East Coast Girls are Hip

I'm back! I've been on the East Coast since mid-June, first at a conference for work, then at a beach in Delaware for a few days.

The conference took place in Washington, DC, which is one of my favorite cities. I got to spend one day on touristy stuff, and being the huge dork that I am, chose to go to the Senate and House gallaries. Which, being the huge dork that I am, was my favorite part of my trip. (Not that the beach wasn't nice.)

Now, this is something that most people don't know. When in DC, you can walk right into the buildings that house the congressional offices. You have to go through a metal detector, but once you do that, they just let you wander around - you don't have to prove that you have any reason whatsoever to be there. I went to the Rayburn Office Building, which is one of three that has HoR offices. It also has rooms for different Congressional committees - the Committee on Judiciary, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, etc. When you watch C-SPAN (which I know you all do), and see someone being indicted before the Committe on Judiciary, it's in that room that I walked past! Someone was being questioned about something when I was there - the door was open and the room was packed, and I could hear stuff being said into microphones, but I couldn't figure out who it was or what was going on, and I didn't want to linger too long and get thrown out. But at the door of the building, by the metal dectectors, there was a little paparazzi of reporters with their cameras and lattes, and whenever anyone entered the door or came out of the building into the foyer, they'd all sit up excitedly, then flop back down. I wondered if they were just always there, but I went back the next day, and they were gone, so I'm guessing the Judiciary hearing was something big - anyone know what was going on last Tuesday?

Anyway, the point is, you can go to your Representative's or Senator's office and say "I'd like a pass for the gallery" and they give you this little card and you get sent through the back halls of the Capitol building (no cameras) and can go sit up in the gallery and watch YOUR REPUBLIC IN ACTION! This isn't part of the regular Capitol building tour - you have to go through your Congressperson (either this way, or on a "staff-led" tour, which I think you can set up for groups, in which your Congressperson's lowly assistant gives you a tour then takes you to the gallery).

Since I was intimidated by the idea of going into the Senate Office buildings, I went to my representative's office (Rahm Emanual!) - I'd been to Rayburn the day before, for work (day of the Judiciary bru-ha-ha, but not for Judiciary bru-ha-ha), so I was a tiny bit more familar and less intimiated by it. Turns out Rahm's office is in the building across the street, so up I go and get a pass from his very young (college student?) receptionist (office was full of old men in suits with some sort of veterns group buttons).

Pass in hand, I head back over to Capitol Hill to figure out where I was supposed to go. I also had gotten a pass for the Capitol tour, but being that part of it was outside (and it was about 100 humid degrees), and also the fact I'm not too keen on groups, I was more interested in getting into the gallery. So I went over to the beginning of the tour line, and asked the guide what to do with my pass. She said that since I only had a House Gallery pass, the entrance I would have to use was the one where all the tour groups went in (meaning very long line). I said I had a tour pass, but if I did the gallery and skipped the tour, would I being missing anything major, and she said nothing much, aside from the Rotunda. I decided to forgo the Rotunda, since that meant not marching around Capitol Hill in the melting heat with Middle-American tourists. Then she said, "Since you only have a House pass, I'll give you a Senate pass. That was you can go around and go in the other entrance - there'll be no line, and you'll also be able to go to the Senate gallery."

Who cares if I was intimiated by the Senate office buildings! I got to go to the Senate gallery anyway. I take a long hike around the Construction at the front of the Capitol (past the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court), to get to the Senate side of the building. On a small tangent - I'm curious about the fact that the Capitol and the Supreme Court face each other, right across the street from eac other, on a hill, while the White House is down the street, perpendicular to both, and really only able to see the Capitol Building's backside - is this symbolic in some way?


Anyhow, I get around to the Senate side (no line! and I see Senator Chuck Hagel) and get to walk around the veranda of the building to the back (where the Steps are) to enter. This was cool, because when you just walk up to the Capitol, the Steps are blocked off completely by security - you can't get anywhere near them. From my vantage point, I could see all the way down the mall to the Lincoln Memorial, and had a good view of the Capitol itself.



Now, once inside, it's a total clusterfuck. They send you into this big room, where all the tours go through, and the signs are really sort of vague (arrows that point towards a wall with three doors, etc). I finally get into the right line to start my journey to the Senate gallery, but it's also the line for the "staff-led tours" of the Capitol, so I'm in the middle of a group of bored Hispanic youth leaders being shown the statue of Jefferson. I weasel through them, and make the turnoff for the Senate gallery. Now it's sort of like "good luck!" This isn't like a museum or national park. All the people working inside are kind of surly and seem pissed that you're bothering them, and the directional signs are terrible. You basically wander down hallways and hope you're in the right place, and only find out you're not when someone yells at you. But the staircases were all marble, and worn into deep grooves from the thousands of feet, and all the walls are gilted or covered with paintings, and the light fixtures are gorgeous.

