Dried Cherries and Bad Pop Music

IT'S CHRISTMAS EVE so I am cleaning, obviously.

My employment situation, with multiple families adding up to somewhere around 2/3 full-time instead of just one family of full or part time, can be very confusing to explain and very confusing to schedule and very busy and stuff, but around the holidays it really pays off... The more families I have, the more cash presents I get! woo!

I opened the adorable card from Dave Jr's family, and there was a ten dollar bill inside, which is very sweet, and then now I am cleaning, and was about to throw away the envelope and then there were two twenties inside the envelope. So, everyone, check your envelopes!

Last night Roommate and I were at the bar, and we wanted White Russians, but Bar TendOwner had NO KAHLUA. I asked if he would make me White Russians if I brought him a bottle of Kahlua and he said yes, but really at that point I should just make them for myself. Also Roommate and I watched Zoolander, and it had been too long since I had seen that classy classy film.

I just realized that the only reason I got out my computer was to use Google Voice to call my phone, because I made my bed and now I can't find my phone, and here I am a blog post later and listening to Usher on the internet radio, still having no idea where the phone is. And then I just realized I promised Roommate I'd clean the vacuum before he got home, and I still haven't done that. WELL DONE.

New Things November: Monday the 29th

I locked myself out of new house today! I had not locked myself out of this house Ever Before. It is important not to lock oneself out of the house when one does not have a front desk staff with spare keys, and also one has a landlord who is very difficult to contact, and one does not always know when one's roommates are going to be home.

It ended well for me, because Incredibly Adequate Roommate was home before I even left work! He is AWESOME.

Hopefully I will not lock myself out of new house again.

New Things November: Thursday the 25th

Today I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner, which I had never done before. Well, the only thing that I can take ALL the credit for is the stuffing and the turkey, but I was also "executive" on the gravy too (not really, though). We also got to eat salad and baked brie, garlic mashed potatoes, pumpkin soup, bread, and roasted squashes, and then for dessert which none of us could fit in our tummies there was pumpkin pie, coffee cake, and Oreo pie (better known as "dirt"). And we had spiced/spiked cider too, and wine, and MGD, woo!

I had never cooked those things before, the foods that I cooked yesterday! it was all SO RIDICULOUSLY TASTY. then we watched MST3K and I wanted to die of food overdose, and also laughing too hard overdose. It was really excellent times.

oh also Brady figured out how to turn up our hot water heater, which was only set on warm, and now holy crap! the water! it's so amazing! I can take a shower longer than 4.5 minutes and have the water still be warm! I need to turn on the cold faucet as well! I feel like a normal person again! ...nah. no normalcy.

New Things November: Monday the 22nd

Today is a really crappy New Thing. I was running out the door to dinner when I noticed that my cats were outside, which was confusing because they did not get out the door. Then I noticed that one of the cats was halfway out the WIDE OPEN WINDOW, and the screen was pushed all the way up, and then I got the cats inside, and realized that one of my roommates often leaves his computer on the table in front of the window, and that it was gone.

So, wooooo, our house got robbed. That is a stupid stupid Thing That Has Never Happened To Me Before Today. Luckily, roommate whose computer is gone came home right as I was closing the window, which allowed him to log into all his accounts on my computer and change all his passwords. His computer was not worth much more than personal information, which I realize is priceless, but the hardware itself is several years old and not worth much money. He also, I assume, filed a police report.

In our neighborhood, it was only a matter of time until our house had stuff stolen from it, especially because my roommates leave windows unlocked and open and shades up and things like computers in plain sight. I'm really thankful that it was this fashion, even though that roommate had to pay a really unlucky price. It was not our back door being busted down, and all our bikes being stolen, along with our stereo, TV, all four computers, jewelry, other electronics, and all three cats going AWOL possibly for good, etc. etc.

But now, of course, our house is a target, because the stealers could look around our living room, and could at least see my bike and some other things. I feel bad that it happened while I was home. I had the radio on. I don't know that I necessarily could have done anything anyway, I guess. Except lock the window. I suppose it is time to call the landlord and have him fix the back gate. And it is time to talk about leaving the windows locked and closing the motherfreaking blinds.


