Academiaaaargh

It is strange and fabulous to be productive. On the surface of it all, writing a rough title and 100 word summary should not take that long, but I have put it off for several months and so actually having done it (even if it does need changing) is a wonderful feeling.

This thing's actually gonna happen. Be afraid, be very afraid. Then I'm going to become a software developer, slowly turn amphibious and go and live in a pond and eat your children.

Also I wrote an essay with 10 different citations. 10! That means I actually remembered where the facts I was writing about came from! That means there were actually facts in the essay! These are interesting times indeed.

Pond. Children. Raargh.

Just a wetter version of the skies...

I am trying to tidy. Those who know me know that this is always a deeply, deeply flawed experiment and this time is no different. I have managed to minimise my washing up at last (this year it lives in a plastic washing-up bowl that I keep under my sink, which is great in that I no longer have mouldering dishes in the same place that I brush my teeth but makes it oh-so-much easier to ignore...), but the overflowing laundry basked and large scattering of graduate recruitment leaflets are going to have to wait. I am going to blog rather than getting my life in order- it seems to be the right way around.

Speaking of. Getting a job. This terrifying, horrible thought that I have been instinctively saying "AAGH NO" to for the past 3 years is now horrifyingly close at hand, and for once it's not concerning me *quite* as much as I thought it would. Maybe I am being brainwashed by these terrifying propaganda-like glossy leaflets that promise fun work with frisbee playing at lunchtime! and other such strange things, but... there's actually some pretty cool stuff out there. I probably won't ever get to do any of it, but still, it turns out that those crazy things like working in an office and having a salary might temporarily be quite a good idea. Until I get together the funds to jet off to a language school and get Chinese fluency then come back and study Sinology until my brain bleeds, that is. This thought process is brought on by the Oxford Careers fair, which was both over and underwhelming at the same time. On the one hand, it was depressingly predictable in that all the careers that I, as a PPEist, am supposed to want to do (O HAI BANKS) look horrifying and wrong, and all the ones that look sort of hip (working for Peter Molyneux? Huh...) require a skill set that I, as a pansy social science graduate, am unlikely to get. Emily and I wandered around this minefield chatting to the folks in charge of the few fun things- mostly involving charity, sweeties and in my case a free Rubik's cube- before despairing of life and escaping to Mission, where I availed myself of their version of the sweet potato burrito (for the record: it's good, but not THAT good. Vegan recipe with mustard is better.)

<3 cube. It's one of those ones with a pattern where it kinda matters which way around the middle piece is, which makes it simultaneously fun and INFURIATING. Mostly the latter, actually. I basically stopped mid-conversation with somebody earlier so I could get angry with it and how it wasn't working out for me. Damn cube. Also it comes from people called Metaswitch who want me to learn software programming with them and live in one of their company houses and go to the pub with other employees every day and play frisbee every lunchtime and do team building events. I'm not going to lie, it sounds suspiciously like a cult. I'm seriously considering an application. (ALSO THE HAT THE HAT LOOK AT THE HAT)

VSO haven't got back to me yet for Youth for Development. I really do have a year's professional experience, guys, pleeeease want me! Then I can stop thinking about which cult I want to join for at least a year.

This week has otherwise been pretty good. Still enjoying Taiqi, although I had a work crisis on the Wednesday night where I had specifically booked out of dinner so I could do an extra class. Being in third year has made me work harder when I actually get down to it, but it's also apparently made me boring already. I got Professor Layton and the Lost Future last week (just after the announcement of the BEST GAME EVER Layton vs. Phoenix I am so excited I might pop) and finished the storyline on Thursday night and the game proper last night- it was the usual Professor Layton thing of setting up a supernatural contrivance where you can pretty much suspend your disbelief (mysterious disappearances and lost treasure, vampire town, time travel), then "solving" it at the end with some ABSURD "scientific" explanation (HALLUCINOGENIC GAS, ANYONE?), with the added fun of some hardcore Downer Ending right at the close- I played this through whilst drunk post-crew date and thus was openly whining as Bad Things happened- all good fun. Then of course they unlock a bunch of other puzzles which tend to be sliding blocks, which I should really stop myself from playing after 10pm, otherwise all I think about when I eventually do try to sleep is moving bricks around. Jolly good fun though, highly recommended. And I am getting damn good at those block puzzles now.

