Yes, I'm still here, and eventually I will get back to the blog.  Right now, though, I'm so busy that I barely have time to sleep.  So for now I will catch up on sleep and wait to update until this weekend.

Mood: Busy and overwhelmed but making progress.
Song: Michael Kamen, Theme to Band of Brothers

Running in the city is tough. It's also tough when you don't have anyone to run with. And that means that I'm not running nearly enough. Boo.

Now I need to find a gym. I was going to join a "Bally's Total Fitness" club, until I found about 1293817237 websites saying how they were terrible, dirty, poorly maintained, and often tried to scam their members into longer memberships. Stuff like that.

So I'm still looking...

Yay for...

Friday.
Having fun with friends tonight.
Not taking myself too seriously, or at least trying not to.
Exploring the DC museums tomorrow morning.
Going to see Mitch Hedberg tomorrow night.
Having my first dinner party on Sunday night.
Sleep.

I don’t know if I can do this whole working-in-a-city-where-I-don’t-know-many-people thing. I think it would just be easier to go to school and have a spontaneous group of people to hang out with most of the time. Sounds like a good plan, right?

I’m not very happy these days. I think I’ve enjoyed work a lot so far just because it gives me something to do. Otherwise, when I’m home, I really don’t have anything to do or anyone to talk to. I’m still exploring the neighborhood, which is nice, but that’s not a particularly interactive way to spend the evening. So I get home, call people, nobody answers, I try to find things to do. And since I don’t have cable or internet yet, and I’m sick of reading for right now, that doesn’t leave me with much to do.

Song: Seether, “Broken”
Mood: Slightly depressed and a little anxious.

I got a parking ticket tonight. The story behind it makes for a good verbal presentation, but I’m not sure if it will work as well online. Or if I have enough energy to tell it. I’ll give the simplified version, which will still take a little bit of effort...

00:00 I pull into a parking lot. A policewoman was in the lot, writing parking tickets.
00:10 I park in an open spot about 10 feet away.
00:18 My friend and I get out of the car, and we walk ~10 feet to the payment machine. 00:22 I put my credit card in the machine, wait for the receipt to put on the dashboard.
00:24 We look over toward my car. Policewoman is standing behind it.
00:26 Policewoman starts writing in her ticket notebook.
00:27 I get concerned. I walk toward the car.
00:30 I very loudly tell the policewoman that I am paying the parking meter right now.
00:31 Policewoman looks irritated.
00:32 Speaking slowly and using small words, I indicate that I parked only moments ago.
00:35 Policewoman looks irritated still.
00:40 I explain that she was standing 10 feet away when I parked the car.
00:42 Policewoman asks why my friend did not stay at the car.
00:45 We answer that we were both only 10 feet away.
00:49 Policewoman says she cannot stop a ticket once she starts writing it.
00:50 10 seconds pass in silence.
01:00 I argue for another minute. Policewoman begins to show a bit of understanding.
02:00 I ask what time is written on the ticket.
02:05 Policewoman states the current time; my receipt says 2 minutes prior.
02:10 I realize there is no way that I’ll actually have to pay the ticket.
02:15 Policewoman says she will put a note on the ticket to explain the situation.
02:20 “Fine.” I relent. She resumes writing the ticket.
02:30 I walk to the car to put the receipt on my dash. A second ticket wouldn’t help.
02:50 Policewoman hands me the ticket.
03:00 My friend and I walk away.

I went on my first run in DC today. Out the door of my apartment, down 12th St. to the National Mall, around the Washington Monument, and back uphill along 17th to M St.

So, yeah. Running in this humidity is unpleasant. And I can feel that it’s a lot different running along the city sidewalks – which, compared to Baltimore standards, are incredible. But it’s still not as nice as running on grass or even packed dirt, and I could definitely feel the heat radiating off the street and huge buildings as I made my way home. Perhaps next time I’ll run uphill to Dupont so I can enjoy the slight downhill on the way back.

Redeemed.

Oops. I committed a pretty big faux pas (sp?) tonight. I guess that’s what happens when you drink a little too much on an empty stomach. Didn’t get sick, but certainly acted unlike my usual self…

Tonight I had dinner with one of my good friends from college, then went out for drinks with a bunch of students from the summer program he’s enrolled in this summer in DC. They’re all taking courses at Galludet University, which is exclusively focused on the deaf community, so they were all signing to each other at the bar tonight. As the only person who didn’t know sign, it was a little bit confusing. Fun, too. It’s amazing how quickly people can communicate with sign, especially across long distances in bars when the music is too loud to hear anyone!

Still feeling a little lonely. In retrospect, I feel like I should have made a better effort this year to go out on dates with people. I certainly made an effort for a few months, but then I basically got distracted with school and gave up. So it has been quite a while since I’ve had anything significant romantically, and I’m getting impatient. But, like I was saying, DC is full of young, attractive people. Maybe this is my chance…

Anyway, thank goodness it’s the weekend. I slept sooooo little last week(end) because of the move, and I certainly didn’t start catching up on sleep this week until last night. So now it’s almost 2:30 and I’m getting in bed. Alarm? No way. I’ll wake up when I wake up.

Mood: Unsettled. Slightly impatient. And tired.
Song: Jimi Hendrix/Ottmar Liebert/The Corrs, “Little Wing”

Welcome to DC. 10 pm. 75 degrees and humid.

My first thoughts of Washington? Lots of young people. Lots of very, very attractive young people. Everywhere. You couldn’t avoid them if you tried.

So now it’s just me. No roommate. And I’m starting to recognize the +’s and –‘s of that fact. On one hand, I think I was about ready to have my own space. But it’s pretty lonely so far. I was taking the Metro home from Adams-Morgan tonight – one of the more social neighborhoods of NW Washington – and it seemed like a huge majority of the people on the Metro were people roughly my age, all hanging out with their friends.

It’s odd. I can’t think of a situation in which I would have come across that sort of environment in Baltimore. But here in DC, it seems like everyone here is more or less my age.

I’m not accustomed to not knowing people, or at least not knowing anyone in the city. (Even that isn’t totally true; I know about a half dozen people in Washington, but I’m not in touch with them yet.) And, to be happy, I’m quite happy to have this apartment on my own. But it sucks not having anyone around to talk with. And I don’t have an internet connection, so I feel pretty disconnected from the world.

Perhaps it’s a good thing. Maybe I need some time on my own, time to feel independent and slightly isolated and forced to think/work/live/figure stuff out on my own.

I’ve been driving a lot recently…probably averaging 100 miles a day for the last two weeks. Until last week I was commuting from Baltimore (~50 miles each way), and then this week I drove up to Baltimore on Mon-Wed nights to finish moving out. 100 miles is certainly enough distance to give one plenty of time for contemplation. And the fact that I was sleep deprived certainly added to my mental self-contemplation. And without writing or speaking a word, I figured out a lot of issues during my drives, or at least I felt that I was able to come to terms with the challenges that will be facing me in the coming months.

But here I am. For now, I’m feeling lonely and a little bit isolated. And maybe, for now, it’s a good thing. Let’s just hope it doesn’t last _too_ long.

Mood: Distant.
Song: Jack Johnson, “It’s All Understood”