An email

From: Mo

To: Sexy Steve

1:10pm

WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH CAROLINA

DID YOU VOTE FOR ALVIN GREENE

WHYYYYYYYYY

----------------------------

From: Sexy Steve

To: Mo

1:28pm

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON! AND OF COURSE I DIDNT VOTE FOR GREENE! IM NOT INSANE! I VOTED FOR RAWL!

Mental Forces

Prince Philip and Captain Bananio, who I get to see tomorrow, too! Maybe we will do Play-Doh for TWO WHOLE HOURS again.

I played in the water in the backyard with Stellina today. Splash splash splash! When the UPS man came and rang the doorbell with a package for Stellinadaddy, we answered the door in our swimsuits.

And then I ate a bacon cheeseburger at the Nats game, and we beat the dread Pirates, and it was great.

He's confessing his undying like for me

Strasburg delivers! 14 strikeouts, every single member of the Pirates' starting line-up, in 90ish pitches. I'm glad I didn't buy his jersey in vain. Well.... so far. Chickens still have some hatchin' to do, but it looks like we're off to a good start.

I took a stinging nettle to my right heel yesterday evening, just where the scar is from my slice-on-the-bed incident. Let me inform you, that plant lives up to its name. It should be called "omg don't ever accidentally briefly touch this plant just trust me don't do it stay awayyyyyy" - that would be even more accurate.

I suddenly feel like I have started something in the middle and am struggling to figure out what the hell is going on so I can try to catch up, and in the meantime, I'm just faking it and hoping eventually it will turn out real. As though me trying to learn how to ride my new bike, clipless pedals and all, is a giant metaphor for my life. I get going for a couple blocks or so, and I know I look like a total badass on my sweet retro road bike, and I feel like I know what I'm doing and I look like I know what I'm doing, and then I get to an intersection, and have to stumble off in an undignified and sometimes painful fashion and walk for a few blocks, until there aren't many people to see me try and awkwardly get back on and get started again.

I haven't been good at bikes in a loooong time, if I ever was. I have a very clear memory of remembering to brake at the last minute and stopping with my front wheel an inch away from falling in the duck pond at Westmoreland Park, just when I had recently gotten to a point where I felt a mastery of no training wheels. I was ... nine? ten? Only now, a decade and some odd later, instead of the duck pond, it's traffic, and kids with grandparents, and stone retaining walls, and hot dog carts, and construction workers, and that curb, and trees, and more retaining walls, and I have to remember to relax my grip on the handlebars because I'm holding too tight, but don't relax too much or I'll forget to steer and end up in the duck pond.

Yeah, that Giant Metaphor of my Raleigh Technium TriLite.

My polka-dotted skateboard helmet is securely fastened.

This is it

I got all excited 'cause on my dashboard, it said I had 151 posts, and I was very pleased with myself, and then I realized several were drafts, and so I actually have about 145 total posts on this blog.

Yesterday's 2:20pm to 2:23pm thunderstorm finally cooled the city down after a long string of 85+ degree days, with humidity. Last night, not only did I sleep wearing clothes for the first time in at least a week, I also slept without an ice pack, and by the middle of the night I actually got under the covers!!! it was AWESOME.

Then today, I got my haircut, had a brief spa appointment, had lunch with Uncle Sexy and his friend at this Salvadorean place I've always wanted to try - and definitely should have tried sooner.

The cats somehow stopped begging for food at 3am. I don't know how it happened. Right now they're eating at 10am and 10pm and not begging me for food in the inbetween times. It might be that they're getting into Sawyer's food, but I think they're still too scared to go into that room because there's a hissing smaller version of Zoe that guards it. They ALSO have been leaving food in their bowls for later! Which in the past has been totally unheard of. I think it's probably too hot to eat. Really, who wants to eat anything other than Otter Pops? Which I did actually stack on Rhett for a bit on Friday, which was a super hot day, and he did not protest, and in fact looked pretty happy about.

I got to take a really awesome nap this afternoon, with the breeze coming in the window. And then I got to have tomatoes, mozzarella, and balsamic vinegar, and then leftover Ethiopian food, and then a mango for dinner. Everyone else had pizza, because our gas got shut off, apparently we were using it illegally? I don't really know. But we all sat on the porch, covered in bug bites and bug spray, with the Jesus candles lit, and talked about Snowmaggedon and Snowpocalypse and Snowverkill, and decided to have our housewarming party on June 25. This is a natural choice, as it coincides with the first anniversary of Michael Jackson's death, and we live half a block from the Michael Jackson Shrine House. And Sawyer pranced around in the backyard catching fireflies.

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.

