Grazed Knees

Epic fail: not scratching in the dirt for forever. I haven't written anything in over a week not for a lack of activity but for a lack of words to describe them. Regularly, I've been getting home in the dark hours of the night, passing out, and then waking up early for work. In other words, just completing the cycle. Between this and the last post I've traveled through Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. I've crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge, wandered through Times Square and Central Park, and visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In terms of work, the report I was working on was published and displayed for ambassadors as well as State Department officials (but that's the boring part of my past week). I have also gotten really sick (then better).

My daily life has become somewhat routinized but not in a necessarily bad way. I have been waking up in time to catch the train into work, where I spend long hours staring at a computer, interjected with short bits of goofing off with my coworkers. When I leave for work, however, I have decided to quit taking the nearest Metro stop home. Instead, I usually spend a couple of hours walking around the city just checking out the sites. Sometimes I plug my headphones in and pretend like I'm in a movie.

This weekend my friend from school, Annika, and I decided to throw our own fourth of July celebration of sorts. We went to the store and bought twenty dollars worth of red wine to make sangria. For those of you not in college, that's five bottles of wine :). It might have been the largest gathering of Iowa college students in DC: five of us from Cornell showed up to watch the fireworks.

Today I cut work a little early so that I could go read a book in the park (hey they're not paying me, and besides, it was nice out). While I was there I saw four undercover cops corner some guy on a bench. I think it was a drug bust. Anyhow, I made sure to mouth the words "soooo cool" to one of the officers to let her know that I was enjoying the latest episode of Law & Order:DC and also that I would be willing to step in if the need ever arose. As it turned out, the need didn't arise so I continued reading my book, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire. If you have read any Abbey then you'll have a little bit of an idea of how smitten I am with myself reading his works in the middle of DC.

I am running out of food; there's no way to deny it. It's looking like I will have to make a shopping trip this weekend. This past weekend I stopped down at the Eastern Market to pick up fruit to pack with my lunches. The market is definitely one of my favorite places in DC. It's basically a flee market, arts and crafts fair, and meat and produce market, with live music. Old stuff, food, and art are practically my three favorite...-I'm searching for a word here, I'm going to go with "staples" followed by "smells"- in life.

Someone stole my bike. I've thought about this for a few days though, and I cannot really bring myself to be upset about it. I actually figured that it would happen eventually, and really, it probably benefits me more to walk- I could use the excercise after sitting in the office all day. I just hope that the bike finds a good home, and helps someone out. I also don't want to run into the person with the bolt cutters that they would have needed to break my lock.

So what else is new? Now that summer is over halfway done for me I feel more obliged to look to the future. I need to start looking at GRE exam dates, and applications for graduate schools. I also need to finish that Peace Corps application that I started four months ago. I definitely need to crack down and re-learn some Spanish.

Well, I'm going to finish Solitaire tonight. I promised myself I would read at least six books this summer and I'm only at two.