Olympia Day 3

Celebrate good times, come on!! Woohoo!! *skips merrily around computer room* So, I finally managed to hook up with my sponsoring Senator this morning. I made three appointments to meet with her with her staff these past two days, and finally one of them caught her in her office. She ushered me into her leather and light decorated office, and proceeded to make pleasant small talk. She asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, but I have no real plans. Instead, I picked the one occupation I'm kind of interested in, and told her about it. Then she asked me where I'd study for the job. There's only one university in North America that offers the course... Yeah. When she heard that, my Senator talked about how attending out-of-state colleges is bad for the state because it draws the state's best and brightest away from our economy. Hence, I've got a new rule of living.

Rule 26: The riskier option is better than the safer option. Safer options lead to foot-in-mouth disease.

So, then I headed down to the Floor for the Senate page picture with the Lieutenant Governor, who didn't show up. Lame. And then it was time for floor duty. There was a resolution passed about Filipino Americans, which was considerably less lame than yesterday's, and the Senators voted on gubernatorial appointments before adjourning for caucuses. We waited for two hours, and then got another 40 minutes of nothing much. Thanks to paging, I have now lost all faith in the ability of my government to get anything done. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the Senators and Representatives appear to be the only people on the Capital campus who aren't doing anything productive. But that's just my tired, ornery grumbling, so pay no attention.

Also today, one of the male pages started flirting with me. >.< Why must this keep happening to me? O.O I was playing a game of speed with him when suddenly:

"My gosh, you've got an absolutely gorgeous smile! I just couldn't not say that." Comments of that sort continued for the rest of the day. I'm mildly perturbed. My usual way of coping with guys like this is: "Why thank you. I appreciate the sentiment." And then continue to be polite but more guarded in my behavior. Unfortunately, it recently came to my attention that my 'politeness' comes off as flirtatious at times.  Which leaves me with the dilemma of being rude and ignoring him, or being polite (my natural inclination) and encouraging him. BOTHER!

Dad came and ate lunch with me and Mrs. Incredible. He brought flowers with him. I am now the proud possessor of a couple yellow roses and a yellow tulip. They're very pretty, but when he pulled them out of the car, I felt both special and spatial. It didn't quite connect that he was giving them to me. My first impulse was "Thank you. And where did you want these taken again?" but I suppressed the urge, fortunately.

A Senator asked the LEG Page Dispatch Station to have the pages write 20 things that make a good Senator and 20 things that make a good page down for him, so I completed the Senator list, but I'm having trouble with the page list. Oh well, I'll finish it tomorrow.

In Page School, we listened to a Moderate Republican lobbyist talk. It was very interesting, and I got him to elaborate on some philosophical topics. Glee!! Then, the pages finished budget bills we started yesterday. We had to write three proposals for reducing the WA State Budget, and I surprised my (liberal) teacher with the three options of : a. a 2% overall decrease of WA government funding, b. 8% decrease of healthcare for state and higher education employees, and c. the deportation of the 500-some illegal immigrant offenders in WA State prisons. When he got to option b, he started tsk-tsking. Most happy.

Well, I'm getting sleepy, so tata for now.

Also, guys - any suggestions for dealing with this page? Despite many experiences with this in the past, I'm still pretty clueless. :P

B