my neighborhood has its charms

it's been a long time since i walked down the 18th Street strip in adams morgan on a weekend morning. but every time i do i get a vivid picture of all the drunken antics the evening before. people leave behind everything from half-eaten pizza, to shoes, to pieces of hair. it makes for an amusing early morning walk.

well, last saturday morning as i was walking to my local post office i saw this young man walking up to me. he definitely had that georgetown prep look about him that i despise so much (madras shorts [gross!] and white polo shirt). but the first thing i really noticed about him was that he had no shoes on. none. not even carrying them in his hands.

my next thought was "wow. i wonder if he's still drunk. he must have had a rough night."

as he came closer i realized that he had a huge amount of gauze taped to the underside of his chin and that his white polo was splattered with blood.

so either he was just released from the local drunk tank where the night before he got into a fight that resulted in his lost of shoes and blood. OR he had been mugged, taped up, and then sent back into the world shoeless and alone.



ahhh...got to love the morgan.

problem?

is it wrong to start referring to your boss as "that dirty whore?"

must control the urge to maim repeatedly

how hard is it to follow directions?

if i said do such-and-such, and then e-mail me to let me know to do it, how hard is it to let me know that you've done it?

if i follow up a few days later, reminding someone to do the such-and-such and e-mail me when it's completed, how hard is it to let me know?

if i have to send a THIRD e-mail FIVE DAYS after i asked you to do a simple task, and you respond with a "i did it the first time you requested it" how much you want to bet that i'm going to lose my shit and beat the crap out of you???


just saying...there are ways to avoid a beating...

my insides

i'm dead on the inside.

sucked dry.

first step to being a grown up

i officially mailed off my last payment to one of my student loans.
by july 2008 i will have officially paid off ALL THE REST.


it's a bit heady.

i learn something new every day... or maybe every other day

who knew that learning arabic would be such a workout for my mouth...and throat.



i still can't make some of the sounds...

my weekend...

drunk texts messages received from an ex: 2

drunk texts messages sent: 0

dreams about an ex or a crush: 2

drinks consumed on friday before the harry potter midnight release event: 2

drinks consumed on saturday: stopped counting after 5

bruises on my body from saturday: 1 (so far)

last saturday i was a fourteen-year-old boy

i admit. i enjoy a good explosive movie as much as the next young boy.
so last saturday i saw the latest die hard movie and transformers (with a break in between for lunch). luckily freshmeat was game on for a day of movies and queso and came with me.

first up:
die hard
wow. i don't think i've ever seen so many explosions in one movie before. LOTS of action and shooting. and explosions (did i mention the explosions?) i really enjoyed it. and so did the ONLY OTHER PERSON in the movie theater.

next:
transformers
whoa. there are some seriously amazing fight scenes in this one. there's something very cool about two cars transforming into robots and beating the crap out of each other on the 405 freeway. before the movie started freshmeat looked around the theater and whispered that we were the only women in the entire theater (apart from the young woman next to me who was there with her boyfriend).

our thoughts
i was torn up about which one i liked more. i might be leaning toward transformers. though i did really enjoy the die hard explosions.

freshmeat definitely preferred die hard over transformers.


afterwards
both of us were too tired from sitting and watching movies to celebrate Bastille Day properly. but considering last year's incident, perhaps it was for the best.

reason no. 1,029,874 why i need a life

i actually got excited when i saw this on pbs.



help. me.

10 minutes of bliss

i was out of work yesterday due to "illness."
today i walk in feeling good about life and all that other crap.

it literally took only 10 minutes of being at work before i wanted to shove my foot up someone's ass.



i think that's a new record for me...

death of a flip flop a.k.a. rockin' the croc

friday night freshmeat decided to accompany me on an excursion on the other side of the river (a.k.a. virginia). but before we left freshmeat's flip-flop met an untimely death.

her solution was to staple the strap down.


it worked.
until we got to the metro station.


her next attempt was to use a band aid i had in my purse to hold the strap down.


it worked.
until we got to clarendon.


the band aid ripped and we were without any way for us to fix the strap.
she was shoeless on the wrong side of the tracks.



i spent the next 20 minutes running around the area trying to find a shoe store that sold flip flops.
apparently that's harder than it should be (the first shoe store i went to had to be something leftover from the 70s and it closed at 6. who closes at 6 anymore?!?).


