Inside the Kremlin

So this is going to have to be quick tonight because it's almost 1a and I'm really tired and there's lots to tell about today but basically I spent the day inside the Kremlin with the Russians. There are plenty of stories to tell but basically the good news is that I didn't get arrested and end up in a gulag. Is that a good tease or what? Actually nothing nearly that dramatic happened but I just thought I would get your attention. So hold your horses and I'll tell stories tomorrow while the world stops for the Michael Jackson funeral. Praise God my network's international channel is also covering it! That means I'll have a few hours free tomorrow!! Great blogging times indeed!! In the meantime, have a good night!!

Back to the USSR

Except that I've never been here!! I'm in Moscow! I'm spending the next week on the road with POTUS and I promise to blog on a regular basis. See, there will actually be something to say this week! :)

Last night, I had to be extraordinarily un-American and skip the celebrations for our country's birthday and fly to Russia. I did see some fireworks from small Maryland towns when I was driving to Andrews Air Force Base so I felt patriotic for a brief second. Last year, I missed them as well when we were leaving for Japan. But I guess being on a military base and getting ready to travel with POTUS can count for being patriotic. And besides, earlier in the afternoon, I spent several hours doing American things like eating hamburgers and hotdogs and cherry pie and ice cream with great friends!

So I got cozy into row 25 on the plane and took some drugs and slept for most of the way. When we landed, we actually had to go through customs (which is unusual for us!) and I had no problems!! And actually everything looked a little like Iowa to me. But now we're downtown and our hotel is awesome. My view rocks! And we actually stay in the same hotel for three nights. Of course I'm not sure if I'll be able to sleep. I might have to take drugs again. We ate breakfast on the plane and one hour later when we got to the hotel, we ate dinner. Of course before we even entered the door, we were offered shots of vodka. Shocking I know. I turned them down because a) I don't drink vodka and b) I had to work as soon as we got here.

Anyway, I'm about to take a walk to Red Square in the rain. I'll take pictures but hopefully it will be sunny tomorrow and the colors will actually show up!!

Home! Sweet! Home!!

So I don't have much time because I have a bazillion things to do (yes that is the right number!) but just wanted to let you know that I am officially a homeowner as of this afternoon! I closed on my townhouse today and PRAISE THE LORD, everything was as smooth as butter. Or is it silk? In any case, I just signed my named several hundred times and it was a done deal. I was really expecting it to be much worse but the attorney was down to business and explained each paper that I signed fairly quickly. I am so grateful that it was so easy. Of course signing my name should be the easiest part of the deal. While I'm at it, I've decided a shout-out to my parents is in order. They gave me the best name. It's so pretty to write. As you might assume, I sign my formal name instead of my nickname and every time I signed, my first thought was did I spell it correctly or did I add an any extra c's. (Sometimes I just get carried away!) Then I just thought it was the prettiest looking name on paper, no matter how many times and slightly different ways it looked. Same goes for my initials. I just love initialing things! I think more of the shout-out should be directed towards my mom because I'm pretty sure I inherited my penmanship from her and not my dad! :)

Anywho, so I'm a homeowner! Yippee! I can't wait to move. It won't actually happen fully until August as I have a few things I need to do beforehand. Like pack. I've lived in the same place for 8 years and I'm AMAZED at how much I've collected. I have to say that most of it is NOT junk but I'm going to have to part with some of it nonetheless. I feel like the purging process is healthy. Currently, I'm shredding eight years of documents, receipts, etc. I've gone through three paper shredders and have become soooo thankful that currently, I'm practically living paper-less-ly!

I'll post pictures once I take them. Hopefully soon. I'm leaving on July 4th to go on a trip with POTUS and I have a series of goals to accomplish before then. That is one of them!

Becky's Excellent Adventure

Last week, I spent the week at the beach and had sooooo much fun! It was my first week away from work since last November and I really needed to get away! Now it's so hard to be back to work that I needed a couple of days to get back into the swing of things before I could blog. So here goes....