Things To Which I Am Morally Opposed, episode III

People who don't take responsibility for their own health issues and needs and instead make assumptions that their needs will automatically be met.

People who respond with things like "Fun stuff" and "weird" when I've just told them that my life has become one giant clusterfuck in the past 4 hours and that I may end up living out of a U-Haul for a week and a half because I literally have nowhere else to go and don't have a gorram clue what I'm going to do. (would it be difficult to say "omg that sucks"? I feel that is a much more appropriate response)

Communication failures.

No cell phone reception.

NextBus lying to me.

People and things that suck.

Right now.

Things For Which I Am Eternally Grateful, episode I

Sleep.

Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me.

Really good cheeseburgers.

Excellent hair days.

Feminist men (real ones, not fake ones).

YouTube.

Playlists containing only the best Chuckanut Drive, Rhett Miller, Old 97s, Neko Case, and New Pornographers songs.

Progress.

Having too many clothes.

Best friends that email a link to the cast of Glee singing the National Anthem just 30 minutes after you emailed to that person the cast of Glee singing a cover of Charlie Chaplin's "Smile."

Just not the one?

Bored and the babby is asleep. Long boring post is about to happen.

Things I accomplished today, in order!

0.5) got out of bed. Accomplishment!

0.75) got an email from Deanna, was really happy and sad at the same time

1) took a shower

2) acquired tickets to the Nats-Mets game for Thursday with Allison!

3) took the bus! to Friendship Hay-eights Station. talked to Maeg on the way!

4) ate Panera for lunch! Was generally obnoxious. Drank water! a delicious experience, if a bit awkward.

5) went to Gap, bought jeans that actually maybe fit! for $25 off! Now I won't feel so bad when they rip and become unwearable in 8 months because I didn't pay 60 bucks for them. also acquired two new tanktops in colors I had not previously owned.

6) went to new babby house to meet new babby! different than the babby I have right at this moment. I have many new babbies. Once everything settles I will give ALL OF THEM internet names.

7) went home, fed my cats. yay cats, I love them. They're extra cuddly today. Because of the rain, you see.

8) came to other babbysits. fed babby, bathed babby, put babby to bed, sang Psalm 23 authoritatively to babby, finally had to let babby cry babbyself to sleep.

9) tried to get Verizon representative on the phone for the 15th time today. All I want to do is switch my service to the new house, and it is being painfully full of suck.

10) watched this:

11) Brad called this the "AD EQUIVALENT OF ORGASM," with which I politely disagreed

12) found out that one of my friends moved to New Mexico without telling me?!?????!?

activity 13 is to figure out how to get the child lock off the toilet lid so that I can pee.

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.

Leslie Knope

I think I scare people with how much I love DC. A few weeks ago I gave one of my roommate's family friends a tour of AU's campus, and what was supposed to be about 30 minutes turned into 2 hours of blabbing about AU and DC, and 2 skipped meetings, and one jilted professor. Sorry, Linda.

Today I found out that one of my friends from high school is moving to DC in the late summer to work for the JVC. She'll be here for a year. I'm pretty jealous because she gets to live in Columbia Heights, where I wanted to live (instead, I'll be living in the Atlas District, which is "painfully hip"?? also, awesomely cheap), but I'm super excited that she'll be here! We were corresponding a bit on the bookface today and then she got bored with that and called me, so I talked to her for THIRTY-EIGHT MINUTES about how awesome the District is. I'm pretty sure that about 10 minutes in she was like "ohhh man who is this crazy person and is she going to try to be my friend when I get there I should have never told her I'm moving there"

In other news, I have just ordered myself a Motorola Backflip, I guess as a birthday present for myself? It is supposed to be wicked awesome and I wanted a phone that runs Android without having to switch networks to get an HTC Droid. But, it's essentially built for the purpose of social networking, which freaks me out. I didn't really need to be further enabled. Also I just realized that if I activate it before the 26th, when our billing cycle rolls over, I'll probably be charged $30 for a full month of data, having only used it for 8 days or whatever. Blerg. Might be worth it to play with the new shiny.

Am in the midst of moving?? But will be getting back to blogging more again. Yay! I've missed it. Stupid finals and graduation.

Happy birthday, Maegarooni, don't die. Punbot is broken.

Nothin' not to love

I'm graduated, yay.

