Literally Literary

Since the semester's been over, I've been reading like crazy.  Crazy.

I love having my twice-a-day commute and lunch hour to read for pleasure rather than for school.

Here's what I've read since mid-May*:

[Please note: just realized this sounds braggy.  I don't mean it to.  I just like to keep track of what I've read so that I can become a well-rounded, well-educated reader.]

Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
The Help - Kathryn Stockett 
The Elegance of the Hedgehog  - Muriel Barbery
Emma - Jane Austen
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

And now I'm having a stupor of thought.  Or a stupor of read.

I'm liking my exploration of classic women authors, and classics in general.  However (as my rather schizophrenic list exhibits), I'm always up for something new and less verbose. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated...

Knight and Day

You know you're a working stiff when you see a movie like this with multiple car chase scenes and you spend half the time thinking to yourself "man, that's going to cause so much traffic."

You know, the people to people people

It was over 90 degrees the weekend that my parents were here.  My Dad was in town to swear in JRCLS attorneys to the Supreme Court Bar and my Mom came with him.  Here we are after our tour of the Capitol....sitting on the grass by the Museum of Art and eating our frozen lemonades (believe me, we needed them).

This is my favorite picture of the weekend.  Why?  Well, about thirty seconds before this was taken, we were absolutely the only people for about two blocks.  We sat down in the only shade that we could find, and fifteen seconds later we heard kids chattering.  Coming around the corner were hundreds of kids in matching, color-coordinating shirts.  And they all wanted the shade, too.  So, within less than a minute, we were surrounded by all of these kids who were sweaty, complaining, and running amok (their leaders were too hot to care).  They weren't too shy about sitting right up close to us to take advantage of the 8 square feet of shade.

Well, you probably know how much Blake and my Dad love crowds...so I just had to take a picture to capture the beauty of the moment.

P.S.  Don't you love how the kid next to Blake has created a "shade tent" for his gameboy by putting it under his hat with him?  Ingenious.

I have Pop Pop in the attic.

Maybe it's just the geeky linguist in me, but isn't langauge variation interesting?

Restart

Do you ever wish you could just Ctrl+Alt+Delete your day?

Gosh, my hair looks awful today.  Ctrl+Alt+Delete.  Fade to black.  Wow, yeah, that's better.

USA USA USA!

That's right, Donovan.  Go ahead and make all the scary faces you want.

Thank you for restoring my faith in my team...even if you waited until stoppage time to do so (thought I was going to have a heart attack).

Summer in the City

I've been here for over three years and there are two things about summer in DC that I still haven't gotten used to:

1.  The humidity.  It's awful.  And it wilts me.
2.  The fireflies.  They're beautiful (unless I look at them up close, then they're scary like any other bug...).  For a girl who grew up in the West, they'll never cease to be magical.  On Saturday there were so many in the trees, that it looked like fireworks, or very small, insistent strobe lights.

I no dust Buster anymore

I usually wear slippers or flip flops in the house at all times.

But for some reason I forgot this past weekend.

The crunch crunch crunch against the wood floors was much less pleasant than I'd have liked.  I guess vacuuming the whole house with a battery-operated dust buster just isn't cutting in anymore.  That's a sorry mental picture isn't it: me crouching down around the house vacuuming all three floors with a hand-held.  Believe me, when I catch my neighbors looking through the window (which the often do...we live in a neighborhood of well-intentioned busy-bodies), I've also caught their confused and disapproving looks.

I'm guilting my self all the way over to Sears tonight to buy a proper vacuum.

I'll be $200.00 poorer, but at least my floors will be clean.

Adieu les Bleus?

I have sports-induced depression. 

It happens only once every four years. 

What are you doing to me, Les Bleus?  Last time you went out with a bang (or, headbutt, as it were --Materazzi, you deserved it.) but where is that style now? 

Stars and Stripes, where's your gumption?

These live web updates are killing me.  And so is a life of Bleus without Zidane.

Love You, Dad

If I were to give a dollar to every person who asked me while I walked up to the metro from work, I'd probably be out about $35.00 a day.  That would be an expensive 7-minute walk.

I'm used to the lady that says every day in the same cadence: "spare sum change help me gemmme sumthin to eat."  I'm used to the man who says "hello, can you spare me a quarter cos I'm hungry?" on repeat even if no one is around.

I'm used to just looking down at my toes so that guilt doesn't show on my face.  Guilt for wanting to help all, but being able to help few.

