Convention Center Gig

So I was going to the zoo today and then I was going to blog about that. However, getting up off the couch yesterday I ran my little toe into some hand weights and I am pretty sure I broke it. It still moves up and down, but it is huge and putting weight on my foot is painful. Hopefully it won't hurt so much soon and I will be able to visit with the lions, tigers and bears in the near future.

Since my zoo trip is postponed, I will instead write about my event planning gig yesterday at the convention center. I applied for work with an event planner who was looking for a few people to work registration for an event happening at the convention center in DC. I had a phone interview and after she had asked me to work the job she mentioned that the convention was for Expungement Candidates.

I later realized that the convention I was working was for convicted persons who were working on re-entry into society. The organizer was the Public Defenders office, and they had set up a system by which registrants could get appointments with lawyers to discuss Civil Liberties, Social Assistance, Child Support and how to get their records Expunged or Sealed. There were also workshops for assistance in housing and job recruitment as well as a large fair for lawyers and other professionals to extend their services to the registrants.

They had planned on having around 700 people attend, however I think the numbers only got as high as 400. That meant that most of the day was spent sitting at a table waiting for registrants. The variety of registrants and the other staffers were interesting and overall the day was fairly pleasant.

On the way home (3 stops on the metro green line) we were informed that my stop was closed because of a suspicious package and a bomb threat. Apparently there was a bus or a shuttle but since I never found it I just walked the mile or so home. After NYC, Washington metro system feels very inefficient.