Wednesday, December 06, 2006

12/6 Another day in the DOC

Went to bed at 10 and woke up at 4:30, couldn't get back to sleep. So I worked on the computer awhile but by 6:45 was ready to go to work. I walked again and it felt good. This time I took a different route and was only two blocks from the White House. Also, last night I noticed that on the corner of the block of my hotel sits the Peace Corps building. Cool.

I do love this part of Washington. There's an electric quality to downtown.

Got to work at 7:15. Training didn't start until 8:30 today so I walked across the street to Starbucks for coffee, and then had breakfast in the Red Cross cafeteria. There were some people I knew, so that was nice.

Today there was a huge sale in the staff gift shop, so I bought myself a few items using my poker winnings. Yay, poker!

We all learned how to sneeze correctly yesterday, and I realized that the strange thing Beata and Rob have been doing--sneezing into their elbows--is absolutely the right thing to do. It's to stop the spread of erms and to keep our hands away from our faces. I admit it looks funny, but our staff health lead said we should do it, so I will. We'll see how many articles of clothing I ruin.

The bad news is that a factory had a major explosion in Milwaukee. My friend Tony emailed me about it, and I saw it on CNN in the DOC. If I were still a volunteer in Milwaukee I'd be called in to work there, but as a staff member, I still need to finish my training.

Something was pretty cool. We got a tour of the DOC and there are so many technological marvels that my jaw dropped. One room looks straight out of James Bond. But to run an operation this huge, you have to be technologically advanced.

I'm loving this.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jer,

Some friends from church were in the explosion at Falk and it was pretty frightening. Glass shattered over 3 blocks away, etc. The disaster site recovery area was at Miller Park.

On another note, I am now an official member of the "roto rooter" club. I went in on Tuesday. Don't remember too much, but I have a healthy respect for plumbing snakes and plumbers in general. :)

Steve

Jerilyn Dufresne, author said...

Sorry about your friends, glad they made it out okay.

And welcome to the club.