Absolutely Crazy...

That would be an adept description of the summer after I graduated from college. Sure, I had a good amount of 'down time,' since my job working for Bush-Cheney didn't really have steady hours, just lots of hours when required. :) I worked several campaign events that summer, including a rally with 15,000 people in Cincinnati, where the Secret Service asked me to watch a certain section of people to ensure they didn't cause any problems and make sure that no one messed with the huge flag someone had put up near one end of the hockey rink where the President was speaking. I have no earthly idea why the Secret Service thought I'd be a good person to watch a section, given that if anyone tried to cause trouble, I probably wouldn't've been able to stop them, since I weighed about 100 pounds. But wahtever. I still got to hear G.W. and got in without having to wrestle for tickets. Indoor events were a lot better than outdoor events because the elements were much more controlled. Later that summer I worked an event in Cambridge on a basebal field, which sounds OK until you factor in that it had poured in Ohio for a day and a half, was still raining as Rob, Branden, some other CRs and me headed down I-70 to the event, and rained harder then not-so-hard as we checked people's IDs and tickets for about three hours, again in the rain. And people couldn't bring unmbrellas into the stadium! It kept up like that until about 1:00, but by then the field was a muddy mess, anyway. What a zoo. At least I had a rain coat; Rob didn't, and had to fashion something out of a trash bag. Branden, of course, had full rain gear, so he was the best prepared of any of us. But like I said, campaign events were fun and you got to learn a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. The sheer number of people who attended these rallies, and brought their kids and dogs or whatever, always amazed me.

Back on the homefront, I sort of took over as "Mom" when my mom developed some medical problems that summer. I cooked, cleaned, took Mel to band camp, and did the grocery shopping, while Dad finally figured out the mystery of the washer and dryer and crafted an index card of instructions, which he taped to the washer front. On top of all this, I had another appointment at the Demon Clinic in June...