Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

I enjoy the theater. Enough so that I have season tickets at the local one, three blocks from my apartment. And they’ve done a really good job since they reopened in their new facility (on the old grounds). But it seems like every season there’s one dud, and last night’s was it. A Long Day’s Journey into Night was more like A Long Night’s Attempt to Keep From Falling Asleep. Highlights from the audience:

• The boy said I’ve never been that fidgety in a play before.
• The one intermission came less than an hour into the play, which was three hours long.
• We both were checking our watched almost religiously to see when the three hour torture session would be over.
• In the first part one gentleman on the other side of the balcony was actually snoring (someone woke him, thankfully).
• Many, many heads were nodding, including the poor woman beside me.

Not good signs.

I understand why the play won the pulitzer; its treatment of addiction in a time when such things weren’t discussed would have been ground-breaking. But in today’s bare-all environment, references to being a “drug fiend” are merely quaint. And you’ve got to work on the pacing of that particular play. There were massively long segments that just weren’t interesting or engaging. At all.

Eh, as I said, they usually have one play that’s a dud, so this was it this season. The next two, The Music Man and The Normal Heart both look to be much more engaging. Thank heavens.

My Big Gubm’nt Agency (BGA) has fucked up something in its spending and internal controls, which means we get to report a violation of law. Was telling the boy about this yesterday evening, because it’s been dragging on for months now as we investigate, but we finally met with several senior managers and came to agreement that it is indeed a violation and so we have to report it per statutory and regulatory guidance. And somehow I got tasked with writing the first draft of the letters, which have to go to the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate (aka the Vice-President), the Comptroller General and the President himself, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Whee! Thankfully I’m not the one who will sign his name to the letters – someone much, much higher in the BGA gets to be that lucky stiff, but I have to write the majority of the story here.

The funny thing was that I didn’t consider this any big deal, it’s just part of my job. An annoying part, to be sure, but just part and parcel of working as an attorney for a BGA, practicing appropriations law. In mentioning that I had to write the letters, and who they’re going to, the boy did a double take, repeated the recipient list (with the phrase “you have to write letters to…”), and gave me a shocked look. I suppose it doesn’t help that he’s been watching the entire run-through of the show The West Wing lately, so he’s had politics on the brain.

It’s hard not to become jaded about such things, since they are part of my job, albeit a rare part. But it was interesting to see the reaction from someone who doesn’t live and breathe politics in his daily life.

Hauling a six year old around one of the most popular-with-kids museums in the Smithsonian system is tiring, to say the least. No sense of personal space, popping around wherever they can. The most amusing part was that she was rushing us through so she could get to what she truly wanted to do – go to the gift shop! She made out okay there, picking up a cherry blossom festival branded panda and some candy to take back to her sister.

It’s been a fun visit, though. Played some on the Wii with her, chatted with my brother, played tourist. Fun stuff. And after we put them on the train tomorrow, the boy has the rest of the afternoon off with me. Not a bad way to spend most of a week.