Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

I think this has to be one of the most difficult periods to be a fed – we’ve got new management, but only a few actual political appointees (only one, in fact!), a handful of political non-appointees, and they’re not fully integrated yet. We know they want to go in different directions, and on the major things those are clear, but on the details they’re definitely not. We’re trying to react to the various provisions proposed in the competing stimulus bills, and despite the fact that the same party is in charge of the two branches, it’s not a given that we in the Executive will be completely on board with what Congress proposes.

Oh, and at some point they’re going to give us our actual budget for FY 2009 as well. You know, the fiscal year that started back on October 1st. So there’ll be that to deal with soon, too.

At the moment, though, I’m running around like mad getting stuff together, analyzing and reacting, and generally trying to be helpful to management. With little to no clear direction, and a lot of guessing. Fun, fun.

While I am glad we have now inaugurated a new President, the last week at work was somewhat bittersweet. In doing the type of law I do, I come into contact with a lot of the top political office holders at my Big Government Agency, and over the last five years there I’ve worked closely with several of them and gotten to know them well. As with the last change in parties, there were some I was happy to see go, but some whom I will truly miss. I will especially miss the leadership in our General Counsel’s office, they were fantastic to work with and for, and were consummate professionals.

My BGA will have a lot to do, and as will be the case with many other BGAs, there will be changes in direction to absorb and run with, and new faces to have to learn and get used to. I only hope that the political appointees chosen to lead us are personable, fair, and competent, and that they do a good job to support and promote the common welfare of us all.

Despite my declarations that I would be holed up inside my apartment until Wednesday morning, I did wander out into DC today to grab lunch with Chris up in Columbia Heights. Our first choice of restaurant was packed to the gills with a line out the door (at 1 pm, mind you), and the second choice had a 45 minute wait. We took the 2nd choice and zipped over to Best Buy to waste some time (setting a phone timer so we would know when to wander back). Got in relatively quickly after we returned, and had a perfectly nice lunch (not-quite-screaming-but-just-occasionally-fussy-baby notwithstanding).

The city is just abuzz. I haven’t seen it this packed in ages, and everyone is just full of this energy surrounding the inauguration, it’s wild. The Metro was busy, but not insane. Lots of “Is this our stop? This is our stop! Quick, get off the train!” type conversations going on, but for the most part folks were getting tickets and getting through the stalls pretty quickly and not being obnoxious about getting in and out of the cars and generally not being in the way. I am, however, glad I’ll not be going anywhere near Metro tomorrow. As busy as it was today, with 8 car trains and all of them relatively busy, tomorrow will promise to be a madhouse.

I’m glad I went out today, it was neat to see all these folks who are so excited to be here.

Sinfest says the election went the way it did because of the moose vote. I can live with that.

Did much shopping this weekend, and picked up several pair of socks, the first of which did the trick today at work – no heel pain. We’ll see how they do tomorrow after waiting in line to vote. But so far so good, and definitely better than the old thinner ones. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

My plan is to get up early tomorrow morning to get to the polls first thing and be done with it. Not that there’s a question as to which way DC will go, but there are local races I’m interested in voting in, so I’d like to just be done with it first thing. Plus I’m supposed to get into the office slightly before my normal reporting time because for some odd reason my boss scheduled an early meeting the morning of election day. Don’t know what she was thinking.

I cannot help but think the four men sitting in front of Congress today were quite full of shit. All of this while the Congress still hasn’t even funded the federal government for the next fiscal year, and can’t seem to decide on how they’re going to temporarily fund us, and for how long. This is, as I’ve often said, no way to run a government.

Long, busy day at work doing things I can’t talk about. Whee. I’ll mention the old adage about not wanting to see laws or sausages being made and leave it at that. And it’s going to start early tomorrow, too. Whee.

Got to see Dean, Richard and Gene for dinner this evening, which was quite nice. I find myself almost wishing for Metro rides across town as it gives me time to sit/stand and knit. I think I got a good 1/2 inch to an inch done on the hat I’m working on now. The downside is that my foot’s now sore again after walking around.

Tomorrow evening should be nice and quiet, with more needed straightening to do, but otherwise nothing is on the schedule, and I’m looking forward to that.

Christopher Hitchens Gets Waterboarded

Link courtesy Saxon.

Not personal, but political apathy. I live in the District of Columbia, and while we do not have a vote in Congress (the branch of the Federal government under whose jurisdiction we fall), we do have a vote for President, with three votes in the electoral college, thanks to the twenty third amendment to the US constitution.

However, the District voter base is approximately 8,953% registered Democrats, so the vote is assured to Sen. Obama, regardless of which way I might choose to vote. And that makes it hard to get worked up/excited about the election, since my particular vote isn’t going to affect the outcome in the least. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still get out and vote, but it’s difficult to force myself to care much about the election news I stumble across during the day when my vote doesn’t really matter here.

I feel irrationally nervy about today’s announcement from the California Supreme Court in their consolidated same-sex marriage cases.

I get to go to the Hill tomorrow with my political boss over The Current Project From Heck and listen to one of our appropriators fuss at us for a bit, and then explain why what they did wasn’t good enough (and how they can fix it). Should be an interesting time.

Was very late getting into work, but was worth it, since lateness was caused by attacking BC when we woke up. Definitely worth the 2 hours of leave time, especially since he’s now (hopefully) in the air and on his way to England for the next 10 days.

Just finished skein #2 on BC’s scarf. I suspect, given how tall he is, that it’s going to have to be four skeins instead of the three called for in the pattern. I already have a fourth skein on hand, just in case, so it’ll be easy enough to add it in. Of late I’ve loosened up on how tightly I’ve been pulling the stitches, with the result that it’s flown along a lot more quickly than it had been. Mom was saying something the other day about how her mother is a pretty tight knitter, so her patterns always needed to be increased to make up for it. I haven’t noticed that much of a difference in the finished stitches, but it has been easier to knit into.

Picked up more yarn and another circular needle this past weekend to attempt the matching hat pattern to go with the scarf.

After the Hill visit I’m going to be back into full-on writing mode for The Project. Based on comments from the #2 attorney in our office we’re going to have to flip the memo back around to the pattern I had originally set out for the thing (*smirk*), and tighten it up considerably. I know I can get the flow into place, but the tightening is going to be a bear. Too bad it’s not as easy as knitting.