Waiting, and a Mushroom...

Do the committee hearings ever occur at their prescribed times?  So far, I’ m 0 for 3, and losing faith fast.  Still, after enduring hours of waiting and the letdowns of cancellation, it was a good, at least didactic, experience.  Besides the inner corridors of the Rayburn House Office Building, I also became acquainted with DC’s professional line-sitters.  Apparently, they make 20-30 bucks an hour and are about the most politically knowledgeable folks in Washington.  I suppose if you spend hours and hours reading Roll Call and listening to various lobbyists talk shop, you’d have a pretty firm grasp of the political landscape.  Hmm, I wonder if they’re hiring…

 Since living here, I’ve been acquiring some of the most random bits of knowledge – which I dig.  For instance, today I learned that the National Botanical Gardens play host to an enormous fungus plant which flowers only about every decade.  This decennial bloom occurred a couple years ago and the local botanists, horticulturalists, and shroom-droppers went bananas.  It was quite a celebration, with just one drawback - the smell.  This malodorous mushroom emits a scent similar to that of rotting flesh.  Eerily, I got the impression that that fact was used as a way to attract people, not deter.  Weird, I know, but interesting still.  I think the greatest thing about living in the nation's capitol is that it seems you are constantly learning something new, and that something is usually interesting, and almost always more useful than facts about fungus.