Ketchup! Ketching up!

Good morning, everyone! Just so you know, I DID write a long entry last night, but didn’t post anything because there was some top secret/personal/embarrassing stuff mixed in, and I was too tired to sort it all out.

So while you’re reading this, bear in mind that 1) it will sound jerky and 2) it was written late last night.

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I hope everyone had a happy St. Patrick’s Day! I felt incredibly old and grown-up and boring, as this was the first March 17 I can remember where I FORGOT to wear green!!! I even forgot to wear my gold shamrock necklace which I had packed back in January specifically for the occasion!!!!! Shame, shame, shame. Fortunately, according to some people, I DO have green eyes, and I did have a green watch around with me all day. Even so, I did get pinched one time in the evening, by a girl who managed to overlook both the color of my eyes and the watch, and then conveniently claimed ignorance of the rule wherein I would be entitled to pinch her back 10 times for the error. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Peppermint Patty!

Valerie was wearing all green colors, to make up for it, and looked sort of like a leprechaun with her red hair and, um, gold jewelry (!?). I was a bit disappointed that she didn’t pull her rainbow umbrella out of the closet to complete the ensemble, but she managed to light up all of our eyes anyway with the delicious corned beef and potato cabbage dishes she made. Yum yum!

Earlier in the day, I had gotten off work a little early to walk to the National Portrait Gallery and look at their new (well, new in January) exhibit on the Vice Presidents of America. It was as enthralling as I had expected, and I took many more and better pictures throughout the Gallery of photos I wanted to remember. I plan to post all of them, eventually, possibly on Facebook, with my commentary. I am particularly excited to at last have a good picture of the handsome (yet hated, in Georgia) General Sherman, as my previous ones were all blurry or accidentally deleted.

I ended up spending about two hours at the National Portrait Gallery, and then took a long walk home, through the Mall, past the Washington Monument, and through the Park past the Lincoln Memorial and Einstein Memorial (the latter one is like no memorial I have ever seen before or hope to ever see again... except perhaps to Santa Claus) (P.s. I take it back—the messy-looking, giant head of John F. Kennedy in the Kennedy Center comes close to reminding me of this style). I had some crumbs of a bagel in my pocket, and I fed them to some ducks. Then I saw a sign that said “Don’t feed the wildlife.” And then I felt guilty. Next time, I’ll just throw the bagel away. Or give it to a homeless person. Actually, I might not—some homeless people can be pretty cranky if you give them anything besides money.

Changing the subject entirely, work is going pretty good. Back in February my office did a little Oscars party, where everyone guessed the Oscar winners and pooled their money and gave it all to the winner. I didn’t attend the party and didn’t lose any money, and still guessed quite a few of the winners correctly, through pure luck and Googling. Through the process, I became interested enough in Slumdog Millionnaire to go and see it at a movie theater (oddly enough, it’s on the block across the street from the famous Ford’s theater), and I found it pretty good. But, unfortunately, not as epically spectacular as I wanted it to be. The casting and acting was just not quite...mmmm...enough, for me, I guess. But it was still a good film. They ought to put it on the repertoire at International cinema, along with The Lives of Others. Now THAT was an Oscar-deserving film! (And it won one too—Best Foreign Film in 2007).

Back to the subject of office party pools, now another person has organized a March madness tournament, and I’ve also filled out my own private bracket. But I don’t really care who wins. I like BYU and I like Duke because I have family members who go there, and I picked North Carolina to win because I like how the letters spell U-N-C like the nickname of my mom’s younger brother. Also, they’re number 1. Also, they’re a Southern state, and I like the South. But as far as basketball games go, I really don’t care. Come championship game time, I will most likely be reading a book, working on homework, at an art museum, or sleeping.

Well, back to catching up. I had phone duty (roll eyes) on Tuesday, which was especially annoying since the receptionist had been gone all day Monday and left the phones on “Do Not Disturb” (one of the other interns asked, “Why can’t we just do that EVERY DAY!?” and I found myself agreeing), and then on Wednesday, neither the intern who is supposed to cover the phones nor the receptionist was there, so the phones were again on “Do Not Disturb.” So I was irked at having to fulfill my phone duty assignment on Tuesday, but I did it nonetheless. At least I haven’t come up with any calls that I haven’t been able to handle—of course, my failsafe strategy is to tell the person to call back in a few hours or (preferably) the next day. Or I transfer them to someone nice who I know will at least KNOW who to transfer them to. The real problem is getting people in the office to answer their phones, because they’re all out eating lunch—another reason why it’s a bit pointless for us interns to be answering the phones at this time.

Wednesday was kind of a blah day. I woke up, went to work, and my computer crashed. So I spent half the day trying to figure out, both on my own and with the museum’s computer person, and eventually I packed up my stuff and moved to the Library, and then moved upstairs to a spare computer on the 5th floor in the “commons” room, next to my supervisors’ offices! Yeah for sunlight and not being next to the freight elevator and the copy machine and not being alone in a dark space all day and not having to pass the scary receptionist desk every time I go to the bathroom or upstairs! I felt renewed and exhilarated, as if I had received a promotion or something. Or started a new internship! All day I got to hear more traffic noises, see the sun, listen to the chatter of the Education department, snack on the leftover food from a meeting with some teachers at the Education department, and fiddle around with my chair to make it adjust and STAY adjusted to my height.

Today I spent the majority of the day working on my Gallery Talk/lecture/presentation on the Hungarian Women Photographers exhibit we have going on display tomorrow. I took a self-directed tour of the photos before leaving work, and planned out my talk and the photos I would target. Now I just need to print some visual aids, organize my notes, and pray that my brain doesn’t freeze, that a lot of people don’t show up, that in the number of people who do show up there will not be a person who knows the exact proper pronunciation of every Hungarian photographer and insists on it being said correctly, and that we can avoid crashing into the Mary McFadden group which will be touring and likely wandering around the other end of the floor. There will be tours given all day in honor of the opening of the two exhibits, and I’m hoping to catch one or two myself before I have to give my own. Mary McFadden herself is giving one at 6 p.m. which would be fun to catch. I’ve seen her a couple of times in the museum so far, but haven’t yet heard her speak loud enough to make an impression.
Today there were some TV people interviewing Mary McFadden at the museum and Michelle (my Comms/Market supervisor) got to spend most of her day with them. I wished I could have stuck around and seen more of what went on in the interview, but Ms. McFadden didn’t look like she wanted to have anyone who was not NECESSARY in the area, and I did have work to do preparing for the Hungarian photographers talk. Still, I enjoyed the privilege of sauntering through the exhibition in its installment phases, and handing Michelle the two water bottles which she asked me to purchase earlier from the convenience store across the street. I also brought a big box of mail from the shop upstairs to her desk, and helped Vivian fetch some posters for our sandwich board signs from a printing place. Productive day, yes!? Except one of the paintings on the sandwich board (Self-portrait of Frida Kahlo for Leon Trotsky; NMWA is famous for owning the original) turned out rather orange-y. I didn’t think it looked too bad, until we compared it with the original. Then it basically looked like Frida Kahlo was 1) suffering from scarlet fever or 2) covered in Cheeto dust. So we’ll be getting a reprint of that shortly!