What else? Oh, some direct democracy but let's not chat too much about that. Suffice to say, things are happening in this country which are bad enough that I am now willing to actually try to do something about them. I have political convictions at last! It's been a long time coming but I am not going to quietly fail to disagree with any more right-wing libertarian morons any more. Hurrah!

...What am I saying, of course I will quietly fail to disagree when I am talking to them. Arguments suck unless you are drunk or not face-to-face. But in all seriousness, one day I will sit down and thrash out a sensible "wot I believe" post and the world will be better for it. Or something.

There are motion sensitive lights in our hallway and every time I walk past one I feel the need to do jazz hands in its direction, otherwise my movement might not be obvious enough to turn it on. Is this normal? You decide...

Enough for now. Cleaning Essay, Logic work, travel grant report, NWF entry, cross stitch and episode of the Apprentice are all crying for my attention. Who will win? What a mystery!

Oxonia, 'tis for thee

Dude, a blog from Oxford! What an exciting thing!

Ssooo I need to avoid the pitfall I normally fall into when I don't write anything for a while, which is "oh boy I need to write about all the things I've been doing for the past 2 months how will I ever catch up". This would be foolish, because there is simultaneously a lot that I *could* say about the past two months, and very little that I *should* say about them. I spent a month at home getting my head straight and avoiding work, and then the past three weeks have been getting back into the swing of life back in the bubble. They have been, by my standards, pretty stable, which is sooo very definitely a good thing.

(I also got a haircut and regained my peripheral vision on my right hand side for a couple of weeks, but it's gone again now. Side fringe I freaking love you so much more than my old fringe but you don't half make it tough to cycle sometimes.)

Anyways. A lot of silly and odd things happen to me in Oxford, so it seems stupid to not talk about them even if I can't remember half of them for more than an hour after they happen. But here goes some Stuff that may or may not be interesting:

• I have three more tutorial essays in total left in my Oxford career. Oh god, where has it all gone.
• I live on a big awesome staircase with fun people. It is so incredibly relaxing to not have inner tension every time people walk past my door. I also live in an incredible barn room that I need to continue to appreciate otherwise I will become boring and rubbish. I do miss Ben though (ARE YOU READING THIS, BEN? GET OFF SKYPE AND COME VISIT ME SOMEDAY). I would also miss Amyus but I see him ridiculously often. Ubiquitous smellyface.
• I'm a vegetarian now. Although I have averaged one "oh fuck it" meat meal a week.
• I have given up every single thing I did last year apart from sorting out the Moser Store. Amusing discovery of the week was finding out that the Wadham Conference Assistant, who was previously paid to manage bookings to all the rooms except the Moser Theatre, now ONLY does the Moser- that's a job that I used to do alongside rowing, writing and putting on my own plays, managing academic affairs and the occasional bit of degree work. And now they're paying someone to do it solely. As far as I know they have made no effort to sort out sound and lighting systems, so GOOD LUCK all those people I booked in last term. Lolz.
• Also I'm stage managering something cool later this term. And I have now officially done every job available to students in the Burton Taylor- acting, "stage managing" (i.e. standing behind the scenes and panicking), lighting, sound, watching and now Box Office. The last one got me an hour of enforced work time (necessary) and a free ticket (awesome) so good times all 'round.
• To fill the void left by the above giving-up-everything, I have taken up taiqi. So don't act surprised when I kick your arse with it.
• I still want to gossip about rowing and the SU despite having NOTHING TO DO with either any more.
• I am amused by the Supermarket Wars. "Big" Tesco is starting to lose its shine a bit though- it's not *actually* that big compared to Tesco Metro back in Cowley. I don't miss most of living in Cowley (proximity to the Covered Market makes up for lack of proximity to Cowley shops) but I do miss Tesco and their 10 types of beans and being able to buy things and then cook them without ridiculous amounts of forethought. I also just generally miss having a proper sink for filling kettles and washing up in; the tiny basins we have here are impossible to get a kettle under and I now have coffee grounds on my toothbrush. Tch.
• I have made a poster of all the relevant library opening times in my life...

So that is all good. I have also tried to take up hourly comic making, but I forget to do it when I don't have paper to hand and when I do, there is paper everywhere and it looks messy. Frankly I think that I have taken up enough new regular things without trying to draw on a regular basis as well. Particularly as I really, seriously, can't draw. Proportions are something that happens to other people.