But yesterday I looked up when a lady asked, "gimme some change so I can get me sum minutes on my cell phone..."

Excuse me, minutes on your cell phone?

Lady, I didn't even have a cell phone until I was 19 and could pay for it myself...but let's not get into that right now.

That was one of the most surprising things I've ever heard.  Almost as surprising as the time when my Dad and I were riding the metro and he (in all seriousness) told me that he had always liked a well-kept head of dreadlocks. 

Yep, this city holds surprises every day.

Ladies' Paradise

Everyone knows that cinnamon Altoids are the best. It's a little-contested fact.

It's also a little-contested fact that I am often tempted, tantalized, and convinced into a purchase because of a flashy and well-placed "new!" or "new and improved!"

And that's how I ended up buying a box of "NEW" Cool Honey Altoids at CVS last week.

Yuck.

Tubular

This dog just fell off its surf board. This dog surfs?

Hahahahahahah.

God Answers Kneemail

About once a week the baptist church on the corner changes its marquee sign. Always good for a smile...

*********************************

Oh, and I'd like to interrupt our regularly scheduled program to note that the World Cup starts in 2 days, 18 hours and 39 minutes.

I'll be firmly situated on my couch. Where will you be?

New Hamptons

Back in my single days, I would (along with our friends) ascribe Yachting to be Blake's favorite sport. You know, because that's what people do in "New Hamptons." (It was funny at the time, I promise).

Well, we may not have done much (ok, any) yachting over Memorial Day, but we did lose spectacularly in Bocci Ball to Blake's parents (um, three times...we lost to them three times in a row). The picture below, however, commemorates my best shot (I'm the green ball...don't worry, the other green ball is about three inches from falling in the lake, which was where my shots tended to land...the one pictured was all luck.)

Well done, Me.

We also spent a lot of time in town at the Yum Yum Shop (the town bakery) and Bailey's Bubble (the best ice cream joint in town). Honestly, where else would you expect to find me?

Here we are at the town docks. You'll notice that the sky is very grey and smokey. That's because of several large forest fires in Quebec...so, combined with the massive amounts of pollen in the air, it was a really great weekend for allergies.

You can't see it now, but about three hours later I ended up with a really groovy farmers burn from this shirt (which, by the way, has an awkward sleeve length for farmers burns because none of my other short sleeve shirts will cover it...). I was reading Emma for the first time and I got really into it, ok? I didn't notice that my flesh was starting to sizzle until Blake kindly informed me that I was turning as bright red/orange as my belt. Lovely.

Maybe the sun helped burn off all that ice cream?

Wherein Thursday becomes Friday

I want to write about our Memorial Day weekend at the lake (which was perfect, by the way), but I have other things on my mind at the moment. Other things like:

1. My Mom is coming into town today and my Dad is coming into town tomorrow (Hooray!). It will be the first time my Dad has seen our house, which has me fraught with anticipation...

2. I am taking tomorrow and Monday off to spend time with my parents (Also, Hooray!)

3. These darn summer thunder storms are throwing off my morning commute. Yesterday the elevators at my station were out because of the electricity, so the station was closed. Normally elevator outages do not shut down stations, but since my station happens to reside 21 stories (!!!) underground, it is only accessible via elevator, and is hence shut down when there are power outages.

Anyhow, to make this already long story a little shorter, I had to take a shuttle bus from the nearest stop to my stop. This was all well-and-good in theory, but not in actuality. None of the metro employees knew where the bus was and were unable/unwilling to help direct. I had to walk 4 blocks in the 90 degree heat to find the bus. I got on the bus alright, but the bus driver was not pleased with his extra riders.

He hadn't been told that his bus was acting as a shuttle. And he was mad. Really mad. Swearing and yelling at everyone mad.

He yelled at the passengers as they got on. He yelled at the metro employee for not having been told that he was a shuttle. He screamed at a lady who asked if he was the shuttle. Then he screamed at the metro employee that the lady had tried to spit on him. She defend that she had not. The tantrum went on for some time before I made it home. Sometimes I really hate public transportation.

4. I just discovered that my colleague at work has a stash of bubble wrap hidden under her desk. That explains why I can sometimes hear little crackles and pops coming from behind her closed office door during times when she seems particularly stressed.

5. I'm starting into my fourth summer in DC and am finding that I will never EVER get used to the humidity...no matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise.