Oh, craptastic day

Late December, how wonderful you are. It's that time of year when everyone gets sick via too much drinking/eating/sexing/traveling or whateverthefuck. Me, sadly, I am not suffering from too much sexing but all the others are adding up to a general feeling-like-shit-ness. Will that stop me from going out tonight? Probably not. I will power through. I can do it. Despite the fact my bank account is subtly reminding me otherwise. Oh well.

Work is so incredibly dead today. I think I've received a total of four phone calls all morning, and I've managed to get through 5 chapters of my book and reviewed fractions for the GRE (yes, I am an idiot who can't remember how to use fractions anymore. Liberal arts, you rock my world).

So its transition time here in the government with the Republicans moving out and the Democrats moving in. In my office, this means a little over half of the staff is turning over...and taking as much of the furniture as possible. Today it was the coffee table in the reception room. The marks on the carpet are laughing. Last week is was the giant painting of something hideous on the wall above my desk. The nail looks lonely. I'm hoping they also take the malformed plant the size of a 6-year-old child that hovers next to my desk, but I doubt I'll get that lucky. The claws were really coming out yesterday when the new chief-of-staff did a walk through the office and discussed how he was going to rearrange things. Passive aggression was rampant. It's like being in high school.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday an increasing trend in barefoot running, despite the increased risk of infections via running over stones etc. I'm looking for a blog on it.

I love going home

Going home is hilarious. I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere in PA. My high school had a graduating class of 64 and most people don't move away after college. So, going home is always a high school reunion.

This year was a little special cause I was seeing a close friend, I'll call him James, who just finished 6 and a half months in Iraq. As I was in England before he left, it had been over a year since we had last seen each other. We hung out, caught up, and hit the local bar scene where we were sure to run into people from high school. We do, and we hit a gem of a girl I'll call Amy. Amy is not the most intelligent person in the world...as illustrated by this conversation:

Amy: James!!! So good to see you!!! How was Iraq?
James: Well, you know, full of sand.
Amy: Sand? SAND? THERE'S SAND THERE?!?!?!!?
James: Uh...yeah...lots of sand, and some trees.
Amy: THERE ARE TREES IN IRAQ?!

And here I finally jumped in HOW CAN YOU BE SUCH AN IDIOT. To which she replied, well Iraq always looks like its full of dirt in the pictures on the news.

I used to do this, now I'm giving it another shot

Last night I was on the phone with a friend of mine who had just finished surgery. I was walking down the street, trying to find a place that sold wine on H street at 9 pm when a SUV stopped next to me. The guy in it leaned out the window, looked at me, and made a motion with his fingers that was a combination between the asking-for-a-cigarette motion and the give-me-money motion. After staring at him blankly, I just shook my head.

This is something I've noticed on H Street--people having no fear of talking to you, asking you for anything. On the one hand its refreshing considering how closed-mouthed I've found people in bars in DC, on the other hand its a little terrifying. Like the guy in the liquor store who chased out the toothless man who started a chat with my roommate and I with, 'Hey, I just wanna ask you ladies a question...'

Contrasting this is that I live right by Galluadet, so there is a large deaf population around my house. To my surprise, my neighbors are very loud. They get in fights, signing furiously at each other and yelling, at 3 am.

Hilarious. And so random.