Soon I will have to fix my post-Oxford future. Right at this moment, I would like a scholarship to language school in Taiwan and a full set of scuba diving equipment so I can spend the non-language learning times in the subtropical sea. But it will change by next week. And then again the week after that. Also some day I will have to make money and pay back £20,000 to the government (PLUS INTEREST; THANKS A FUCKING MILLION, BROWNE). But not until the future, and by then I will have a jetpack sooooo. Yes.

This has been short and nonsensical but hopefully it'll get me back into writing down more Shit That Happens (and next time it will be anecdotal and fun, promise!) In the short term, though, it is just so fucking nice to be stable. And happy. Focus on that, and the rest will sort itself out... maybe.

Tupperweather

So after two months of near constant heat and humidity, Washington has finally decided to behave itself and has produced a day of overcast, dry mid-20s bliss. The kind of day where the grey in the sky improves the colours of everything else, rather than washing it out and making it dark all around. I was given this day to walk 4.6 miles around the city on a tour of some of its historic residences, and despite the realisation in the evening that it was also the anniversary of the burning of Washington- oh wait, tangent time!

Hells yes. Although this picture is terribly inaccurate, both historically and geographically. Then again, given that the portion of the world who even remember the war are completely misguided as to who actually did the burning (note especially the presence of Tony Blair 3 minutes into that video... fuck the what guys) so the presence of men in boats and the British burning the Frigate Colombia aren't exactly a big deal, relatively speaking.

Also let us not forget that the national dish of said portion of the world appears to be cheesy chips. 'nuff said.

Anyway, what was I talking about. Oh, yes, I got a solo field trip day to see some historic houses, which should have been postponed to a non-historically-important anniversary but never mind, there's always tomorrow (which I hereby declare to be "British-running-away-with-their-tail-between-their-legs-because-a-hurricane-terrified-them-off" day, unless you can think of anything catchier). This meant I spent a lot of my day playing Simcity 4 wandering the gloriously beautiful neighbourhoods of Georgetown in my boots and a nice top, enjoying the complete lack of sweat forming anywhere on my body (I did also play Simcity 4 a bit but shhhh! I also toured 3 historical locations, walked 4 and a half miles and read 40 pages of a grown-up novel so *justified*).

Where did I go? Well, first up, Tudor Place, from where Mrs William Thornton watched the Capitol go up in flames (she was at the window just to the left of the pretty column thingy):

This is about the right weather, too. Like I say, tupperweather (I can't remember who initially coined that phrase but by golly I am going to use it so often now). That's the weather you would get if you were enclosed in a Tupperware container, for the uninitiated. And no, Americonians, I don't care if you don't call it Tupperware. Look it up if you're not sure what I'm talking about. You're on the internet for crying out loud.

Erm yes, Tudor place. I went on a house tour with a lovely guide, a nice lady and another lady who despite being nice was also everything that gives Americans a bad name in international tourist circles. Gushing over any tiny little thing that George Washington touched is bad enough, but must you do it whilst asking stupid questions and occasionally even contradicting the tour guide? And also we don't really care if you had that particular kind of sink in your 1950s New York home. It's a farmhouse sink, my parents still have one at home and it's not noteworthy. Pipe down.

Another interesting fact about Tudor place: for a very long time, its owner was an American lady who had the distinction of being named Britannia Wellington Peter by her parents (one of whom was George Washington's granddaughter, hence all the Washington paraphernalia in the house). Given that she was born in 1815, that must have been quite a fun name to go around with for 96-odd years. She had sisters called Colombia and America too. Fun times.

Enough nonsense about that place. I also went to Dumbarton Oaks (not Dumbarton House which I should have gone to, really) which was like a very small boring version of the British museum with a load of old stuff in it and also I sassed the security guard and got away with it.

Then I went on a walk to OCTAGON HOUSE! The most badass place that you have never heard of.

(Incidentally, all this stealing pictures off Wikimedia commons and then having to resize them in the HTML is working wonders for my division skillz.)

The most exciting thing about Octagon house, according to anything you will ever read about it, is that ZOMG IT'S NOT ACTUALLY AN OCTAGON. It's built on a kinda triangular lot, and they reckon it's called Octagon House because blah blah circular room building it's all very yawn.

More interesting things about Octagon House:

- Designed by Dr. William Thornton- as was Tudor Place and, for a while, the Capitol (until that whole burning thing came along). He liked doing architecture in his spare time, because hell, who doesn't? It was his wife who watched the burning up above (and that is historically interesting because she wrote a diary about it, by the way)

- Lived in by some mates of Washington who bought into the whole "THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST CITY EVER" thing (for most of the 19th century it was actually a godforsaken malarial swamp; opinions are divided as to whether it's improved since then. It was gonna be a big industrial centre with its own CANAL but then oops railways guess that thing you sunk millions into building ain't gonna bring in that much business after all)

- NOT REALLY AN OCTAGON oh wait yawn

- The guided tour would like you to believe that it got saved from burning because the owner moved the French ambassador in for the duration of the British occupation (24 hours); this was during Napoleon's first exile so the British had no interest in irritating the French by torching their representative. Actually the British only burned one privately owned building and that was the one that the American militia were shooting them from and thus reasonably justified in the grand scheme of things. They were specifically told not to burn or loot private stuff, so it's really no mystery at all why this completely private building survived, Frenchy or no.

- After the presidential mansion got a bit singed, Madison and his charming wife came and hung out here for a bit. This is where the Treaty of Ghent got signed, which ended that all important war of 1812 for good.

- Now the architectural college have taken it on and thus a lot of the guided tour (one of these MP3 do it yourself things) is talk about how wonderfully efficient and ventilated the house is and how thoughtful Dr Thornton must have been when designing it. Which I guess must be very interesting, if you are an architecture student. Just like the fact that it's NOT REALLY A- oh whatever.

What else? Oh yes. TEAISM. Which is my new second home and which I will miss terribly when I leave Washington. I went to a different one to usual, which was less characterful but smelled better and gave me a nice big mug to drink my tea out of instead of the teeny tiny ones that I get at Dupont circle. Also their Jasmine tea is epic as I discovered today.

Hasn't this been a good entry? I shan't spoil it by talking about the weekend and the people who left. I have retired from the social sphere of the house now, which is sort of sad I guess but I'm feeling way more relaxed at the moment than I have in a long time. I can identify the cause pretty well but again NOT RUINING THIS.

Interesting things I have learned recently

Here I am at work, the day after everyone has left (well, there are a couple of interns still around but they appear not to be in the office today... alas). I am reading an interesting piece of work called "Everyday life in the 1800s" which is not so informative about the events of the war of 1812 but which is generally interesting. As there is nobody around to tell the facts I learn from this book, y'all will have to do (some of these are not from the book, as you may note as you read them):

• Graham Crackers (like digestive biscuits, but AmericaniZed) were originally convieved as a cure for "carnal desires", particularly the sin of, er, self-abuse. Apparently blandness stops you from wanting yourself. Who knew?
• American housewives liked to wash their hair in rum and use honey and charcoal to clean their teeth
• American ring binders, and thus American hole punches, have three holes- one at the top, one right in the middle, and one on the bottom. This means that the hole punch is an enormous thing unsuitable for any kind of portable activity (not that hole punches are ever *that* portable I guess...)
• Tomatoes were widely considered poisonous up until the end of the 19th century
• "Bungee cord" is the same in both languages
• There is such a thing as too much Kate Rusby, although what I actually think it might be is too much time spent with headphones in. I really want to spend some time alone somewhere where I'm allowed to make noise without it being pumped directly into my ear...

I have tried to write this blog three or four times now, but each time it starts off with moaning and then moves on to me worrying about people disliking me and then being sad that everybody is leaving. This is the kind of thinking which makes me even sadder because I feel like I haven't made enough of the opportunities I've had. Even though, with the exception of academic work, I've done all I can and more besides. Such are my thought processes, tiring things that they are.

Much good stuff has happened this past two weeks- met my hero (not elaborating here), finished writing the second play, completely finished redrafting the first and had a reading out in the wilds of Maryland (I need to stop referring to places in Maryland as the wilds, to be fair... but it's fun, Washington suburbs are so much greener and more open and all the houses are actually pretty; I still dislike the prevalence of driving where I see it but it's nicer than a British housing estate). I went to the Holocaust Museum which was really good in a heavy way, didn't go into the same league of horror as some of the memorials in Europe itself do which left more opportunity for the human side to come through. Hats off to the Danish and the Italians and the people of Budapest, you did good it would seem.

Ten days left here, then off to recharge back in the Shire for a couple of weeks before it all kicks off again with a vengeance. I also have a play to write. Again.

