The Story So Far...

Allright, so we did move here 10 months ago, so I'd better update this with the story so far.

We moved from Moorhead, MN to Alexandria, VA around the end of July, begining of August. We had an interesting drive in a large U-Haul...never again. With our entire apartment loaded in the truck and the car atattched in a trailer, with kai's carseat in the U-Haul's passenger seat and pregnant Jackie in the middle, we headed out. We drove through Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The through the mountains of West Virginia, which our U-Haul did not enjoy, the thing just about died. We finally got to D.C., got an apartment and began the next chapter of our life.

The first night in our apartment was not very pleasent. I discovered a cockroach, which I kept from Jackie for srveral days until she discovered one herself. The place was infested, not horribly, because the bugs were very small, but we were not pleased. The management of our complex probably hates us because we complain all the time about a variety of things. We had two mice at one point, we have upstairs neighbors who used to blast bad Mexican polka in the middle of the night, among other problems. Now however, things in the apartment are good, no bugs, no disasters in sight, for now.

I currently am working in the U.S. Capitol Building for Congressional Special Services, which is much less interesting than it sounds. We work with accessability issues in the Capitol, doing tours for the deaf and blind and basically making sure the trains run on time as far as tours are concerned. It pays a paltry $28,000 a year, but has good benefits with healthc are and vacation time, so we deal with ti for now. It also gives me a lot of down time to do homework, and blog, as I am currently. I started here in late November after four months of job searching that led to me signing up at three temp agencies and nearly working at TGI Friday's. D.C.'s a ahrd place to get a job unless you "know somebody."

As far as school goes, my first semester I took the Fundementals Class, which was taught by a man named Chuck Cushman, who reminded me of Mr. Hanson from High School. He drove tanks in the army during the Cold War and now was a little bit crazy, but one of my favorite teachers. I also took a State and Local Politics class, which was the biggest waste of money ever. We learned absolutly nothing. My last class was Strategy and Message development, which was ok.

Last semester, (Spring) I took a better State Party Building class, which was ok, and I took Campaign Advertising, in which we made two 30 second spots. I'll see if I can get them uploaded to Youtube and on this site. I took that class with a guy named Peter Fenn, who is on Tucker on MSNBC all the time. He was a cool guy who did adds for Colin Peterson's first Congressional race and worked for Norm Coleman when Coleman was a Democrat, a really interesting guy.

This semester is crazy, two months and three classes. I am taking Politics and the New Media, which is about the Internet in campaigns. I also am taking Running for Office and Speechwriting, which seem like ahrder classes.

As far as life in general, we had the baby in February, Parker Daniel O'Shea, and Kai is turning four on Monday. Jackie is trying to get a job now that Parker is older and I am looking for a better one as well. Only one more semester of school for me and then its back to Minnesota for the O'Shea's. Next time I post I'll talk about our neighbors and perhaps get some pics up as well.

Whew....blogging is hard work :)