i eventually found these.


we spent the rest of the evening trying to put "croc" into ever sentence.
it was croc-tacular.

a moment

ever have one of those moments when you realize you are being overpaid for the work you do??








yeahhhh, me either.

it was worth waiting in line for hours while dealing with the rain

last night some friends and i went to the Uptown to experience the new Harry Potter movie.



i don't care how much of a geek, nerd, loser, etc. this makes me...
but i LOVED it.
it was A.MAZ.ING.



and seeing it on the big screen like that was AWESOME!

a sign of a problem

there's probably something wrong in my life if i have dreams about work two nights in a row.


and neither of them was good.


at all.

unmotivated

things i have done this morning to avoid work


reordered my netflix's queue

looked for a new gym bag (i'm probably getting this one)

sent freshmeat MASSIVE amounts of e-cards from someecards.com (this one is one of our favorites)

looking at the movies in my friends' netflix queues

stared off into space

looked at the piles of filing and ignored them

bought a ticket to vegas

checked to see if the Harry Potter movie at the Uptown has sold out for the opening night (it hasn't)

and the winners are...

here are the winners of the global vote for the new seven wonders of the world:

chichén itza
christ redeemer
the great wall of china
machu picchu
petra
the colosseum
taj mahal


uhhh...i've been to one of these.
petra.
A.MA.ZING.

new seven wonders of the world

we've all heard about the ancient seven wonders of the world (great pyramid at giza, hanging gardens of babylon, statue of zeus at olympia, temple of artemis at ephesus, mausoleum at harlicarnassus, colossus of rhodes, and lighthouse at alexandria).

but here's a chance to vote on the new seven wonders of the world.

and time's running out.
today is your last day to do it.

the contenders are:

the acropolis (athens, greece)

alhambra (granada, spain)

angkor (cambodia)

the pyramid at chichen itza (mexico)

christ redeemer (rio de janerio, brazil)

colosseum (rome, italy)

easter island statues (chile)

eiffel tower (paris, france)

great wall (china)

hagia sophia (istanbul, turkey)

kiyomizu temple (kyoto, japan)

kremlin / st. basil (moscow, russia)

machu picchu (peru)

neuschwanstein castle (schwangau, germany)

petra (jordan)

pyramids at giza (egypt)

statue of liberty (new york, us)

stonehenge (amesbury, uk)

sydney opera house (australia)

taj mahal (agra, india)

timbuktu (mali)


the pyramids at giza have been given an automatic spot as they are the only surviving structure from the original seven wonders.

over-celebrating on the third can lead to a calm fourth

where i may have gone wrong on the evening of the Third...

taking advantage of L'Enfant's half-priced Belgium beer night

drinking a bottle of prosecco

throwing ice off the roof

opening another bottle of wine after everyone finished four bottles of prosecco

taste testing kbean's home brewed strawberry-mango infused vodka

attempting to pick up broken glass

finding out that i'm a bleeder

my grandmother's brother

i never really knew my uncle jim. he was already living in a small town outside of san francisco by the time i came onto the scene. i think i saw him once, maybe twice, before he died due to throat cancer (the hole in his neck wasn't going to stop him from smoking every day). but i always heard stories about him and his fantastic life he lead before "retiring" to carmel.

you see, he was An. Artist.

he lived this fabulous life in France (splitting his time between Paris and the country), where he meet, loved, and married. after his wife's death he eventually came back to the U.S.


even though i never knew my uncle jim, i always felt connected to him. it could be the fact that i was surrounded by his artwork every time i stepped into my grandmother's house. or the fact that my grandmother would talk about him as much as possible. but i like to think it's because he, like me, needed to get out. needed to see other places. needed to not be trapped in the lives that had been planned out for us.




my grandmother called me before i left for Paris. i asked her if she still had the address that my uncle lived out. she knew it from memory.

on my last night there, i went to see the place that my uncle called home during his creative years.

my weekend

number of drinks consumed: 7

number of drinks consumed only on friday: 5

number of rentals viewed: 1

number of apartments viewed where i had actually attended a party many years ago at: 1

number of times i rearranged my apartment only to decide the way i have it is the only way it will work: 4

number of times i thought about how pointless my life is: 1704