Also did I earlier say too much Kate Rusby? No such thing.

But that was Wisconsin; that was yesterday

OK, I am uploading a MEGA-ALBUM with this entry! It's gonna be on facebook and awesome. I imagine that all of my readers come from there anyway, so if you want photographic evidence of my time here then you should go and check it out. Or just go lol at how bad my skillz are. Or if you'rs an ISH-er, you can worry about how awful the photos I took of you are. Jokes.

So I just got back from the beach, and I am resolved to have a Week of Productivity this week so that starts now, with BLOG. I have little to say about last week, which was not so good on the mental health front but which I survived intact and without any lasting psychological damage. My second biggest woe at the moment is definitely culture shock, which is compounded by the fact that I tend to spend a lot of time with Americans or seasoned US residents who don't quite seem to clock that America can cause culture shock... one of the fellows I went to the beach with apparently did an exchange at Oxford a while back (followed by a B.Phil, clever bastard) and was given a leaflet on cultural things including the instruction "Do not assume that British people all want to be American. They are happy being British". Which is amusing but also sums up the unconscious assumption that actually what goes on here IS better, that the way Americans speak is correct, that not having drive through banks is a reflection on the backwardness of the country without and not the quirkiness of the one with (car culture is not normal. The overwhelming majority of people on this planet do not live in a car culture. They are capable of walking to a cash machine.) I like this place, I would happily come here to do a masters or a PhD, but it's unapologetically strange (as opposed to China which is self-consciously strange) and it bothers me more than I think I've ever been bothered by a place before. It's all just very uncanny valley I guess. Which means I am reacting to America in a way analagous to how I would react to a human corpse. Mmmm.

But yes, aside from the inevitable mental wrangling, I had a fabulous time at the beach. We went camping, which has now given me a lust for "real" camping- the kind where you actually do go and hang out in a forest indefinitely and bring torches and camping food and maybe do a walk or something. Perhaps I'll bugger off to Wales for a bit when I get home, then I can take some pictures whilst I'm there and discredit the whole "BRITAIN HAS NOOOO NICE BEACHES" assumption. If I go to a beach, that is. Anyway, it was nice to camp except for one reason and another I couldn't shower and ended up absolutely revolting and covered in salt and sand and moaning endlessly about how disgusting I was which went down well (although to their credit there are some very good knee-jerk "NO YOU LOOK FINE" reactions out here. I am impressed and amused.) Also, the beach was in Delaware.

Buuut nobody I was with knew the reference. Also nobody I was with had ever seen the film "A Clockwork Orange". Do you understand where I am going with this culture shock thing now?

Beach itself... what is there to say about a beach? It involved being in a bikini which is sort of OK for a while but then you realise that whilst there are a lot of very big people around none of them are as young or pale as you (one pregnant woman had suntanned a smiley face into her baby bump, presumably using a cunning application of suntan lotion. I'm not kidding.) and also bikini lines let's not elaborate on that but they are a pain. The sea was awesome even if the waves were enormous, and we did some general chilling. The sand was incredibly hot and there were a fair few gay people around.

The evening involved eating a bison burger and then going on an immensely unsuccessful bar crawl. The guy in charge of our trip, Dan, had been told by a 40-something that the beach was awesome in the 80s and what seems to have happened is that the same people have kept returning since then, meaning we felt a bit young and also one bar was frankly disgusting and the other did not have good enough dancing music and was completely lit up as if you'd want to see the faces of the people dancing next to you. We then went to make our own fun by bringing the grape juice of the very old grapes (or "J-VOG". That is now a word. Use it all the time.) to a railway track to look at the stars. The stars were not as good as we'd hoped, but the conversation was good. I did not like sitting on a railway track at all, being as I am from the East Coast Main Line, but nothing came in 90 minutes so I guess that was fine.

Most of these folk are leaving next week. I will miss many of them terribly. And I will have a couple of big, big regrets. Such is life.

