The Love Affair Continues

It was about 85 degrees today, and still, my housemate made a pie. A completely delicious summer blueberry pie.

Earlier, I discovered the vegetarian/vegan cafe and bakery up the street. Then I passed by Cake Love and had to stop in.

And then, at Target, they were giving away free pints of ice cream. My favorite flavors, too.

And on the walk home from Target, I passed a "Bake Sale for Obama". Now, ordinarily I would stop to support two of my favorite things, but with a Cake Love cupcake and a pint of ice cream in my bag, and a pie waiting at home, it seemed a bit much, even for me.

DC has figured out my weakness, and is pulling out all the stops to exploit it.






(I also joined a gym today.)

DC Weekends

On the weekends, our next-door neighbor pops open his garage door in the alley and cranks up the stereo inside. I'm pretty sure it's audible for at least five blocks. He plays a mix of classic soul, some R&B, and Spanish music.

This, apparently, is the caveat, the asterisk to my awesome porch. The music is completely inescapable. But I can't even get mad about the numbing volume level, or the blatant intrusiveness of it all (forget about trying to play my own music—my wussy computer speakers don't stand a chance).

All of the backyards of our city block meet up in the middle, so I can look out at the backs of houses from the streets to the east, north, and south from my porch view. People come out from their own yards, chatting it up with each other. With the tunes, and the intoxicating smell of BBQ all day long, it's like a block party every weekend out there.

(This must be a best-of-the-80s CD: 'Eye of the Tiger' just finished playing, and now 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' is on.)

A Little Dose of Home

Chicago pals Mannequin Men were in town last night, playing not too far away at the Black Cat. My first DC show!



My school chum Andrea came out to meet me. She's in DC for a couple days preparing for a summer program in Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast. (Nope, not jealous at all, not one bit.)

Then tomorrow after work, my housemates and I are going to Jazz in the Garden at the National Gallery of Art, then to the Hirshhorn After Hours. Yay, culture! I should finally have some snaps of the actual city, too.

This Time, With Plants!

I swear I do more than just take photos of my porch.

(The Day After) My First Day as an Arts Advocate

Postponed because my internet connection wasn't working last night. There wasn't much to report on anyway. Like all first days at a new job, it involved a lot of paperwork, training videos, 'here's the copier and here's the fax' tours, and meeting 50 people whose names you forget 30 seconds after shaking their hands.

It also poured rain when I left, and I had no umbrella.

I did, however, get taken out to a nice lunch (Georgia Brown's) and got a spiffy new bag and keychain. My commute was less than 30 minutes door-to-door, and I caught the bus immediately both ways. Everyone in the office is genuinely nice and interesting and weird.


my new office

Today was much more exciting, not the least because it was a breezy 75 degrees with sun. After an intro meeting with the vice president of policy and research (my cup o' tea), I finally got to sit down with my new supervisor and find out what exactly it is the "Government and Public Affairs" intern does.

Turns out, some pretty neat stuff.

Sure, there's the requisite tedium inherent to any internship, but my minutiae appears to involve number crunching. More fun.

I'll also be sitting in on some Congressional sessions next week, as the Senate mark-up begins on the Interior appropriations bill (which encompasses the NEA, one of our primary interests, of course). The House approved a $15mil increase in the NEA's funding for next year; now it goes to the Senate. Ms Maria Officially Goes To Washington!

I also have a mini-project researching Barack Obama's arts policy committee, which includes my former supervisor and a professor who works closely with my old museum.

My long-term summer project is to review and revise my organization's federal resource guide for international cultural exchange. The State Department's position and funding for cultural exchange seems to vary year to year, so the existing document needs some updating and analysis. Woohoo!


this is the first time i've ever had a cubicle. it's empty and sad and right next to the noisy copier

Also: there were two homemade cakes in the office Monday, and two more cakes today!! (Including one from my housemate/co-worker's mom, but I'll tell you about that in another post.)


So far, I am liking DC a whole lot more than I thought I would.

Eleventh Heaven

First Impressions :: My Neighborhood

I'm coming up on 48 hours since I arrived in DC. The transition has been surprisingly smooth, and I feel unsettlingly settled. I'm comfortable. Maybe it's a testament to my adaptability. All these years of traveling alone have prepared me well to move to a city where my friends number exactly one.

I also believe the attenuated period of adjustment has something to do with my new neighborhood, Columbia Heights. It's charming and colorful, and just dirty enough to be interesting. The mix of people reminds me of Hyde Park and Humboldt Park, two neighborhoods I'm very familiar with in Chicago, while the look and feel reminds me of Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn: brightly painted rowhouses with front yards, some meticulously manicured, others overgrown with weeds. And with awesome burritos right down the street, I'm home.



Columbia Heights is also undergoing gentrification/urban renewal/whatever. Bling to the west; blight to the east. All of the expected big box names -- Target; Bed, Bath & Beyond; Staples; Starbucks; Marshalls -- lumped into a shiny boring complex. My housemate tells me it opened only two months ago.

I went to New York City about a month ago, and I remember being surprised and somewhat dismayed that in a span of like twenty blocks, I passed by two TJ Maxx/Linens 'n Things behemoth shopping centers, followed by a few Jamba Juices, Old Navys, and a DSW. Now, I have no claim to be fussing about NY's suburbanizing urban landscape given I've been there maybe half a dozen times, but that experience coupled with my DC move is bumming me out. Everywhere looks the same. Yet, because everywhere looks the same, I feel 'at home' immediately. Bleh.

Christopher Hitchens writes about lost Bohemia in this month's Vanity Fair: "On the day when everywhere looks like everywhere else we shall all be very much impoverished, and not only that — we will be unable to express or even understand or depict what we have lost."

Despicable as I often find his views, this rings true today. And yet, I would be lying if I said I wasn't elated that Target is a five-minute walk away.

Postcards from Washington :: Day 1

Three Months Later

As I sit and sweat in sweltering Washington, DC, it's easy to forget that there ever was a time when I felt cold. But cold, cold, cold I was, oh so freakin' cold, on my "spring break" to Berlin and Stockholm. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel the cool, pelting hail and the crisp, blinding snow.*

Brrrrlin

Snowholm





*Actually, that's just the water I squirted into the fan spitting back in my face.

hi there.

remember when this used to be a travel blog?

well, grad school happened so i haven't been traveling much. in the shamefully undocumented nine months since my last post, i've visited costa rica, montreal, michigan, and new york city. alas, that was all before school started.

this, however, is why they invented spring break.

just in time for the dollar to hit an all time low against the euro, i'm headed off to berlin and stockholm for a respite from the reading 'n writing. (saving the 'rithmatic for next year.)

stories and photos to follow in a timely fashion. maybe.