Followup: My Trip to DC

A bit of a followup on my trip to DC. I had a great time at the training. It was a little more clear what we were being trained to do - basically facilitate "Table Top Exercises" for NGOs and partner organizations. Because of the Homeland Security funding, we are doing exercises that start out with a natural disaster with mass casualties , following up with a terrorist incident planned to take advantage of the media attention. We still have 5 online courses to take before we can begin facilitating and they won't be ready until this fall.

I attended this training with 3 staff from our chapter - Nick Hambridge, former Americorps VISTA and the new Manager of External Relations, Beth Neil, the South Coast Area Office Director, and Mike Chaplain, former Coast Guard officer and South Zone Volunteer Specialist. Monday night we headed down the street from the hotel in search of a sit-down restaurant and ended up at Nagoya Japanese Steak-Seafood in Asburn for a Teppanyaki-style meal.

Speaking of food, I was incredibly and pleasantly surprise at the quality of the breakfast & lunch dishes as well as the various snacks, desserts, and beverages in the "Kiosk" kitchen at the Executive Conference and Training Center. Really top-quality.

Tuesday I met up with Kristin , Heather , HarpinRed , Chanel19 , and Flamingcarrot for a phenomenal French dinner at the Eiffel Tower Cafe and some great post-meal conversation. Our the food, service and atmosphere was really amazing. Perfect for an intimate dinner with friends.

It was really sad to have to leave and head home. I hadn't seen Heather and Kristin in ages and it was my first face-to-face meeting of the other three - who were very cool. I miss having friends that we can go out to dinner with, have over for a movie night with intellectal conversation and Kirky's amazing food.

Hrm - 3 mentions of food. Time for dinner.

In Washington, DC - Dinner?

Hi all - I waited to post this until I got here because it was pretty last-minute. I am here at the Holiday Inn Dulles for Red Cross/FEMA training. The training is supposed to "enhance the response capacity of NGO and volunteer orgs following WMD or Terrorist incidents". I am being trained to be a Tabletop Exercise Facilitator.

Anyway, I know some of my friends are at HOPE, ComiCon or getting ready to head out to BlackHat but I'd love to have a late dinner with y'all on Tuesday. I get done with my course around 5pm but I'm hoping to get a peek at the Disaster Response Office and some of the IT stuff over at the HQ before I leave.

Give me a holler on my cell if you're around or email me. Leave a comment if you don't have my cell number.