Day 3 in D.C.

Before I get to today, I had a blast last night board op'ing for Jon Anthony's live show. It's been probably 6 years since I've run a board, and it was fun. Not as fun as switching a tv show, but fun. Made me even more regretful that I didn't get to do a live show on America Friday.

So I got up this morning and had a leisurely breakfast. I'm staying at a place that has a breakfast buffet with made-to-order omlettes. Seriously, I could eat breakfast 3 meals a day. So I'm loving it.

Left the hotel about 9:45, with somewhere I wanted to be at 10:30. So, I decided I'd head west. I was staying on the 900 block of F street... and of course everyone knows the White House is at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. 7 blocks and change. Cake. They wound up being 7 long blocks and quite a bit of change, and it was pretty hot. But I'm glad I went. And I got to see a lot of cool buildings along the way, which I took photos of that I will share when I get home.

I had been to the White House before, around '95 - back when they actually let you go in it. You still can... IF you have a group of 10 or more and IF you get your Congressman to make you a reservation and IF he makes that reservation 2 weeks or more in advance. So I had to be content with looking at it from the fence. It's big.

One thing I haven't gotten the hang of yet is the street structure here in D.C. They have numbers going one way... and letters going another. That's great. I'm at 9th and F... I can find that. My next destination was going to be 11th and K. No problem. But then they put states in the middle of things. I left Pennsylvania and wound up on New York, which actually is a cross street that XM is on - at the complete other end of the city. Wonder how long of a walk that would be?

On my way into work later that morning I stopped into the Spy Museum gift shop. Didn't really find anything I was compelled to buy for Delaynie, but I did discover some cool Nancy Drew books that I didn't know existed. Will pick them up at Overstock.com later.

I spent my afternoon at Eckington editing - chopping up interviews and creating artist soundbite pieces for US Country. Oddly, I don't feel like I've gotten as much done as I should have, because listening to interviews to mine sound out of is time consuming, and you don't have a lot to show for it. But I did get 15 new pieces created.

My eyes were crossing from staring at a computer monitor for the past 5 hours, and I still had 6 1/2 or so hours to go in this shift, so I decided to take a break and head downstairs. Another perk of life at the Mother Ship is that they have a fitness center in the basement. A really nice one, complete with a locker room and showers and big makeup mirrors and blow dryers. I'm horribly jealous, they don't even pay for my Y membership. But I like to at least use it while I'm here, so I swiped a t-shirt off someone's cubicle wall and worked out for about 45 minutes.

Oh, one more perk of XM D.C. - the talk channels have a couple tables where they discard the books that they've been sent to review once they're done with them. I usually come back loaded up with reading material. Currently I'm reading Everything I Needed To Know About Being A Girl I Learned from Judy Blume while waiting on the Metro.

While I'm lounging around playing tourist here in D.C., my husband is left with a Honey Dew list on the house, and my daughter leaves tomorrow morning for her first "sleep away" camp. We are 11 days away from closing on the house we're selling - it's crunch time! It's kind of a nice respite being half the country away from the madness and moving boxes!

Just finished the fruit cup I brought in for dinner, I'm off to schedule logs. Jon Anthony will be doing the Highway 16 Traffic Report live tonight from San Francisco -- be sure to tune in -- you never know what kind of wacky mistake his rookie board operator might make!