Clearly I haven't been the best about posting on here, but if you think about it from the standpoint of being busy doing things, going places, and seeing things, it's almost acceptable, right? At least, that's the rationale I'm using for my bank account.
As of today, only eight and a half more days of working at AFF/living in WashDC. Hard to believe that only 9 weeks ago (a whole high school term), I showed up at AmericanU having no idea where my office was, how to use the Metro, who I'd be friends with, how I'd feed myself for 11 weeks, etc. Not that I've figured ALL of that out - the food solution still escapes me from time to time - but I've figured out a lot. I've turned into a Washingtonian; I walk down escalators, I wear almost entirely business casual 24/7, I wear flops and carry my dress shoes, I attend Jazz in the Garden every Friday, I take cabs at 4am to the airport for business trips, I try to avoid the Mall on weekends, I'm even going to my first Washington Nationals a week from Sunday. And I like it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to go back to Zelienople and Pitt, where there's trees and grass and good friends and dogs and drive-ins and everything, but DC is so ALIVE. I just think I might have a bit of culture shock when I go back to school, and everyone's not in suits and dresses all the time and rushing everywhere as if the world will end if they don't get to Corner Bakery by 8:36am. There's also the chance I'll get a hard time for all the Texas habits I've picked up from Bailey, being thoroughly TX Southern Belle herself.
Hard to recap all of my events of the last month, since I'm so terrible at posting, but the 4th of July was a blast. My friend Heather from Pitt stopped for the night on her way back to Oakland, and we did some sightseeing before meeting up with the rest of 3rdFloorFederal for a picnic and fireworks, followed by Monuments at Night (the best time.)
I attended a concert of She and Him at the 9:30 Club, a smaller venue that reminded me of Mr. Smalls in Pittsburgh. She and Him is the band of Zooey Deschanel, the main girl from Elf. It was a lot of fun, and great, catchy music; thank you Bailey for being OBSESSED with She and Him and making me go.
The weekend of the 9th I took an unexpected roadtrip home, thanks to my wonderful father and my fabulous friend Marissa. What a blessing; I was able to recharge, sit on a porch with a burger (the thing I've been missing most), see a small handful of my best friends from home which really helped my sanity, and just sit around with my family and my animals.
The 13-14th I traveled to Vermont overnight for work, and helped host a reception at our Tree Farmers' Convention which my boss was unable to attend due to flight cancellations. It went swimmingly, but then I had to deal with my own hellish version of Laura's day when it took me over 12 hours and no luggage to make it back to DC the next day. (Side note: it only takes ten hours to DRIVE from Vermont.)
Friday, some friends and I found an 18+ dance club in downtown DC and amid giant thundershowers, raced from the Metro to a night of bad salsa music, good beats, ridiculous creepers, and good friends.
Saturday, I was able to unwind a bit by dog-sitting for Laura at her house for the evening. It was such a relief to be in a house (with no friends knocking on the dorm room door), with a dog and a cat and a (small) yard and a neighborhood. Following that was a nice relaxed evening at Shannon's apartment with friends and Super Mario Smash Bros (NOT Brothers). Rounded out the weekend with Inception, which as it turns out, is better than I expected.
The rest has been a flurry of frisbee games, randomly ending up at Shannon's apartment, movie nights somewhere on 3rdFloorFederal, water and power outages, museum trips, Sporcle games, and Safeway/ZBurger trips.
As for going out with a bang in DC, my bucket list of things to do keeps getting longer, not shorter, but then that's to be expected. My roommate Kristen from Pitt is en route to DC as I type for the weekend, which will be the biggest relief of my summer. Julie's younger sister is visiting this weekend, as well as roughly 20 of my older/graduated Theta Phis for Alexis' 21st celebration. I've already invited all my new friends to Pitt around the vicinity of Feb 4th, and I'm planning at least one trip during the year down to the capital area for a reunion. In every other aspect, I'll just be looking to make the upcoming two weeks/one last weekend the best I've had yet. But then, I'll only be leaving here to head straight to Europe, so who can be too disappointed with that?
