Forgive me if these posts begin to take on the tone of a typical country bumpkin suddenly livin in the Big City.  By virtue of spending 80% of my time within district lines, I’m amazed and maybe a little enchanted by the things I see on a regular basis, the likelihood of which I probably wouldn’t have seen had I stayed in my wonderful little garden apartment in Pentagon City. (Please refer to future post of May 2010, when I bitch and moan about how nice it would be to live somewhere normal and clean for once, my GOD what is WRONG with you people?)

I have seen men peeing out in the open off of Columbia Rd, without a care to whether people notice and even more wonderful, seemingly not drunk.  Just this past Tuesday I was running up Florida Avenue and, yup, that’s a rubber anatomically correct penis sitting on the sidewalk.  Just hanging out, not 10 blocks north of the White House.  On Sunday I was walking home from Columbia Heights at 10am in the morning and the girl 10 steps ahead of me just leaned over and vomited, right there all over the ground in front of that really nice apartment building with the fancy lights in the lobby. It was bright pink. And I’m not referring to the lights. AGAIN, seemingly not drunk or hungover!  Where can you find these magical moments anywhere else but in the transitioning neighborhoods of Washington D.C.?

I have encountered more “wildlife” here than out in Virginia.  I don’t just mean the happy flock of cockroaches – although I am now possibly too familiar with the differences among the cockroach species – or the sickly looking rats that sift through my garbage at night.  I swear more people in the city own dogs than people anywhere else.  There must be a dog for every two people here and yet definitely not enough place for them to empty their bowels.  It’s weird how correlation works (err, doesn’t work) like that…

All of these serves as a good backdrop to the incident of this past Sunday afternoon, when my landlord was fixing up the front stoop and pulled on what she thought was a stick stuck in a hole in the broken brick and, yeah, you can see where this is going. Tail. Of rat. That was apparently dying. So it just lay there, miserable. Screaming ensued, a meeting was held among neighbors to figure out what to do. To its credit, the rat died on the spot (out of terror I’m sure), saving us all the trouble of….well let’s not even think about where it could’ve led.

To my landlord’s credit, the stoop looks great. I’d probably still be sipping bourbon from a flask under the covers of my bed after an incident like that.

Objective: Start final paper

Step 1: Spend 10 minutes in front of fridge deciding what to eat for dinner

Step 2: Begin assembling ingredients for a grilled cheese sandwich.

Step 3: Briefly consider making homemade bread.

Step 4: Follow up with 15 minutes of web research on homemade bread recipes.

Step 5: Briefly debate putting on pants to get bread flour at the grocery store.

Step 6: Complete grilled cheese. Polish off in seconds.

Step 7: Set up papers, post-it flags, pens of various colors.

Step 8: Flip around looking for perfect “studying” tv. Do not stop to contemplate idiocy of previous statement.

Step 9: Notice it’s really cold.  Go get blanket and space heater from bedroom.  Decide to make a cup of hot tea.

Step 10: Acquire splinter while digging around in the back of the cupboard for the herbal tea.

Step 11: Update twitter.

Step 12: Spend 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get splinter out.

Step 13: Take call from Boy. Ask advice on splinter. “Tweezers.” Oh. Right.

Step 14: Struggle with tweezers and remember why you don’t ever bother tweezing your own eyebrows. You suck at this.

Step 15: Success!

Step 16: Update blog.

Step 17: Run out of good excuses.

Step 18: …

Step 19: COME ON INTERNET STOP BEING SO SLOW. DON’T FAIL ME NOW.

Step 20: Surrender.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated you on the ridiculous endless stream of hobbies I find myself getting into.  Right now my life seems to revolve around perfecting homemade pizza dough, running long distances and taking pictures of my hamster.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that [a] I got my hands on a bike and [b] I’m terrified of it.  I was telling one of my coworkers about this bike and they mentioned they did one of those “I’m going to buy a bike and ride all the time!” deals and then rode it twice before it sat in her condo, like a sad puppy. So, naturally, we made a bike date.

It was great! I mean, sure, she picked me up so I didn’t have to actually ride in dangerous commuting traffic, but I still rode amongst cars and wasn’t too afraid. And I wobble on the thing like a four year old. But the weather was gorgeous and scenic and a great way to chit chat and do something productive at the same time and I didn’t find it hard at all.

There’s only one problem: the bike sucks. Actually, that’s not correct – it’s  not the bike itself. The bike works beautifully. But it doesn’t fit me, like a bad pair of shoes.  It’s just way too small.  I wonder if it’s really for teenagers or something.  Is that even possible? I have no idea what to do about it. Get the seat and handlebars lifted? Taller wheels? My back is killing me from the awkward position I had to sit in.  So now, of course, I’ve spent the weekend researching brand new bikes that I don’t need and can’t afford. I love hobbies!

In other news, while we were biking along the Potomac we saw the cutest scene: a mother duck with ten babies behind her. There were at least 10 other people around when I spotted them, including kids, and yet I was the only idiot going on about cute it was and look! Baby ducks! Even my friend was like okay Arlene let’s move on.  Why don’t people believe in the magic anymore? The magic of cute animals, that is.

There are really only three highlights from this weekend.

First I hit up the Nats game with my friend Marc who cares about baseball even less than me. It was a ton of fun but a surprisingly expensive night for two people who don’t care much about baseball.  We spent most of our time figuring out our drinking and eating strategy and then gossiping about people while half-heartedly cheering.  Also we sat in the wrong seats the whole time. The good news is that the stadium is still a lot of fun, they added more Ben’s carts but it was impossible to find the awesome new beer selections they promised us. Tip: the cheap seats sell out surprisingly early so plan accordingly for $5 and $10 seats.

Saturday morning I ran 6 miles!! I can’t believe I did it, and easily too. I remember huffing and puffing through my first two miles 6 weeks ago and now I guess I’m officially a runner.  It was also really gorgeous on Saturday morning and the route took us across the memorial bridge, past the monuments and Watergate, along the Georgetown waterfront and then a loop through Teddy Roosevelt island. Who needs to do touristy things when you can just run by them?  (This paragraph was not paid for by the DC RoadRunners, but it should be. If you are DCRR management, please contact me for proper royalty fees).

Biking! More on this later in the week, but let me  just say: SUCCESS.

I hope everyone got outside this weekend, it was entirely too pretty, especially on Saturday.  I love sunshine and fresh air!!  I could’ve skipped to work today. If it wasn’t 50s and raining. Sigh.

I’m beginning the process of actually fixing this little space up.  I actually wanted to refuse to direct people here until I had an actual theme and style but meh. With my school schedule that could take months.  Might as well get to work. But first: wings and beer.  These are the types of priorities that make blogging the best hobby on earth.

I did it. Cue score to 2001: A Space Odyssey (which incidentally was the second DVD I ever purchased because I figured it’d look really cool in all that digital deliciousness. It took me three times to watch it all the way through without falling asleep but now I can appreciate it for what it is.) I successfully created my own blawg!

I’m escaping the confines of blogging platforms and hosting myself! Look at these magic skillz!! Not only did I manage to actually install Wordpress, which has a confounding set of steps, but I did it on my own without any help from any ole schmuck, specifically my schmuck-y boyfriend who got tired of hearing me complain about how I had no idea what I was doing and was just going to “fix it” himself. Take that highly trained software engineer.

MySQL, you are no match for me.