Like I said in a previous blog, on paper my vacation didn't really look like a vacation. I went with my sister Laura, my 5 year-old niece Cayton, and my 2 month-old niece Raygan. Also Cayton's best friend, Ryley, and her mom Melissa were with us. Oh, and Ryley's 18-year old brother Adam and his girlfriend. All in our beach condo. Actually let me back up and say that as Cayton pointed out to me, I invited myself. But I had some time off to kill at work and thought, what would be a better thing than to spend time with my family!! Plus, my parents live about two minutes away from the condo so that was my back-up plan.

Turns out, I never even considered going with the back-up plan! Mom and Dad came over every day so I got to see them a lot too. And the arrangements at the condo were nothing but fun! I opted for sleeping in the same room with Raygan because I knew she wouldn't kick me all through the night, unlike Cayton! The down-side to that plan is that she does require a feeding in the middle of the night. But we got into a routine and she's such a good baby that it was never a problem. Plus I think a week of full night's sleep for my sister more than qualifies as a great present from me!

Let's just say that I never felt relaxed and there was always a flurry of activity but I came home from the vacation feeling recharged and it was just good to get away from work and my crackberry and everything for a while.

Here are some of my favorite moments (in no particular order!):

* Swimming in the pool with Cayton and Ryley. They are a hoot!! Cayton is pretty much one of the cutest kids on the planet and Ryley is right up there with her. The two of them together just makes for the perfect pair of cute kids. And they have some super imaginations. I think I was either a princess or a mermaid approximately 95% of the trip. Cayton and Ryley are learning to swim (Cayton is a little bit more advanced than Ryley) but it was sooo much fun to just play with them!

*Going to Build-a-Bear and Sparkles with the girls. I just love to watch other people stimulate the economy. And that is exactly what Laura and Melissa did! The girls came away from Build-A-Bear with the most spoiled stuffed puppies on the planet. Of course the dogs needed roller skates!! And Ryley picked a dog that "walks" on all fours so that meant buying twice as much! Then at Sparkles, it's basically a make-over place for kids. I was a little scared that the Gothic-looking girl was going to turn my precious niece into a little goth kid with black lipstick but luckily she has "Pretty Princess" in her repertoire too. Cayton and Ryley were such adorable Princesses and their modeling just cracked me up!!

*Cayton losing her first tooth. You may have heard her screams from wherever you were but it caught all of us off-guard, especially her. But after a while of bawling, she recovered enough to go play putt-putt and then the Tooth Fairy came to visit and left her $5. I'm pretty sure I got a quarter when I lost my tooth. Who knew that inflation has risen that dramatically in the tooth world!

*Spoiling that beautiful baby niece of mine by just holding her while she would sleep. She is so incredibly precious and I think we bonded. I think she knows her Aunt Beck Beck loves her so much. I held her so much that I think now she'll only sleep if someone is holding her. Sorry Laura. Anyway, I love it when she coos and giggles. I could get her to smile if I asked if she was a pretty baby. If you don't believe me that she is an absolutely beautiful baby, see for yourself.

*Watching plenty of Noggin and Disney. It's just such a great thing when I take a step away and don't follow world events so closely. I love it when I have no idea what's going on. (Of course I pay for it the night before I go back to work when I have to read thousands of e-mails!) But just being unplugged and having the decision between Disney or Noggin as the biggest issue of the day is such a great thing.

* Laughing my head off with my sister and Melissa. La-La and Melissa just made me laugh. Usually it was at one of the kids but there were such funny, funny times. Melissa knows every word of every single song from the entire 1980s. Literally every word. We went to a dueling piano bar and she was only stumped twice the whole time we were there. Very impressive!! Even more impressive is that these two moms stayed out until 11:30p when their usual bedtime is somewhere in the ballpark of 8:30p. They were SUCH wild women!! It says a lot when normally I am the wildest person in the bunch!!

