From the Campaign Trail

Oh, what to say? I don't know how to capture on paper the experience that working on a vibrant campaign is. Maybe I'll have a better description of it in a few weeks, once I've started sleeping again, but for now these random thoughts will have to do.

Things I've Discovered this Week

• I can work in an environment with news programs showing on two TVs (both located eight feet away from me), people making GOTV calls and various conversations taking place around me, so long as I'm doing visual or numerical work. If I need to be doing something verbal, like writing? Headphones and my iPod to drown out the background noise are a must.
  
• These people have an obsession with the intercom. And speakerphone. I can hear both sides of nearly every conversation that takes place in this office And ohmygod, if the two of you would just get out of your chairs and take two steps outside your offices, you could actually have this conversation FACE-TO-FACE!
  
• If the number of times I heard some variation of the f-word in a (yes, broadcast on speakerphone) conversation yesterday is any indication, I can TOTALLY work in this field.
  
• No amount of sleep will ever be enough. Thankfully, any deprivation can be cured with massive quantities of caffeine.
  
• God, indeed, has a plan for me. I know this because my main project this week is to overhaul the campaign's website, and the instructions I got from the Communications Director were "Um, here's the website. I don't know anything about it, but it hasn't been updated in forever." A year ago, I would have run away screaming. Or laughed and suggested they find a nice college kid to take care of the technology stuff.
  But. Miles and miles of ugly HTML code, three phone calls to the web developer, twelve straight hours of sitting at this computer and seventeen jillion uploaded, edited and formatted pictures later, I am happy to report that I have made the website my bitch. (Of course, there are more things I want to do to it but they involve "massive site re-design by the developer" which costs "money," so the answer is no. Oh well.)
  
• Those 2-hour parking limits in a downtown that can be described as "you could lay down in the middle of an intersection at lunchtime and take a nap without anyone running you over" don't actually apply. Which is good, since I completely forgot to move the car during the entire thirteen hours I was in the office yesterday. But I do love my five-minute commute!
  
• Eating is pretty much unheard of. Five days and I've lost 2.5 pounds and it sure isn't because I'm making time to exercise! The irony is, nearly every event features food, but there's no time to eat it or no discreet way in which to do so, so you just don't. Non-fat lattes are my saving grace -- both for the protein and the caffeine they pack! And on those mornings that I forget to toss a PowerBar in my purse, I kick myself.

God I love this.