District of Columbia

District of Columbia

- Benjamin Walker -

I applaud

the Navy snipers on the rooftops--

men standing guard

with automatic weapons

on unlit Metro cars

and circling the House of Saud

while the neckties on K Street

and the brass buttons in the Pentagon

outgun everyone

I honor the Congressmen

who get the last word

without listening to ours--

they say don't hand out clean needles

then slip away at night

hugging their comforters in cool Virginia

I sing praises

for the 5-0

who understand

why we left our IDs at home--

who patrol Spring Valley

and the National Cathedral

at 3AM--

who sleep

parked

on Nebraska and Constitution

while a Balkan melee rages

across the Anacostia river

I offer a toast

to the CVS guy who locked up

all the condoms in the Navy Yard

and through the lower wards--

as if this swamp isn't muggy enough

In this city--

as long as it remains--

men on the street

come up to me cold

as I leave theaters

right out of Chinatown--

one takes my offered cigarette

but refuses my dollar

then says

I like you though,

See?

You look me right

In the eyes

It's fine, everything is fine. Just fine. Fine.

I measure my time in Captain Bananio development stages. I hope I get to be his best friend for all of time.

Assignment 1A

I've got a hell of a lot more of this to do.

Also, I got an awesome sunburn that day where my convertible tights stopped, and so I have a line where my skin is slightly more red. It's like the reverse of a sock tan. only it's burn. and right above that on my left leg I have bruises from hopping concrete barriers at the Tidal Basin.

It's clear that this blog is now only about injuries to my lower extremities. It must be spring.

cat

that's what I've got for today.

Right Red Ankle

Things that have happened to my right foot in the past year:

July: Slam it in a revolving door. yes.

September: Drop a full container of laundry detergent (pointy top down) on it.

December: Drop a chair on it (walk it off walk it off okay now let's look OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY FOOT) - I still have marks.

all the time: stub toes, kick things. only my right foot!!! I notice when I stub my left foot and it is not often.

March 28, noon: Slice open heel on edge of bed. Bleed through two bandaids.

so far.

ETA: we've now succeeded in bleeding through three bandaids, a sock, and a shoe!

ETA II: and now another sock, onto the fourth bandaid. Should I be worried?

March 28, 1:30pm: kick chair, stub toes.

I'm sparing readers the photo of this morning, though I have photos of all of these events.

You save the best for later

When I woke up this morning and looked at my phone, I momentarily thought that it was my birthday.

Happy 27.

It is nice when fussy babbies calm down when you start singing "You Are My Sunshine" to them. Also, one-year-olds should not have Queen shirts, but at the same time, yes they should.

Stay in school, kids.

I can't forget that first time you left

I miss PSU's practice rooms, even though they were terrifyingly effective in producing claustrophobia, because they were really pretty much soundproof. These ones are shiny, though, and I think almost all have a piano?

I would be happy if this happened. I'm happy it exists and I'm happy everything about it.

I've been listening to the FYCL podcast which is totally awesome. I mean, it's just SJ and the Egg sitting around talking about random stuff and dubious sex toys and dubious advice and dubious other things, but it's really pretty hilarious. I listened to it a bunch today as I travelled back and forth from Stellina's house, which wasn't the most practical, because I had to turn it way up to hear both of them, and then SJ's laugh is REALLY LOUD. See how I did that in all caps there to emphasize loudness?

I read too many DC blogs now. and they suck. They're all the same and they all suck. DCist is solid but really bougie, and then there's WeLoveDC that just sucks and is super-bougie but sometimes they pick up stuff that DCist misses so you have to have both, and then there's Prince of Petworth, who is awesome but updates, oh, say, about a hundred thousand times a day. Then there's why.i.hate.dc, which updates like once a week maybe with usually boring stuff that we've all heard before, and then there's Unsuck DC Metro which is kind of funny actually but makes anger. and 14th & You updates once every fourscore years and it's usually boring and/or bougie.

(Bougie being the best word I can presently think of to describe these. See also: elitist, woo privilege!, omgomgomganotherwinebaromg)

More on that later.

Time waits for no man but for woman it stops

This morning Brad recorded the radio show on a minidisc, so ... that is likely where it will stay for the rest of eternity. Is it possible to transfer minidisc to any other format? isn't that why minidiscs failed? also, because you can only record like 20 minutes on each? I am probably wrong. Anyway, I'm sure the show was entertaining.

Yesterday I saw Stellina for the first time in two weeks, and she was confused that I cut all my hair off. She is getting bigger all the time!! Funny how that happens.

I've got Fidelity Grange cycling through again and again, especially "Falling Still." It's just been that week.

Here's a photo from New Orleans:

Honey, I'm searching still.

Things To Which I Am Morally Opposed, episode II

Boys who should be decent and maybe even really great, and instead treat awesome awesome girls (who treat the boys so well) like they are not worth any time or effort or care or thought.

Metal Rolling Stones covers.

Food deserts.

Not getting a second chance.

Phones freezing! Electronics freezing when I am trying to do something.

Miscarriages when the mama wants the babby so badly.