*Sense of accomplishment in packing up. It's amazing how much stuff three adults and three kids (including a baby) can take for a week. It's kind of like playing the video game Tetris in real life. We had a soft carrier on top of the van that two men loaded in Roanoke. But for the trip home, my goal all week was to pick up a guy who would be willing to help us on Saturday when we left. Somehow, hanging out with a baby and two five year olds does not attract men. Especially when it's senior week and 95% of the male population is 18 years old and hungover from their illegal celebrations! So Melissa and I had to do the whole thing of loading things onto the top of the van by ourselves. Plus it was more than 100 degrees. After many sighs and grunts and with sweat pouring off of us, WE DID IT! Wooo!!!!!!

Once I got home, it took me a few days to not wake up in the morning and not expect to hear "Aunt Beck Beck" from someone. I had such a wonderful time with my family and friends! (Although we missed you K and I'll go to the beach with you and Mark and baby S. one day too!!) I can't wait until next year! Yes, I am signing up for more of the same fun! Now it's back to work and back to normal. Somehow life is just not as fun this week!!

Metro Accident

Yesterday was my first day back to work after a wonderfully fun vacation! I'll post about my trip in the next day or two but yesterday my goal was just to get acclimated back to having to work. While out last week, I watched literally no news and very little television that wasn't Noggin' or Disney. Apparently a lot when on in the world because I had approximately 1700 e-mails to read through when I got back to work. I was really hoping that my assignment yesterday wasn't going to catch me completely off guard as I was still catching up.

My normal assignment yesterday was to produce the news package for the evening news shows which is my least favorite task at work. But it was my turn. And the piece was fine. It was about POTUS signing legislation banning tobacco advertising for kids but also about his own personal struggle with his addiction to cigarettes. (As an aside, the one time I was six inches away from him, I smelled no cigarette smoke on his breath but I seriously think he sneaks a cigarette on a fairly regular basis.) Anyway, the story was short, sweet, to the point, and a little bit of a crash but it turned out okay.

Then about 30 minutes before I was going to leave work, someone came running through our bureau saying "if you're not doing anything, you need to run up to the newsroom." Technically, I was done with my assignment and after some prodding by others, I went upstairs. Big mistake. The bureau chief was on several phones at the same time and saying "Every producer HAS to go to the scene of the Metro crash. It's a huge story!" Actually, there might have been some screaming and more choice words. I turned on the local news and realized that it was a big story and one with possible huge devastation. I actually had no idea where the crash site was and I really, really wanted to go home so I decided to look busy at my desk. About ten minutes later, I was assigned to go to Howard University Hospital to wait for victims. And while I had a horrible attitude towards having to go, I grabbed my intern and we headed up there. This situation was completely out of my comfort zone. I'm used to dealing with POTUS, not breaking news situations but I quickly figured the lay of the land (once I finally found Howard University Hospital). We were there for a few hours and saw the ambulances pulling in with victims. I wasn't close to the accident scene so I didn't experience the epitome of the breaking news environment but luckily I got an interview with the doctor who treated some of the victims and so it looked like I had done a lot of work! :) I was truly just glad that the accident didn't kill more people (although my heart goes out to the 9 people who did die) and things seemed fairly calm by the time I left the hospital last night. Thanks for those who called to check on me but I rarely ride the Metro and never on that route! I am praying for those who were injured and lost loved ones yesterday. It was quite a tragedy.

Long Lost Blogger

Wow! I had no idea it's been a month since I've posted anything. Truth be told, pretty much nothing exciting at work has been going on. I spent most of the past four weeks in our bureau which trust me, is not that exciting. But this week I've been back at the White House and saw POTUS two times for the first time in a month. He didn't appear to be happy to see me. In fact, I'm pretty sure he never even noticed me because I never even made eye contact with him. Oh well. I'll get to the point of the low-wave or weird head-nod at some point in the next four years.

So let me catch you up on the goings-on in my life in the past month.