The New Thing that I did today on PURPOSE was that Biebzbear and I went to DC-3, which was delicious, if not kind of stressful, because taking babies anywhere is stressful, let alone babies who are as fussy as Bear. He's so fussy!

Hello Little Sproutlets!

DC WASA came and fixed our water leak, and dug up the front yard. I got an email from a Roommate NorCal while I was in NYC last Friday about how the Squash Monster was okay. I came home that night and looked at the squash all dug up and hanging out on the dirt and wondered what Roommate NorCal had been smoking. Squash Monster pretty much not okay.

Then on Monday, DC WASA came back and brought us "topsoil" and so I skipped ballet class and all other previous obligations and attempted some hack gardening. I was too lazy to go get mosquito spray at Rite Aid (which is two blocks away, so maybe I was just too broke), and it was about 90 degrees, and remember that our lawn had been a pond and we have the lovely shelter of a ginormo Squash Monster. The next day I started to count my bites, got to 15, realized I was halfway down my first leg, and gave up. Anyway I dove into the plant and cut off the parts that were very clearly dead and rearranged the bits that looked like they might be okay still. I dug a hole and put the okra plant in the ground with a tomato cage around it, and took off all the dead leaves which was all of them, and harvested the 6 inch okra dudes, because no one in my house pays attention to stuff like that. Then I dug some weirdly placed trenches and poured in some flower seeds just to see what would happen.

Because we don't have a giant water leak any more, OR a spigot at the front of our house, I have now assumed the responsibility of massive watering duty. This means filling up a huuuge bucket at the spigot in the back of our house and then hauling it through the house to the front, where then I fill up the watering can and water twice a day.

Here is the status on plants at our house.

Squash Monster: ALIVE! Flowers blooming! I think I saw one fruit today that might still be growing, but I would be super surprised if we got any fruits. It's still nice to know that it is alive.

Okra: Almost certainly dead. I'm gonna give it until I go home next week to rehabilitate, and if it's not alive and doing things by then, that is okay. No one knows how to harvest okras on time anyway.

Flowers: sproutingggggg! I do not particularly care if we get real flowers or not, I just want to have plants in the yard because right now we have dirt and a sickly squash and a dead okra. I have sproutlets, and they are alive.

Soon my bike will have yellow housings for brake and derailleur cables, and it will look so fly. I have been going on and on about yellow housings for so long that the bike shop [personified] just got sick of me talking about it and ordered them. when that happens my bike will be looking fly like this but I have yellow water bottle cages (and a black saddle) so even fly-er than that one.

I'm gonna debauch the hell out of this blog post

Last night:


I went to a barbecue at the house of a coworker of my roommates, where there was brick, and a fire escape, and pretty lights. We decided it didn't look like New York, but a movie about New York instead. It was delicious and fun and I smell like mesquite still, which is funny now but was probably really obnoxious at all the bars last night.

Oh, except I'm kind of sad because I just put clean sheets on my bed and now they smell like barbecue smoke. I can't be too upset at myself, though, because even if the thought to shower had crossed my mind when I got home last night, I wouldn't have been able to accomplish becoming clean, as I was far too focused on the cricket that I was absolutely convinced was under my bed. The cricket! It was there, I swear to David DeJesus.


I have had excellent times in Augusts in the past few years. This marks the second year in a row that Maeg has called me from a wedding the night before she moves back to DC and conveys all the ridiculousness that has happened so far at the nuptial party for one of her one hundred fifty three thousand three hundred and forty cousins. This year there was fountain swimming, none by Maeg unfortunately.

oh, wait, sorry, that's not how many cousins Maeg has, that's how much water we got billed for by DC WASA as a result of this little baby:



That's right, the spring, the source of life, the reason for our $1505.66 water bill and 153,340 gallons of water sitting in our front yard. For some perspective, China reported its giant oil spill as being 400,000 gallons. (Also, holy smack what is with all the oil spills. Sorry, Earth, I think we're beginning to get the picture...) (and, couldn't we have had one more dollar's worth of water in that 33 day billing cycle, so that our bill, which we received on Friday, August 13, was $1506.66?!? That would have been too much)

