In Love with the '80s, a Day of Romancin' and the Fairness Doctrine

Wow, so I have a really, really long update! And this weekend was SO fun too ... where do I even start?

Thursday after work I met Danielle, Rachelle and Micaela at Target to find '80s clothes for the club we were going to the next day. I found a fun shirt ... and then Danielle and Micaela talked me into hair dye (which really wasn't that hard, haha) because they were both dying their hair that night. So we got back, watched The Office, and then had a hair dying party in Micaela's apartment! I picked "medium, golden brown," which came out a bit darker and redder than my natural color -- it's not too drastic of a change, but I liked how it turned out.

I had class all day Friday and then a group of us decided to go to the National Press Club for Friday taco night. We all have memberships to the National Press Club, which is absolutely amazing, and every night is taco night -- buy a drink, get free tacos! I had never been there before, but the Press Club is SO nice. Totally classy. And the 8 or so of us who went definitely looked out of place, haha. But it was so much fun, and the food was amazing, and then we spent some time exploring the building and all the rooms and photos on the wall. Absolutely amazing.

Then Rachelle and I got '80s-uped. And oh did we transform into the '80s! We went with 11 other girls (most were ASP) to this club called The Black Cat, which was having '80s night. Some of them had gone a few weeks before, and they said that it was really fun and void of creepy guys. So basically just a fun place to dance, which was perfect! Anyways, we got there ... and we were definitely the only people who had dressed up for the '80s ... but since we were such a huge group, it definitely didn't matter, and I personally think it just made it more fun! It was a really small venue, and definitely a good place for a group of girls to go who love dancing, but don't want to be bothered by creepers. It was SO much fun! My favorite moment was getting to dance on stage to the A-Ha song "Take On Me!"

Then Saturday was Valentine's Day! We slept in, and then Rachelle and I met our friends Alex, Julia and Sharyna in Georgetown for a late lunch. We ate at a Mexican Tapas (appetizer) place and Rachelle and I split chicken kabobs, and then I got scallops. Small portions, but so good! Then we went to an AMAZING cupcake place that just about killed me! It was so good -- I would have to say it beats Sprinkles! After that we walked down by the bay and took pictures. And then a couple came up to Rachelle and the guy asked her to take a picture of them. So she did, and she started to give the guy back his camera when he said, "Hold that thought. You'll want to get this" ... and then he went down on one knee! He proposed to her, and Rachelle took their engagement pictures! Alex and I were just standing there stunned!

On the way back, Rachelle and I decided to spice up our V-day and buy each other flowers. So we stopped at this tiny florist shop where an older Italian guy worked, and he decided that he really liked me. I got several kisses on the cheek and hugs and was mildly creeped out, haha. But we got gorgeous flowers! I got white baby carnations and Rachelle got pink tulips. Then we got back to the apartment, played around with her SLR taking photos of candy hearts (I haven't used one in so long -- it was really fun!), talked with a girl named Christina for a really long time about some pretty intense stuff, and then we made cookies and got cozy in her bunk and watched An Affair to Remember on my laptop. Overall, it was a wonderful Valentine's Day! :)

On Sunday a group of us went to Capital Hill Baptist. The service was long -- 2 hours -- and pretty traditional, but the preacher gave a great expositional sermon. Rachelle was just mad that we had to stand up and sit down so many times. Afterwards there was a free lunch for college students and interns, so we all went to that, and there were so many people there! I met and talked with a few interns for quite a while, so that was interesting getting to meet some new people. We didn't leave until 3 ... and the service had started at 10:30!

We got back and Rachelle and I decided that we wanted to go to the National Zoo ... so we got Zack, Mark, Chris, Jason and Jeremy to go with us! It was cold and pretty late by the time we got there, so we didn't see a ton of animals ... but we did see the red pandas (so cute!!), emus, a fisher cat, zebras and cheetahs. It was fun, but we'll definitely have to go back when it's warmer!

On Monday we got out of class a little early and so Rachelle and I went to Ebenezer's to read ... but it was full, so we went to Corner Bakery at Union Station instead. I absolutely love the book I've been reading, "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss! Her writing is beautiful, and I've also been reading to and from work on the bus, so I'm almost done now! After a couple hours of reading, we went to family dinner at which we found out that one of my roommates, Danielle, is supposed to be on the MTV reality show, TrueLife, because her boyfriend applied for it. So the majority of the hilarious dinner revolved around what they might be on it for. When we went back to the apartment, Rachelle and I watched a few episodes with her because none of us had seen it, and Danielle got pretty nervous because it's kind of a trashy show. She talked to her boyfriend and found out that the episode would be TrueLife: My girlfriend and I are really different, or something like that. She's still deciding.

We then had worship night, which I absolutely love! It's entirely student-led and voluntary, and it's so wonderful to have everyone come together for it. I honestly think it provides such a sense of unity. Then after that I watched the movie "Once" (which has amazingly beautiful music!) with Zack, Mark and Andrea, edited an article for Christina, and went to bed.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I spent most of the day at my internship working on research for a story I'm writing on the Fairness Doctrine. It basically calls for the airwaves to only present balanced news -- all sides have to be represented -- so basically Christian talk radio would cease to exist. The doctrine was abolished in the '80s, but there has been talk of it from some Democrats and some conservative groups are freaking out that it's going to be reintroduced. My personal viewpoint is that it's ridiculous and there's no way it's coming back -- it's SO unconstitutional and it would change all media as we know it -- but some people are hyped up about it, so I've been looking into that.

After work I went to the Capital Hill Baptist Bible study with David and Yvette, which is specifically for interns. I'm so glad I went! There was a group of about 40 interns doing all different types of work, originally from all over the U.S. (I even met a guy from Yorba Linda!), and it was seriously the most welcoming group. Everyone was so kind and friendly, and I really enjoyed the discussion too. I'm definitely going to try to go every week, and I'm so excited to get to know people outside of my program.

Today it snowed!! :) And I wrote the 800-word article about the Fairness Doctrine. It was exhausting. And then I got back from work, and my roommates and I had to cook very, very quickly for our floor progressive dinner. It was our turn to do the main course, and we decided to do breakfast, so we made pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon. Now, I am an expert scrambled egg maker, if I do say so myself, but bacon's a little out of my realm because 1) I think it's gross. 2) I don't like eating/making anything that's pork. 3) I don't think my family's ever made real bacon -- we always use turkey bacon, haha. And we were rushing, so Rachelle was using the prongs for her pan, and I had to use a fork ... and the scalding grease kept jumping up and burning me because I had to get so close. I actually, legitimately burned one of my fingers from the grease, so that's fun, haha.

We started out having fruit roll-ups and gushers in the guys' apartment (I was so happy about that, haha!), then we had our breakfast dinner, and then we had brownies and ice cream in the girls' apartment. And after that we all decided to play the concentration animal game, which was SO fun with 16 or 17 of us! I'm so glad that I had experience with that game -- Jeff and I ended up winning, haha. Then we played a similar game where you all have to keep the signs going without the person in the middle catching you. It was really fun! I love silly games like that :)

So there is my crazy-long update!! Also, I got another lunch special at Peking Garden this week (orange chicken -- mmm!), and my fortune was "You appreciate music and the arts." Once again, very true, but it's just not a fortune ...