The biggest news and the reason that I've been so occupied in the past few weeks is that I have bought a townhouse! The search, while not that long, was quite intense and I found a place a few weeks ago. I put in a bid and started the negotiation process with the seller. I recognized from the beginning that I am not a good negotiator by nature so I had to work extra hard at doing a good job which included getting advice from several people. In the end, I got most of what I wanted out of the deal and look forward to close on the deal at the end of this month! That's like two weeks away!! Whoa!!! I'm really just glad that the negotiating part is over!! The good news is that I can take my time to move because I'm still paying rent until August. So the purging, packing, and moving process has begun. I've lived in the same house for the past eight years so I'm really looking forward to being able to pare down my belongings. I'm not a pack-rat, so to speak, but I have accumulated quite a bit and I'm already feeling better about throwing things out and donating things! I'll post a picture of the new place very soon!!

Other than that, I did take a 36 hour trip with POTUS to Arizona and New Mexico a couple of weeks ago. The highlight of the trip was the two hour overnight nap in a nice hotel in Albuquerque and meeting Alice Cooper at Arizona State University. Most of you won't be surprised to know that I have never claimed to be an Alice fan (in fact you could probably offer to pay me a million dollars to name one of his songs and I couldn't do it!) but he was an exceptionally nice man and he came to the filing center (where we work) and just hung out with us for a while. I don't remember much more of that trip because a) it wasn't that exciting and b) I was so sleep deprived that I couldn't actually remember most of the trip.

I didn't go on the last international trip with POTUS to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, France and Germany. It was supposed to be my trip but since I'd been to Saudi and Egypt before, I switched with my coworker who had been to the stops on the next trip. It was a great decision because they didn't sleep for three days on that trip and I was able to sleep in my own bed and get a lot of stuff done with the house-buying process. Instead, I'll be headed to Russia, Italy, and Ghana in early July. Yes, you read those countries correctly. It's like POTUS just spun the globe three times and wherever his finger landed, that's where we're going. At least we'll spend approximately two days in each country.

See, what did I tell you? There's literally been nothing exciting going on! Next week I'll be on vacation and I'm sooo excited to just get away. However, on paper, it seems to be not the calm, relaxing time away that most people look forward to. I'm going to the beach with my sister and my 5 year old and 2 month old nieces, my sister's friend and her 5-year old girl and her 17 year old boy and his girlfriend. But I am looking forward to it more than anything!! It will be so much fun! I'm so looking forward to hanging out with my family and the sun and ocean is an added plus! Plus, my parents live two minutes away from the beach condo and they have a guest room in case things get too crazy! :)

Prom Night and a Big Weekend!

This past weekend was one of the biggest nights in Washington. Bigger than the Inauguration. Bigger than the State of the Union. It was the White House Correspondents' Dinner. A chance for all the "important" people in DC and LA and NY to come to a dinner with POTUS. There's really no better way to describe it than to say it's DC's prom. Anybody who is anybody is there (plus me) and all decked out to the nines. This year was even bigger because I'm not sure if you've noticed but the folks in Hollywood *LOVE* our POTUS. The stars were out in full force and I probably would have rather been home with my sister and brother in law. My main reason in going is that I didn't go last year because I was out of town and I wanted to make sure I stayed on the invite list for career-related reasons. Please don't get me wrong and take my lack of enthusiasm in any snobby way but I have been going to these dinners for years and they just don't excite me. Once I'm actually in the room, it's a great time and lots of fun but the anticipation is just not there for me. I don't go to a personal shopper to find a dress. I do my own hair and makeup (which isn't any different than any other day) and I avoid shoes of death so that I know I will be able to feel my feet in by the end of the night.

This year, my sister and brother in law were in town (more on that later in the post) and I had a marvelous time hanging out with them. I waited until about 15 minutes before my ride was coming to get me to decide what I was going to wear. Thank God I have been a bridesmaid numerous times (not quite 27 times but it's close) so I just chose the dress that looked the least bridesmaid-sy. It just so happened that it was the one I wore in my sister's wedding but there was no bias in the decision making, I swear. (I really didn't take many pictures but my friends did and when I steal them off of Facebook, I'll add them in here.)

