Dallas Part I and a Shutdown Solution

Alright guys, judging by my prolonged absences from blog-land, I have a lot to tell you.

Let's start with with my trip to Dallas (which might be broken up into parts, cause I'm starting this post late and I'm already starting to yawn...)

Soooooo if you follow me on Instagram, which by the way, I feel like I started my last post out the same way. Is anyone else feeling like Insta is kind of a spoiler for your blog posts? You already know what I did, why am I blogging about it?

Anyway, if you follow me on Instagram you know I took a trip to Dallas with a couple 

of my girlfriends.

Woop woop! Girls trip!

We rented a minivan (four women + four women's luggage really left us no choice but to go with the minivan) and road-tripped it out to Dallas.

Why Dallas you ask? Why are you vacationing to Dallas?

Well, the answer I'd been giving was, 

"Well, umm you know, ASU is playing Notre Dame at Cowboys stadium that weekend, and I have a girlfriend out there, and you know, just for a girls trip and stuff."

I have a confession, though.

That's not the real reason we went out to Dallas.

We went to Dallas to go see the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum that was just opened this Spring.

Woof. There, I said it.

I'd stopped giving that answer because whenever I did people would be like,

"Oh cool! But really, why are you going to Dallas?"  

I know, normal women in their mid-twenties don't go traveling around the country to visit Presidential Libraries. And then pile on the fact that it's Bush, and it's just not an easy task trying to convince someone that yes, this is in fact, how I want to spend my vacation.

Only problem is we didn't get to see the Library.

Wanna know why?

Cause the night before we left for our trip the Government shut down.

And since the Library is run by the National Archives, you guessed it, the Library was shut down too.

We made our way down there anyway, since the restaurant and the gift shop would be open, and since we love both shopping and eating, we figured we'd make what we could out of it.

At least we knew the Library was closed ahead of time, there were other folks walking up thinking it was open. We chose not to say anything to them, but rather, see the looks on their faces
when they read the signs.
So sad. Turn on the news people.

So needless to say, this was as close as we were gonna get.

Thanks a lot Congress.

So you know, we got a good view of the outside.

...And that's about it.

We were hoping the Government would open before we left Dallas so we could see the Library before we had to head home.
And when that didn't happen, we hoped the Government would stay closed, cause I was gonna be reaaaalllly mad if we got home on Monday and the Government was open for business on Tuesday.
But now, since that didn't happen, I'm ready for the Government to be open again.
You know, just like they're legally and constitutionally bound to do so.

Since Congress can't seem to figure out a way to make it work,  I've figured I'd help them out. I've basically come up with a list of solutions on how to make our politicians get along better and so that they can re-open the Government.
I'm like, 87% sure they'll work.

I call it:

Operation: PBFFs

(political best friends forever)

(cause Washington loves acronyms)

Democrats and Republicans (and Libertarians too, for good measure) should do the following in order to get along, and take care of business so the government can open up again and tourists can go see the Bush Library (too bad that won't be me):

-Attend floor sessions dressed in Halloween costumes...cause I bet you'd feel really silly fighting with your fellow congressman dressed as a Teletubby.

-Change the party mascots (or whatever they're called)...cause quite frankly nobody wants to be called an elephant or a donkey (or the other word people use for donkey), so right off the bat I'm sure it puts people on the defensive.

-Text message each other pictures like this:

Cause you can't really be mad at someone after this pops up on your phone.

-Play with puppies together.
People bond over puppies.

Take mine for example:

Bond over puppies, bond over the debt ceiling, and bada-boom-bada-bing you've got a productive United States Congress.

-Share good jokes
People bond over good jokes too.
And plus, I always look at someone with a little more respect after they tell me a good joke.
Example:
Q: What's Forest Gump's password?
A: 1forest1
...Funny right?! I could totally hash out a budget and avoid Federal default after that kind of a doozy.

-Do a ropes course together
The kind where you do all kinds of team building activities and the classic "trust fall."
Nothing says let's make a deal quite like,
"I'll bring your bill to the Senate floor for negotiation if you catch my body falling 
from 20 feet up."

-And last but not least...
Uncle Si 2016!!!

Part of me feels like it's my fault the Government isn't open by now.
I should've given them these tips a long time ago. Like, before we left for Dallas so that they didn't
ruin our vacation.
I hate it when the government ruins your vacation.

Good thing we had other fun things planned...which I'll tell you about later.
Ugh, so lame I know. But this would be one mother of a blog post if I didn't stop now.

This post originally posted on Hayley's blog