Yesterday one roommate and I were standing on the platform of the NY Ave metro station, watching some dudes bike past us on the MBT , and one guy yelled something to the effect of "Hey stop being such lazy asses! Get a bike!" which I thought was situationally hilarious and also infuriating. Someone came up with the idea that back before that idiot started to ride, someone yelled that at him once, and so now he thinks he's the shit and wanted to pay it forward to try and make himself look cool. How many combined hours in the past six weeks have I spent on my bike or at the bike shop or drinking with the guys who work at the bike shop? Hey entitled douchebag, I'm taking the fucking metro so that I won't bike drunk, because biking drunk is FUCKING STUPID.
And, let's talk about how biking is a policy of choice and not everyone can afford a $1500 Bianchi and the time to leisurely ride the MBT, because some of us have $1500 water bills to pay, and cooler plans than you for Saturday night.

Silver Jenny Dollar

I went to Annapolis today! It was kind of like this:


Maybe tomorrow I will upload the thrilling video I took of some boats and stuff.

West Virginia to the north

People who are my sister will now be attacked by this image for a third time (first email, second Bookface), but it is too amazing to not share a lot:


Today was rainy, so Stellina and I couldn't go outside really, we have been having crazy crazy thunderstorms, so she attacked my bag, and put on my extra shirt (NatsTown) and socks (argyle), and then my shoes and bike helmet, and went through my wallet and dragged around my Timbuk2 a bit and generally impersonated me. The shirt is a unisex medium, so, huge on me, extra ginormous on her. The bottom of it dragged on the ground and the sleeves covered her hands all the way before I rolled them up a bit.

She turns 2 on Sunday. Already if you ask her how old she is, she says "Do! Do!" which seems to be the only number she knows. I got her a couple of books, one called Baby Giggles (the kid is absolutely obsessed with babies), and then Maisy Goes to Preschool (Stellina will be starting preschool in the fall, and I will miss her but I don't want her to be scared), and also Elmo's ABC Book (if you thought she loved babies, she loves Elmo even more, and also she will need to learn the alphabet soon).

Another really important thing that happened today was that I bought my plane ticket to go home for a bit in September. Now I need to make a comprehensive list of all the things I want to do in Portland and Seattle! It will come up very very quickly I know, and I am so excited but also I will be sad to be gone from here for so long. I will miss my cats and my bike and my kids and my city. Mid-September is a great time of year in DC.

I am having a problem with my bike. When I get on it I do not want to get off. I don't care where I go, I just want to ride around and look at stuff and get totally lost and just spend time going fast or going slow and swerving to avoid potholes and stopping at stop signs and running red lights (of course when it is safe to do so) and getting angry when people drive or park or walk in the bike lane, which I learned some things about today. I guess my bike continues to be an extended metaphor for my current place in life, though I don't think that metaphor is the correct literary device, please help.

The day before yesterday my roommate and I converted his bike to a single-speed after his rear derailleur broke to unfixable proportions (that is not a fixie pun, his bike is not a fixie), and then we decided to ride to Screen on the Green, which was much more fun than I expected it to be. Both the ride and the movie. Halfway through the sky opened up and it started to flood, complete with lightning right on top of us. Roommate was terrified of the lightning so he dropped his keys and phone and wallet in the middle of the ground and then just kind of ran in a circle and then just stood there looking sad and confused. Then we decided we probably weren't going to die and so we danced in the sheets of rain until it stopped and we were soaked all the way.

And so, we rode home on the wet streets, which were nearly empty in the dark, and we went up a huge long hill at the Capitol, and roommate's bike doesn't have gears, and I can't change gears yet because I have to have two hands on the handlebars or I will die (my shifters are on my frame, not handlebars), so we sang Livin' On A Prayer at the top of our lungs to get to the top of the hill. The Hill, I guess. The view of the Capitol as we rode east on Constitution was breathtaking, or maybe it was just that I had just ridden up a crazy crazy hill without being able to downshift.

Then when we got home we got fried chicken and mac & cheese and ate it sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Any more than I needed her too?

It is time for partyz.


Someday my roommate will find out that I put a picture of him wearing an apron with no shirt on the internet, and he will make me take it down.

Until that day, please feast your eyes on this piece of wonder. By that I mean the goat ribs on the grill.