Elaine and I met up and went to the dinner and got there much earlier than we anticipated. People were taking our pictures as we walked down the street and we just tried to avoid the protesters as much as we could. (As an aside, I really couldn't tell what they were protesting although one sign had the word "cheerleaders" on it. I almost got a picture with the sign since I was a cheerleader for one year in the 6th grade.) We arrived and it was a MADHOUSE!! There were so many people there, you could hardly breathe. The only redeeming part of it was that the celebrities were just as miserable as the rest of us. I walked in with Forrest Whitaker and a couple of other people who I'm sure were famous but I couldn't tell you who they were. Since I have a height disadvantage, I couldn't tell whose armpit-level I was at. After a few minutes of trying to maneuver through the mosh pit, we decided to go to the ballroom and find our table. We had great tables near the front. (Tyra Banks was sitting about two tables away from mine.) Stars were everywhere. You name them, they were there. I didn't get too excited about seeing any of them but as a collective group, it was quite an impressive showing.

This dinner is a chance for POTUS to be a little on the relaxed side so he got up there and told some jokes. Some of them were actually pretty funny. He does have great timing in delivering the jokes I will say. The comedienne, Wanda Sykes, was also funny although she stepped over the line a couple of times.

As for the actual dinner itself, it's really nothing to write home about. It was one small piece of steak and one small piece of fish and some weird potato concoction and four pieces of asparagus. They made an announcement at the beginning of dinner saying that we wouldn't have dessert and they had donated the proceeds to feed hungry children. Personally, I would have rather donated the salad portion as it was just some cheese on some weeds with a small weird gourd on top. Oh and some salami. I'm sure there was some fancy name that it was technically called but I could have done without and enjoyed a piece of cheesecake in return! :)

I didn't go to any of the after-prom parties because I wanted to see Katherine and Mark before they went to bed (since they were leaving early on Sunday morning) so I can't tell you all these awesome stories about colleagues getting drunk, running into any more famous people, etc. I'll save that experience for next year! All in all I actually did have fun while I was there and it's good to see your colleagues outside the work situation every once in a while. I am also glad that this is only one night a year (well technically there is another correspondent's dinner thrown by a different group in June but it's not as "exclusive" as Saturday night's shin-dig).

The rest of the weekend was even better as I got to see Katherine and Mark. I hadn't seen them since Thanksgiving and it was just great to spend time with them! They are preggers and I can't wait for them to be parents and give me another niece/nephew!! So this was likely the last visit before kids. It was definitely a full weekend! They like to keep things moving!! On Thursday, we spent time in the rain in Old Town just hanging out! On Friday, we went to the American History museum and then to Ford's Theater. Later that night, we drove up to Baltimore for the Orioles game (they definitely didn't plan their trip around the Nationals' schedule but next time!)

On Saturday, we went to possibly the best museum of all times in my world- the Newseum. They just reopened within the last year and I hadn't been. I swear I put no pressure on K and Mark to go. It was totally their choice. But I cannot lie. I become a HUGE nerd in that place. It's almost a little too close to home in some cases. It's a great museum and lots of information but it's almost like going to a museum about your own life. I have no idea if that actually conveys what I'm trying to say but hopefully you can figure out what I mean. The visit actually inspired me to be even MORE of a pack rack in case they ever need to make a display about me! :) The highlight of my time there was looking through the exhibits and trying to find people I knew. The surprise of that little exercise is that I was looking at one picture in particular and lo and behold, I saw myself!!! How crazy is that?!? I'm pretty sure that absolutely no one will ever find what picture I am talking about but just in case, I will pay a HUGE reward to anyone who can. (Katherine, you are not eligible.) Ok, I might just break down and post the picture because it's pretty funny!!

Early Sunday morning, I had to say goodbye to Katherine and Mark after a lot of fun! Then after church, I had to recover from my weekend with a good, long nap. I know the weather was absolutely gorgeous but I couldn't help it. I did end the weekend with a long walk with my friend Mary Jane. The incentive was that it was to Baskin 'n Robbins. That just made for the perfect ending to a great, great weekend!