Will it Ever Stop Raining?

The power is out yet again, the 3rd time in about a week, a fact that showcases the obvious technical wonder that is the DC Metro Area power grid.

Anywho, it’s been a busy past few days. Thursday was my first experience with Fort Reno, an annual staple of the DC summer music season that showcases local talent for free each Monday and Thursday at the eponymous named park. I didn’t quite catch the name of the band that performed this week as we showed up nearly two hours into the performance. The band was composed of teen-something high schoolers and the songs I did catch ranged in topic from the passé “I wanna drink a bottle of Jack and kiss your neck in the field,” to the creationist myth inspired “back when the earth was young and purple lava spewed from the mountaintops.”

Taking the metro on the way back to my house I was privy to an obviously wasted Ghanaian blatantly hitting on one of the only 3 other passengers on the train at that point. In fact, on an otherwise empty train, this man made the decision to sit next to the woman who appeared shocked at his misguided train etiquette. The situation only become more amusing when a group of 4 teenagers got onto the train and proceeded to run around showing the increasing number of passengers the erotic Simpson’s pictures stored on one of their cell phones: “I bet you never seen the Simpson’s do that!” They then proceeded to have a 20-minute conversation with the Ghanaian Romeo on the topics of hookers, drugs and attempts to exploit money from in order to see one of the girls’ asses, somewhere in which the frightened woman who was being hit on managed to escape to another car.

Friday was a fairly typical night of Georgetown area socializing with Vicky, her housemates and her friends from her semester in Hungary. “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” was the definite highlight of the night and it provided essential lessons such as: 1) if your going to leave a dead old lady in front of the morgue in a box be sure to leave a nice note saying she died of natural causes and run her pockets for that money your mom left you for the summer 2) tweens should never buy diamond rings for their girlfriend and 3) the best way to clean dishes is to throw them off the roof and shoot them mid-air with a shotgun.

Saturday offered it’s own fun provided by a surprise visit by Stefan and Mary who, due to Stefan’s always busted ass phone, I had assumed had fallen into a well somewhere. One bottle of Riesling at Bilbo Baggin’s later I joined up with the G-Town kids for Bosnian food at a carryout around the corner from my house that previously had previously gone unnoticed to me. I didn’t even know my area had enough of an ex-pat community to sustain such a place though I’m glad to discover it as the food was excellent, the world cup was on, and there was a full-on European grocery attached. Goal number 1 achieved it was on to the second goal for the night, The Brickskeller. For those not familiar with the DC area, the Brick holds the Guinness World Record for the largest variety of beers served. The menu was easily a dozen pages long, categorized by country and held over 1,000 different beers ranging in price from $3.25 to $149.95. I’m still in awe and expect numerous visits in the near future as it’s my new life goal to complete a world conquest of beer.
Sunday was filled with the joy of waking up at 5:30 AM to drive my mother to the airport. A joy that was matched only by that of my Mother’s towards having to fly to Idaho to teach for a week. After that I made it up to Baltimore to try and entertain Tara in her new city and, though it was Sunday and we were broke so we mainly watched TV, it was exponentially more amusing to watch TV with other people. Her living situation is pretty fucking spectacular as she has a nicely sized apartment (right next to the monument) with exposed brick walls and a balcony. It also gave me a great excuse to not study for the statistics test that I would’ve failed anyway since we apparently learned everything on the single day of class I couldn’t attend due to my car trouble. Thus, I may in fact have to actually study for the remaining two tests in order to gain my C, a notion that displeases me greatly.

All in all it’s been a decent week. I still don’t have a job and my car is causing me all sorts of grief, but I’m finally enjoying being in DC for a summer. Now if only it would stop raining and the power would come back on, then I could finally stop using my cell phone as a flashlight.