At last, I'm outside the door to the Senate gallery. Once I get inside, I see that they're only using two of the eight sections that are available, so people have to wait outside for someone to leave, before they can go in - they don't kick you out once you're in - you can stay all day if you feel like it. I didn't have to wait long before I got to go in. This was last Wednesday, when the Senate was debating and voting on 26 different amendements to the immigration bill. For the debating, there weren't really too many Senators in the room. Mostly, there was one guy going on about the fact that the Senate leaders were trying to prevent debate on the different amendements. This seems like it might be the case, because they eventually got back to the amendement at hand, and then called for a vote pretty soon after. There was a vote!

The votes are awesome to watch! First, there is a roll call - the clerk who sits on the dias directly below the President pro temp (or whomever is presiding that day) calls all the senators' names. During this, all the staffers sitting along the back of the room go into action, and many scurry out to make sure their Senator gets to the vote. Once all the names are read, the clerk starts taking the votes. He'll look up, and a senator holds up his hand and makes eye contact with the clerk. The clerk hits a button on his desk that turns a light in front of him red, then says the Senator's name and the senator points a finger either up or down, and the clerk repeats the senator's name, and then says their vote, while recording it on a long tally sheet (from my vantage point, it basically looked like a 4 foot scantron), then hits his button again, turning off his red light, to indicate he can take another vote, catches the eye of another Senator with hand raised, and does it again.

As this goes on, Senators appear in the room - a few at first, then more and more over the next ten minutes. They've likely had the C-SPAN broadcast of the debates on, wherever they are, or they already know how they're going to vote, or they've been briefed by a staffer. There is a laptop set up at a desk on the main floor, and some of them come over to read the amendement they are voting on before voting (s-m-r-t!). Some vote and then leave right away, others debate in a huddle before voting, and several wander around to talk to other Senators after voting. Almost all 100 voted, so I saw Obama and Clinton both, along with quite a few others. I was intrigued by the fact that there was more buzz in the gallery when Obama came in than when Clinton came in. But it could be that Obama is very tall (and pretty much the only black guy in the room), and Hillary, in a room full of men, appears short and can be easily overlooked.

So once the vote is over, the Senators are still wandering around talking, and the presiding Senator annouces that they're going to start debate on another amendement, and the Senators are still wandering around talking, and finally he bangs his gavel and says that the Senate must come to order, and asks "those Senators still involved in conversations to take them out to the corridor." It just struck me as kind of funny, like they were all being chastised for talking in class.

I left not too long after that, since I didn't figure anything else would be as exciting as a vote. At this point, there was a huge line in the hall to get in, since most people who got inside before or during the vote hadn't left. After more hallways and stairwells and more getting lost, I managed to get over to the House gallery, which was pretty much empty, since everyone was trying to get into the Senate gallery. There were about 5 Representatives in House, debating budget amendments. Mostly boring, yes. I didn't know exactly what they were debating about - I think it had something to do with some sort of amendement that would give the President power to cut spending by chosing items from the budget to cut - and obviously the Dems were not cool with this and were arguing in favor of specific items that could be cut and they felt were important. Some Republican Representative from Arizona got on a high horse to condemn the Democrats for not being willing to cut spending, saying things like 'I understand that we became the minority because we were spending too much. But I thought that now that you were in power, you would be willing to make those necessary cuts. But now the people voted you into power, and you want to spend more, when you wanted us to make cuts before.' He's acting all "disappointed dad" and it infurated me, because basically he's pretending not to understand the difference between sending all our money to Iraq (the reason they were voted out of power), and spending money to rebuild infastructure and clean up toxic waste here in the US, and also not getting what a bad idea it is to let the President, who's been sending all our money to Iraq, get to make the decisions on what to cut.

I seriously had to leave before I started yelling things at this smug bastard. So I finally made it outside via some small side door, and back onto the Mall. Note - there is basically noplace to eat on the Mall, so pack provisions (unless you are going into the Capitol - no food or drinks). I found a McD's thanks to a Smithsonian Facilities employee I stopped on the street, just before it started to pour rain. The McD's was right across the street from the US Department of Education building. Which has some lovely decorative entrances.



Anway, after leaving DC on Thursday, my friend Jenn (who lives in DC) and I went to Dewey Beach in Delaware, which is basically like the Hamptons for middle-class thirty-somethings on the East Coast. They go in shares on houses near the beach, and then come down every weekend from DC and Philly and New Jersey to sit on the beach, go to bars, get drunk and get lucky. It was kind of fun, but it's not really my scene, so I felt a little out of place. Especially because I didn't want to drink much (since alcohol, mixed with my meds, plus sunshine = sun poisioning), and so no one seemed to really know what to say to me. I had to keep turning down beers and shots, and I sort of felt like a recovering alcoholic in the middle of New Orleans Mardi Gras. There was some sun and I got some decent beach time, and enjoyed hanging out with Jenn, but the party beach thing is really just not for me.

So at last, I'm back home, with tomorrow off to run around and do about 50 chores.