst into tears and explain the whole thing.

Thankfully, my boss was a very cool lady and everything worked out. My dad came to help me finagle the handle back on my rental before returning it and my insurance settled with me for a good amount and I bought another Mustang.

Then they found my old one.

Apparently, punk teens had just taken it for a joy ride and abandoned it in an alley in DC. I was even able to go to the impound lot and recover what belongings (which is another story for later) they hadn't taken with them. But guess what they did take?

My Club.

Oh sweet irony.....

Ways You Know My Parents Are Related To Me

I may not have said this before but my gift of constantly getting into random mishaps likely comes from my parents. I come by it honestly. And apparently it's genetic (sorry future children!).

Case in point: In the last year, my dad had a rental property both flood and catch on fire simulataneously. While my mother has been tortured for several weeks by a bird she lovingly refers to as "Bang Poop" because this bird has decided to bang it's head repeatedly on practically every window in my parent's home, early in the mornings for no apparent reason. And as if being woken up by that every day isn't annoying enough, every time the bird hits it's head -

it poops down the window.

These are the things that happen to my parents. And I got to see all of our powers combined this past weekend when I went to stay with them for Memorial Day.

My parents recently got into camping in a trailor they bought last year, so I stayed with them in Pigeon Forge in an RV campground. When I arrived, I was already sporting two bandaids on my right side from having two more moles removed unexpectedly earlier that day (thankfully at a different dermy than the one I used here, but not an incredibly pleasant experience nonetheless).

Over the course of three days, I ended up with two bandaids, a vasoline covered arm, benadryl covered insect bites down my leg, and a swolen bruise on my ankle. Meanwhile, my father got a blood blister and cuts all over his ankle as well.

Not surprising at all.

But what was really a perfect example of my family's luck was - my bed.

The camper has one bedroom and two hidden bed things in the living area. I was to sleep on the couch one but it's mattress had recently popped.

So we got another one.

That one also started leaking air making me a half-girl, half-mattress burrito by morning.

So we got another one.

That one ended up being too big for the dimensions of the bed, forcing me to sleep on the mattress propped up the wall on one side, causing it to slope downward to my side.

So we got another one.

And this one fit perfectly! I felt like Goldilocks finally eating the right porridge and I get up the next day, the day we leave the campground and go back to my parents' house an hour away, and--

the bed won't deflate.

I have no idea if my parents ended up getting another one after that, but that whole scenario is just so typical of us.  At least I know I'm not adopted.....

DP Dana (Disaster Prone Dana) Strikes Again

So I know you all are waiting to hear that I tripped and fell or got sold to a random ex boyfriend or something at my charity date auction, but unfortunately (?) it was pretty uneventful and ended up being friends buying friends rather than people purchasing strangers. My friends ended up buying me for $210 --the highest bid of the night, I might add *brushing off shoulder smugly* (they joked they were buying me to clean their apartments though ... ugh, You're Welcome, Cancer Research!)

The climbing in a prom dress was also fairly uneventful, although one girl did take a fall and the EMTs were brought in. That part was scary but it turned funny when the EMTs were walking out right as my friend Cheryl jumped off a wall we were bouldering on and ended up kind of crumpling, laughing to the mat on her less than graceful descent. One of the EMTs wryly called back "maybe we should stick around....?"  which entertained us. I'm sure they were thinking "these stupid kids....."

Here are some shots from the evening:

That girl has on stilletos....Rock. On.

This just made me laugh

I'm so graceful.....




Our group. You know, just hanging out....

But while neither of those events were particularly disastrous, never fear, Internet, I do not come to you empty-handed!

I've mentioned that I'm disaster prone in that I:
A. have personal random acts happen to me that may or may not be life threatening.
B. I've ended up personally involved with several national disasters (9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Swine Flu, Oil Spill Disaster....)

But there's a third category in that:
C. I tend to randomly stumble upon other people's situations as well.

In college, I drove down a street right in time to witness a car flip over a guard rail on an overpass and come tumbling down to my street, throwing the driver out in the process. I've come across people with car trouble in parking lots, along interstates, helped push a lady's car stuck in snow on an on-ramp (ha! tried to help push it. Thank goodness someone else finally stopped to help too. Someone with actual muscle mass...). I've stumbled upon a lady slumped over her steering wheel in a D.C. roundabout during rush hour, I found a car flipped on its top in the ghetto on my way home, and I was the lone person recruited by a policeman to talk to a girl who had been molested next door to a house party I had just left, to make sure I hadn't seen anyone matching the description of her attacker.

I've also been the one to discover property damage inside the official state guest house for the President...and had to tell the diplomatic security agent I was on a date with at the time about the damage. ...which he had to report...even though we weren't actually supposed to be running around in there at the time...woops! 

So it really shouldn't be that surprising I suppose that during my relaxing jog this past Sunday I ended up being the first one to arrive on the scene when a severally intoxicated man nearly drove himself into the river alongside my running trail.

The scene:
I'm running past an industrial park and hear a loud noise and see smoke. Thinking something exploded, I keep running towards it (because, again, I'm the Smarty Pants who chooses adventure over self-preservation every dang time) and I see a car (SUV really) has lodged itself atop a rock pile, hit a pole, and the driver is looking at me through his window saying "help" and pawing at the window.

That will change your running pace pretty quickly!

So I run faster, open his door and ask if he's alright, and realize he is waaaaasted. (not that I wasn't already clued in to that from the fact that he just inexplicably drove across a trail and up on rocks in broad daylight.) His air bag had deployed and he was moaning and yelling incoherently and I don't have a cell phone so I'm looking around for other runners who might and simultaneously talking to the guy like "you are alright, buddy, and no, I really don't think you should try to get out SINCE YOU CAN'T STAND ANYWAY but on top on that, you might be injured and stuff..."

A few other runners stop and a couple of them call 911 while everyone just kind of stands around while I'm still trying to talk sense into Drunky. At some point we realize there's gas leaking from the car and I flash back to my last vacation in Athens, Greece where my friends and I ended up in riots here and my friend Gina and I foolishly continued to take photos around cars on fire that also appeared to be leaking fluid....Seriously, HOW DO I STAY ALIVE?? Anyway, the man is insisting on getting out and since the car may blow up anyway, I figure - what the heck. Then I have to inform him that -Ooops, it appears your door is stuck on the LARGE ROCKS YOU JUST ASCENDED... (while the other runners - ALL MALE - continue to stand around. Thanks gentlemen! Don't worry about the girl trying to help this guy, no big deal!) and finally a policeman shows up and lets most of us go since we didn't actually see the acident happen, we just saw the immediate aftermath.

I wish I had a photo of how random this was. The man's SUV climbed rocks and squarely hit a pole and that is the only thing that kept him from driving right into the river.

And all that went down at the precise moment I was trotting by.

Seriously, maybe I need to just start staying indoors....