Mr. Hat belongs to another TWC intern, Craig Wilkinson from Mount Union College in Ohio. Vicki, one of my roommates, stole Mr. Hat while Craig was playing Guitar Hero at our apartment. After he left, Mr. Hat was on her desk and subsequently on Vicki's head. He rode all over Washington on Vicki's head, since he doesn't have any legs. For his photo ops, he usually stood on his own. Pride, I guess.
Before Mr. Hat was given the opportunity to see the Capitol, he had to go on a Metro ride from where we live (Alexandria), all the way to the Metro stop at Capitol South. He rode on Vicki's head to get there. Vicki seemed to be really enjoying that we stole Mr. Hat from Craig :)The agenda for the day was to see the Native American History Museum. It's one of the Smithsonian Museums, so that means it was free to get in. If it weren't free, I am curious if Mr. Hat would have been charged the adult fee, or the children's fee. Since he can't go anywhere unattended (and he's small), I figure he'd probably qualify as the child rate.
Mr. Hat posed so that the Capitol Building could be seen in the background. (Hi mom!!) It was really cold on Saturday, and so Mr. Hat went right back onto Vicki's head.
When we got into the museum, we of course went through a metal detector (they are in almost every building, and usually they have one of those cool xray machines for your bag, too) and the police guy thought my laptop was a DVD player. I carry what I call my "office in a bag" at all times, because, like I said, I don't know how to NOT work. My office bag has a still camera (used it to take photos of Mr. Hat!), a small video camera (although I have a full size one), an MP3 voice recorder, and the laptop I already mentioned. You'd think that would be heavy, but I own an ASUS Eee, which is the world's smallest fully functional laptop. It weighs 2.3 pounds and is 7" big. More like... not big.Mr. Hat posed in front of the really cool Indian art thing. I personally thought that art piece looked a lot like some odd Aztec or Incan thing,
but then again, art is not my forte. I did take Art History, but all that did was make me think art was really cool. I remember art stuff about as well as I remember stuff about geology- not very well.There was a lot of cool stuff up on the third floor of the museum. It was structured in such a way that you would follow the curvy walls, looking at small artifacts, televisions, and info-prints, until you actually had gone in a circle and ended up where you started. Mr. Hat's favorite piece was the Dragon thing, which is a representation of the devil, called DIABLADA. When I took a picture of it for Mr. Hat to admire later, the flash had gone off right where the eyeballs were. I thought that made it look SO cool.
All in all, Saturday was really cool (literally, since it was also about 36* out), but Mr. Hat also went with me to work on Wednesday. I work a couple of blocks from the Capitol Buildling, and the "office" is really more like a radio/recording studio with three computers and three office chairs in it. Mr. Hat hung out on the desk in front of the main computer. That's one of the places where I sit when I'm conducting phone interviews. When we're going to interview people and they can't be done in person, we call them up and record them on the computer.
Then we edit the interview and put it up on the website for everyone to hear. I've done four phone interviews so far. Michael Martineau, Executive Producer of Movies for a Better World; Peter Bennett, musician and actor/artist promoter; Scott Rosenfelt, Movie Producer; and Joan Miller, mother of Eric Miller, a young man that desperately needs a kidney transplant.On Thursday I'm going to be interviewing (in person) Congresswoman Watson. It's pretty cool- I called up the press secretary, told them I was with Talk Radio News Service, and three days later they called me back and now I get to interview one on one with a Representative of Congress. Now, I was able to do a whole bunch of that at the State of the Union Address, but this is much more fun because I set it up myself and I get her undivided attention for fifteen minutes. I also called Senator Burr and Senator Landrieau... we'll see what happens.
More adventures with Mr. Hat are sure to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment