A Capitol View

It has been awhile since my last post (nearly three weeks), and trust me, I have been busy.  The highlight since my last post:  a much-needed vacation to Washington, D.C.!  Thanks to Southwest rewards points and wonderful friends (more on those in a minute), I was able to have a great trip at an incredibly low cost.

So, DC.  A lot of people wouldn’t choose it for a “spring break getaway” or “weekend trip”, but it was perfect for me.  Two of my friends live in DC, so it was the perfect excuse to see them, get loads of exercise, and escape St. Louis for a long weekend!

After landing in DC, I headed out to Fairfax, for lunch with my good friend Alex.  Alex and I have known each other since a very young age — our moms were in exercise class together, around the time we were born!  We ended up attending the same elementary school for about three years, and were pretty much inseparable, until Alex’s family moved out to Virginia.  He now lives in the DC area.

After a delicious lunch at Sweet Green (a salad place), I hopped back on the Metro, and headed into DC!  This was the view that greeted me, after exiting from the Capitol South metro stop —

My friend Amy lives within walking distance of the US Capitol, which is the perfect place to be located for a visit to DC!  Amy and I met during our freshman year, when we sat near each other in Intro to Chemical Engineering.  At the time, she was trying to make up her mind between broadcast journalism and chemical engineering.  Though she ended up choosing journalism, she minored in chemistry, and we suffered through experienced a number of chemistry classes together.  We weren’t able to see each other much during the second half of junior and all of senior years (thanks to her semester abroad and our drastically different schedules), but managed to see each other a few times in our last few days of college.  Now, Amy lives in DC, working as a producer at a pretty prominent news affiliate, with an apartment in a phenomenal location.

We spent our afternoon at the Museum of Natural History, marveling at the gems and talking about percentage of Neanderthals (ask her… it’s weird).  After some much-needed relaxing at her apartment, we walked down to Barrack’s Row, for dinner at Ted’s Bulletin, unique to DC.  Their signature feature?  Homemade pop-tarts!  We bought a few pop-tarts for breakfast the next morning, and capped the night off with March Madness.

On Friday morning, we headed to the Newseum, which blends news and journalism into a 25,000 sq. ft. experience.  We saw amazing things, including historical newspapers and large sections of the Berlin Wall —

We also checked out the balcony, which offered great views of the National Mall, Capitol Building, and more!  Feel free to check out my Facebook album (A Capitol View) for more photos beyond this cute shot of Amy and I:

After delicious falafel from the DC Ballers food truck, Amy headed to work, while I headed to one of my favorite places — the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum!  A place like that is pure magic for an aerospace nerd like me.  My favorite photo:

 

After a long afternoon at Air & Space, I decided that it would be a great idea to walk miles and miles around monuments, before zipping back up on the Metro for dinner with Alex.  On the way, I saw the Smithsonian Castle, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and Korean War Memorial (pictures below):

 

 

After that, Alex and I went to Good Eats for dinner (such delicious burgers), and I spent a relaxing evening back at Amy’s, watching basketball. 🙂

On Saturday morning, I headed out to Virginia again, for a break from the city — hiking!  Alex and I spent a few hours at Great Falls, which is located right around the Potomac.  We spent time on the Maryland side, and saw beautiful views, such as this — 

 

And of course, a cute picture together:

 

We also walked around Georgetown:

 

And of course, the day was not complete until we walked everywhere else — we concluded our busy day with the MLK Memorial, FDR Memorial, and Jefferson Memorial:

 

After that, I grabbed a quick dinner at District Taco, and headed back to Amy’s for a few hours.  After relaxing for awhile (and waiting for Amy to finish work), we went out to Granville Moore’s, a great DC establishment with quite the selection of Belgian beers!

 

After a night out, it was time for a semi-relaxing Sunday, before I headed back to the Lou.  Amy, Alex, and I went to the National Zoo, primarily so I could see panda bears.  The highlight of the zoo was watching the orangutans climb across the air…

 

We ate lunch at Amsterdam Falafel, and a few hours later, I was back at Reagan Airport, getting ready to fly back home to St. Louis.  I am so grateful to Amy and Alex for being such great hosts, and showing me new parts of DC that I’d never seen before — restaurants, neighborhoods, and so much more.  It was so wonderful to have a break from my everyday life, and spend time with people who I care a lot about.  I can’t wait to come back to DC!

