D.C. Bound!

So BIG NEWS here at the Worcester outpost. It turns out that the NPR internship that I applied for back in July, that I didn't get... well, I got it. Someone had to cancel at the last minute, and they called me up (why is it I am never anyone's first choice?). So I've spent the last two days frantically planning my trip down there, searching for housing, and in general freaking out about my move to the Big City.

I've been keeping the phone lines open to the Montana Headquarters, staying in touch with M&D while I figure all this out. My father is always full of such sage advice. This morning, he reassured me with the following:

"You know, Annika, all these things always seem bigger than they really are. You're just going to DC. A lot of other girls your age"--here I thought he would say something like dating dead-ends, or working at McDonalds, things to make me seem awesome by comparison for having ventured into the wide world--"are packing to go to bootcamp and getting deployed to Iraq."

Oh. Well great, Dad, how can I follow that act? I thought a lot of other girls my age were getting jobs and internships and trying to figure out where they belong in the world, too. Now my brain is just overrun with images of me landing in fatigues and dust on a wide avenue of downtown DC, fresh from the helicopter. Cut to a scene of me crouching behind a pile of construction debris eating rations out of a can, a look of war-weariness on my dirt-smeared face. Of course there will be the requisite reading of letters from home and lovelorn notes from my beau. Insert sweeping Michael Bay music and machine gun noises here.

Dad's parting words were much more reassuring: "You'll be fine, just stay away from congressman."