8.48 pm

So exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open and so wired I can barely sit still. I feel as though I haven't stopped moving since Tuesday? Wednesday? last week when I got pulled to be on the team working the Secretary of State's visit. This past week has been a frantic rush to check out the site of the Afghanistan conference, hammer out the details, and get all that info back to Washington. Not an easy task. Every step of every movement needs to be discussed, walked through, written up, in triplicate, sent to the processing department, lost in the mail, resent, and rubber stamped. The upside about 12 or 13 or 14 hour days is that if you're busy enough to be working that much, you're busy enough that it flies by.

And fly it does. Here I am on a Tuesday night, a week after we began to pull the visit together, and I can say that I witnessed diplomacy in action, took notes for the Secretary, and had a chance to shake her hand. I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed that our official photographer got a wide angle shot of the meeting where I took notes, so that there's a photo with me and the Secretary at the same table. Perhaps a little silly or celebrity struck - but you already know that I'm a geek like that.

*edit* There is such a picture, although I found it on the Hillary Clinton Blog. All credit to the anonymous photographer.