Let's write!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

A few weeks ago I applied for a written communication workshop at the Leadership Institute and was able to attend this two day workshop for free (because I was the first person to sign up). I was not sure what to expect, but I initially heard about it through the Ladies DC listserve, that I've mentioned before. Last night was day 1 of the course and unfortunately, it started off on the wrong foot. My name tag said: SOPHIA. Already in a mad mood by then, but the evening improved thanks to a Greek dinner spread, which included delicious falafel, hummus, grape leaves, shwarma, chicken skewers and meatballs.

There were two speakers for the night. The first was Matt Lewis who is the senior contributor for The Daily Caller and also the editor of  "The Quotable Rogue: The Ideals of Sarah Palin In Her Own Words". He has appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, ABC's Nightline, Lou Dobbs Radio, etc. Needless to say, it was becoming evident that I was at a VERY conservative and political workshop. Which there is nothing wrong with, but I was not mentally prepared for this crowd. Lewis polled the 100 attendees on the reason for them being there and the top 3 answers were: campaigning, fundraising and political blogging. Not exactly why I was there...why was I there?

Nonetheless, he was entertaining, knowledgeable and supposedly a George Clooney look-alike. Favorite quotes of his presentation: "Don't hate the playa', hate the game" and "You can't change the world, if you can't pay rent".

The next speaker was Daniel Graham, who "provides training and consulting about writing efficiency and quality to corporations and government agencies. He is also an award-winning novelist with five titles". He was extremely knowledgeable about fast and effective writing. However, I felt like I was in school again and the doodling (read: hearts, flowers and fonts) began, I can't seem to help myself. The words passive voice, subjunctive, pronouns and shifting terms equivocation are not really my friends at 9:00pm (zzzz). I'm terribly sorry. Also, I was a bit distracted during the evening, by the guy who kept removing and re-inserting his (slobbery) retainer and the girl next to me with her electronic translator (English-Japanese) who kept typing every other word she heard into it--via, passe, literary, blending, condom (well, that one didn't really happen but I wanted to see if you were paying attention). However, I did learn that Hebrew language has a past and present tense, but no future tense. Who knew?

We shall see what tonight's speakers have in store for us...

In other news, I'm bummed that despite being in the Dupont Circle area yesterday for a work luncheon, I totally missed this! Turns out that Honest Tea installed "pop-up stands" in 12 cities around the United States yesterday. The stands were unattended (but being secretly filmed) and people were asked to drop $1 into a locked box for every tea they took. It was a social experiment and the idea was to see how honest people really are, when no one is watching. This year DC scored a 91% on the honesty scale, where as Chicago scored a 99%...would you have paid? That's the real question.