By now a lot of you may have heard about an event that happened here in Washington D.C. on Friday. Things happening here aren't all that out of the ordinary but Friday's event made something very clear to me.

For those that haven't heard about what happened I will explain it to you. A man was seen near Capitol Hill carrying an assault shotgun and a sword. He was wearing a bullet proof vest and had the intent on hurting some people. In his car they also found a bow and arrow. When investigating his car they saw wires running out of the glove box and a couple of propane tanks. So of course the bomb squad was deployed and a large section of Capitol Hill was shut down while they dealt with it. You can read about it here.

Safety is a relative term. I served nine years in the Marine Corps and have been sent into hostile areas. We ported in Greece during a communist rally that had all of us on high alert. We sat off the coast of Serbia during their elections and Solbodan Milosevic's reign of terror. I was deployed to Afghanistan during Enduring Freedom. I'm no stranger to hairy situations. But Friday's events got me thinking.

During the whole thing on Friday we watched the events unfold via security cameras. We were laughing and making jokes about it. Some of us hoped the car would explode mostly because that would have been cool to see. Because of all this the shuttle I take to Union Station wouldn't be able to make it to Union Station so I walked. I got to within 25 yards of the bomb squad truck before being detoured down a side street. As I turned down the street the bomb squad used a device to diffuse the bomb in this guys vehicle. Of course this device they used is an explosive. So here I am walking through DC and an explosion goes off. Part of me thought it was cool but another part didn't like it one bit.

It made me realize working here puts me in an interesting situation. All kinds of loonies come to DC. Some are just crazy and feel the need to protest something. Some are pissed off at a senator. Some are angry at the president. And of course there are the terrorist that would love nothing more than to blow something up on Capitol Hill. So am I safe? I would like to think so but in many ways I am not. The security systems we have in place here give you a sense of safety but when it comes down to is we are not. A lot of the buildings are secure and it would be very difficult to do anything but others are wide open. You can pull right up to them in your vehicle and cause a lot of mayhem before you were eventually captured or killed. So I got to thinking about what if this guy parked in front of my building? What if I were outside smoking a cigarette and this guy blew his car up or got out and started shooting? What the hell would I do? I am not armed, at least in the Marine Corps I had my trusty M-16. I would be utterly screwed.

I may be thinking about this too much but it is very surreal to here an explosion near where you work especially when you know what the explosion is related to. I'm sure this won't be my last time experiencing something like this working here. Hopefully, my building will never be the target.