9:25 p.m.

Third location, third floor of Barnes and Noble in the philosophy/religion stacks where there is an outlet for my loyal computer. Somehow out of the gazillions of books in this place I ended up with “The Joseph Smith Papers” and “Mormon America” sitting directly in front of me.

596 words down, 2,000 more to go. But at least now there is some actual substance in my paper. B&N has been good to me.

7:58 p.m.

I’ve relocated and it’s much better. I’m on the second floor of the Georgetown Barnes and Noble next to a giant window where I can see lots o’ people shopping and there is free wi-fi. I also picked up a lemon-raspberry cupcake from Baked and Wired on the way. Just thought you’d want to know about this exciting development. I haven’t, however, got much more done on my paper. Maybe it would help if I stopped blogging…

5:39 p.m.

This is my life right now. I just got home from work, where I’ve been writing all day. I have a 8-12 page paper due at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning on how I’m going to change the world. At this moment, I have 400 words. This picture above is where I will be sitting until the end of time. Wish me luck.

Body Double

Meet Kailey Johnson, of Georgia, my supposed twin. Just this week we got an “I didn’t know there were two of you” from a regular Barlow visitor. The first couple of weeks when everyone was still getting to know each we got mixed up a lot. It’s a good thing I like her a lot; I don’t really mind people thinking we’re the same person. Now I know who I can send in to take a test for me in the Testing Center.

New Spice

This is kind of a cheater post. I keep almost writing something-- I have about 100 ideas just waiting to be written and have pictures edited. Like Louise visiting, Gettysburg, New York, Newseum... I have an entire sticky note of them. But I never seem to get quite enough time to do them. So to tide you over I'm posting this video for those of you who don't go to BYU or haven't logged on to facebook in the past couple of days. This thing has majorly gone viral. It was posted three days ago on youtube, and already has almost a million views. So enjoy! It's a fantastic spoof of the Old Spice commercial from the super bowl for the BYU library. Fun fact: the original commercial was actually done by a Portland ad agency with a Portland actor. Go Portland and BYU!

Also, for those of you who may have wondered, I did feel the earthquake the other day. It was at 5 a.m., which was actually only a couple of hours after I had gone to sleep because about half of the Barlow Center went to the midnight showing of Inception even though we had class at 8 a.m. Reckless, yes, but totally and completely worth it. Go see it now. Needless to say I was really confused when I woke up to the earth shaking. After trying to figure out what was different from normal I realized there was an earthquake, and then promptly fell back asleep. No one else who went to the movie even knew it happened until people started texting us the next morning.

Freedom Run

I can't ever run on tracks because I get bored of the scenery really quick. That isn't a problem here, and I love it. My new most favorite run route in the world is from where I live to the capitol building and back. It's about 8 miles round trip, but it doesn't seem nearly that long because there are all sorts of things to distract you, like monuments, museums, tourists and plenty of softball and dodgeball games. It's only a matter of time before I get hit by a stray ball, which just makes it all the more exciting. Unfortunately I only seem to have enough time to go the full route once every 600 weeks, but I was able to do it last night and it was beautiful. There was even a little rainstorm in the middle. So refreshing.

Here is a map so you can appreciate how wonderful it is and see all of the cool things I get to pass. Running in Provo is going to seem more boring than ever when I get back.


















Also, I found out how to get through my work's ridiculous security set-up (they said cia.gov was not secure!) to make this post. Bwahaha. But don't worry, I'm still being extremely productive. This only took a second.

A Capitol Fourth

Let me just say that the Fourth of July in DC is incredible.

I took so many pictures it took a capitol fifth and sixth to get them edited so I could post them. So please look at this album to see what our entire fourth of July was like in DC! I promise there is some good stuff in there. At least I think it’s good stuff, but I could be biased so I’ll leave the final verdict up to all of you.

View Full Album

Now for the narrative.

We started the day out with the parade (well, after church of course. Where David Archuleta happened to be sitting a couple of rows behind us), then had a makeshift barbecue (with a George Forman grill) in the Barlow where we live before heading to the capitol to stake out a spot for the A Capitol Fourth show (on PBS) and fireworks. We actually went to the dress rehearsal for A Capitol Fourth the night before, so we already knew what was going to happen but it was definitely worth going back for the real thing. It was the 30th anniversary of the show, and performers included Gladys Knight, David Archuleta, Reba, John Schneider, the Marine Band, Lang Lang, the National Symphony Orchestra (they played songs like the 1812 Overture with the fireworks)… Fantastic. We got there at 4 (the program didn’t start until 8) and it was ridiculously hot but I would do it again. We got the perfect spot sitting on the steps of the Capitol building near the top. I could see the stage and even better the Washington Monument, where they set off the fireworks. Luckily we had enough people that we could take shifts of who could take refuge in the shade so we didn’t all die before it started.

Here are some choice pictures from the parade and waiting:

Parade. (My mom requested I post more pictures I’m actually in)

Tasty Barlow BBQ complete with flag cake

90% of the gang. They weren’t all paying attention… Not my fault.

The view.

I had to try to take a picture of this balloon. It was required.

Assorted.

And the whole thing just looked perfect in the sunset. Look at this lighting! I didn’t even edit it. SO beautiful. I might be a little obsessed with the way the world looked at this moment. You could take a picture of anything and it would look good. See?

I could seriously put a million fireworks pictures on here. Way too much fun. I’ll limit myself to posting like… twenty. What is really fun is flipping through them really fast on my computer, because then it looks like the show is going on again. It was seriously so beautiful. Hopefully I captured at least a little bit of it for you to see. I didn’t even play with the colors or lighting or anything in Photoshop. I apologize for any shakiness. My tripod is conveniently in storage in Utah. Wasn’t quite able to get to it for this weekend…