It's List Wednesday!

I am bored, and don't want to work on things that I need to work on, so I decided to finally put down my DC Bucket List - stuff that I haven't done yet in DC and really need to do before I move away. I don't know when that is, but it is at minimum a year, so just to be safe, I want to start making sure I can take care of business and do everything.

So here is my list of shit that I haven't done yet in DC but want to do / places I haven't been but need to, in no particular order.

PLACES:

1) Roosevelt Island

2) National Arboretum

3) Hirschhorn Gallery

4) FDR Memorial

5) Air & Space Museum at Dulles

6) Frederick Douglass House

7) Pentagon Memorial

8) the museum in Katzen at AU

THINGS TO DO:

1) Sunrise at the Lincoln Memorial

2) Caps game

3) DC United game

4) Watch the drag race in Dupont

5) Screen on the Green

6) Roller derby (uh... watch, not participate, as much as I love Whip It)

7) train to Baltimore for the day (I know that's not DC, but, it starts at Union Station!)

8) a sport on the Mall! frisbee, bocce, softball, croquet, etc. doesn't matter which one.

9) go up the Washington Monument

10) Embassy open houses, EU and others

11) Paddle boats in the Tidal Basin (except this is so romantic I might barf)

What am I missing? It doesn't need to be all national shit, it can be like "hey you totally need to go to Sticky Rice on H Street, NE! and have omakase, and a carafe of sake. Then, go to the Biergarten Haus and drink whiskey while rooting for the Celtics, as your roommate shuns you in his ugly-ass Laker hat."

Well, I did that last night, so, think of something else.

OK well we also have a list of Awesome Shit that I Have Already Done in DC, which will be the next post, for ease of editing.

How 'bout them Uruguayans?

Contra

I will get back to posts that are not just giant lists of stuff ... shortly. Now things are starting to feel settled and I think this will be the first week of real normalcy? So that's pretty great!

So here is a list of Things That Have Happened.

I graduated from college! That's fun. It was really stressful but nice to see everyone.

I moved across town! This is a big big big thing. The chaos started a little over a month ago, when I was hung out to dry by some folks that I was potentially going to live with, and then I wasn't sure if I was going to have to move back to Oregon, or what. Then, I got freaking lucky and two of my new roommates found me, and then some more chaos happened regarding my old apartment, and then I moved into my new house, and then my new roommates moved in about a week later, and now our fourth roommate is in, and everything is fantastic! Actual moving really sucked, but packing was not terrible, and unpacking was also not terrible. I had lots of help from really great friends.

More on the new house and new neighborhood forthcoming.

Somewhere around moving time I got a bunch of new jobs, and also a new phone, and all of those are great.

Then it was my birthday! I turned a different age than I was before. That was fun. I got drunk and busted my knee on the balcony of my old apartment, and it's almost all better now but still kind of gnarly.

Then I helped clean the house of my friend, whose other housemates left him totally screwed and responsible for cleaning the entire house where seven boys had lived. That was fun, because I like cleaning, even though it was gross. I miss that house a lot, it very much defined last summer for me. Now I have a new definition.

And then today! I bought a bike! It looks a little something like this:

the green-looking bit is more blue than what it looks like in this photo, more like in this photo. It is pretty freaking rad. I have to switch out the pedals for regular platform pedals but the pedals (clipless? I need to learn a lot about bikes quickly) that are on it are not too terrible to ride with. The front brake needs aligning, which some random bike co-op folks that I ran into showed me how to do, and they also filled my tires which was so nice of them! Bike is super '80s and very rad. hardxcore rad, even.

And then I bought a fan for my room and a ton of Otter Pops from Rite-Aid, which is two blocks from my house, and a bunch of summer clothes from oldnavy.com. I am done stimulating the economy for a while.

and I don't want no substitute

Both my roommates are gone now. One will be back next weekend for Georgetown's graduation, and she'll be back next term, but we won't be living together anymore. The other is gone for who knows how long? That Peace Corps thing is super time-consuming.

I can't wait to be moved and have my work schedule set so I can start focusing on what really matters during summer: baseball, grilling, and drinking.

and going to the zoo.

not in that order? in that order?

blerg.