Kate

What Happens When You Go to Kansas?

I’m a proud Mizzou alum and a huge fan of college athletics.  There are a number of side effects related to those things:  

• A significant amount of black and gold accessories
• 15 t-shirts in the same golden color
• A huge Mizzou logo poster and calendar in my cubicle at work
• Mizzou Alumni license plate frame and window decal on my car
• An immense dislike of KU and the entire state of Kansas

So yes, I am not a big fan of the state of Kansas, but when our 2014 region conference for SWE was slated for Wichita, I knew I’d be paying it a visit.  After a fair amount of drama, I booked my plane tickets to Wichita (because there’s nothing direct from here), registered for conference, and got ready for what I thought would be an easy travel weekend at the end of February / beginning of March.

Early morning Facebook status at Lambert International Airport

My flights to Wichita went off without a hitch:  on-time departure, a nice few hours in the Dallas – Fort Worth airport, and the worst that happened was an injury when I landed in Wichita.  Word to the wise:  if you are a small person, have someone else get your carry-on luggage down for you, because you may otherwise get a really nasty-looking bruise that stays on your upper arm for a week and a half.  (Yes, this happened when I landed in Wichita… luckily, my bruise is almost gone.)

My friend (and fellow collegiate leadership coach) Kristina picked me up from the airport, and we headed to the hotel.  Friday night was rather uneventful, since we spent it making bouquets and tying ribbons for flowers for SWE section presidents and region officers.  Saturday brought a full day of conference events — keynote breakfast, SWE business meetings, lunch… I had just signed into a financial planning session, when I got a phone call that changed the entire tone of the weekend.

Nothing like getting a phone call from American Airlines, saying that your flight from O’Hare to St. Louis has already been cancelled for the following afternoon.  I’ll spare you the details, but long story short, I spent a total of 45 minutes on the phone with American Airlines, and managed to get my itinerary changed, so I’d leave early in the morning and fly through Dallas – Fort Worth instead.

I got this call literally the hour before a CLCC presentation on leadership burnout.  I am so eternally grateful that Kristina and I were co-presenting the module, because honestly, I was a train wreck and stressed out beyond belief about my travel home… I did not want to get stuck in Wichita.  I spent the entire rest of the day stressing out, though I did manage to take a break from stress to get this cute picture of Kristina and I —

Representing CLCC at the Saturday evening banquet

I will spare you from the details, but I was a ball of stress on Saturday night — didn’t get a ton of sleep, and the sleep I did get was terrible quality.  I woke up at 4 am (even though my alarm wasn’t scheduled to go off until 4:30) and was downstairs in the lobby, ready for my taxi… 20 minutes early.  Luckily, my taxi driver showed up early, so I was all ready to go at 5:15 am.  I waited in the American Airlines line for an hour, and was so happy when, after hours of being a mess, the ticket agent handed me my boarding passes and told me to get home.

But the stress wasn’t over.  My flight from Wichita to Dallas – Fort Worth had already been delayed by an hour, and was further delayed when we sat on the plane, getting the wings deiced.  Luckily, I’d had a 3-hour layover built in at DFW… I basically had enough time to hop off the plane, book it to the skytrain, and get to my next gate, just a few minutes before boarding started.  Of course, we had to deice that plane as well, so we took off a little late there too.  I had a moment of panic when the pilot said he was cancelling service over Springfield — seriously, there has to be a better way to say, “We are not serving sodas anymore, because of turbulence.”

When we landed in St. Louis, I started crying.  I was so happy to be home, so happy to be reunited with my family and boyfriend after what seemed like an eternity away, even though it had only been two days.  I was so exhausted, to the point that I took Monday morning off work to sleep in.

And even though it was an incredibly stressful weekend, one thing became incredibly obvious to me — I have the most amazing family and boyfriend in the entire world.  My family and Kevin were there for me whenever I needed it, whether it was taking me to or picking me up from the airport, or simply being listening ears as I worried that I wouldn’t get home.

With that being said, I really did enjoy my time at region conference… and I am very glad that this fall’s annual conference is in Los Angeles.

Kate