Talking about last week is less interesting. I saw Inception, which I enjoyed but which frustrated me artistically because I didn't really like the way they revealed the world, and it did feel like they kept changing their own rules when it suited them (SPOILERRRR: introducing "you can't die in dreams" almost immediately, and then following that up with "oh but we CAN die in this dream cause we'll lose our minds and that will be as bad" and then following THAT up with "oh but people have died and we brought them back sane despite what we said would happen happening" just wound me up no end). I really liked the ending though, I thought that was very clever indeed. I do think he was in the real world though. What can I say, I like seeing happy endings even if I never intend to write one. I also started working on mah thesis which it seems will actually happen, which is definitely a good thing even if it's gonna be stressful to squeeze most of the work on it into the bit of summer I'm going to have left when I get back. I'm just looking forward to having a lot less additional stuff to do next year so I think I'll be OK.

There is little else to say. Three and a bit more weeks, a historical re-enactment, a couple of interviews, a lot of goodbyes, a puppet show and a possible trip to North Carolina await me, and then I will be home again and ready to throw myself into a final year of fun. This is a good thing.

Boredom is not a literary device

The most vivid memory of *that* term, the one where everything pretended to come together, is taking the walk home. In particular, the permanent puddle between buildings is jammed into my mind, because it was always the moment of walking where the emotion of the moment would hit the hardest- happy frustration, usually, then barely concealed elation for a while and then the days where it turned into crushing disappointment and the realisation that it had never been what I expected. It doesn't really matter if things are going well or badly, it's still that walk away where all of the bits of emotional junk that have been ignored for the duration of socialising sneak up on you and leap on top of you and make you forget that your internal organs are just to keep your cells fuelled and your temperature regulated. The boy (and the feelings) which first made me think this is(/are) gone forever and the walk is different but even with distance and perspective the experience flattens me more effectively than anything else that anyone can inflict on me. And it's after that moment, the Walking Away from the night out or the weekend away or the day at work or the evening walk (Blockbuster, screw you for not renting to foreigners. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU YOUR SHOP IS IN THE EMBASSY DISTRICT), that I get the chance to tell y'all about what I've been up to. Which makes it hard, usually.

Wah. I'm in Washington living it up and I'm a bit sad, pity meeee. CRY CRY. Blah.

RIGHT.

I wrote in a margin last week what my favourite thing was from Friday, and then I promptly forgot about it until yesterday where my rediscovery was compounded with the resolution to tell everybody that I'd written down a thing to tell people in the margin of my notebook. The thing itself was an observation about the Metro here, which I am now a pro at (a mixed blessing; it means getting from place to place is easy and I'm regularly not on the most crowded train carriages but it also means I get irritated very easily at people who aren't pro Metro-ers) utilises real people to give the announcements in all the train carriages. The awesomeness of this is not to be underestimated; at worst, it means that the moments of my day where I would otherwise be spoken to by a clinical British voice (calling London "Blundon" and Huntingdon "Cuntingdon"... gotta love First Capital Connect) are instead spent listening to a bored southern American accent, and at best it means I get some of the best dialogue of my day. Irritated women tell people to stop being such morons and crowding onto one door of a departing train and just move down the platform or get the one in two minutes time like a normal person. Calming older men start every message with a "thanks for riding" before slowly drawling the name of the next stop in such a way that you're there before they've even stopped talking. Some speak in a manner completely unintelligible to me, or forget to say things and have to reannounce, or hold on to the button for too long And just occasionally, you get days where a voice will announce to you "there's a train in front of us... and a train behind us. We are between a rock and a hard place" and everybody on their miserable morning commute to the centre of Washington will catch each other's eyes and smile for just a second.

"Next station Farragut North, Farragut North next station". Gotta love it. The voices, not Farragut North.

This weekend involved a very long and pleasant day of wargaming with my boss, which has in turn spawned a lot of tiresome jibes about the mild oddness of this situation compared to the relationship most other interns have with my boss. It's not my fault that they don't express a polite interest in wargaming at the right times. I then took a spin on the Potomac with my new sculling skillz on Sunday- charming but it takes a very long time to get anywhere new and interesting on that river. I wish I had the confidence to take an MP3 player out with me, but I know that that would be tempting fate to an unreasonable degree so I'll remain without it. On a more painful note, sculls are not made for people with thighs as disgustingly enormous as mine and as I don't have shorts long enough to cover them up adequately, I end up with massive grazes on the tops of both of my legs which then get disgusting and start sticking to my jeans and are generally unpleasant. Too much information maybe? Well, whatever. I go back to the house in time for Sunday lunch and then wait for a planned museum trip with a couple of housemates; one does not materialise, one does and then pussies out because it is drizzling. I am disgusted by this and inform him never to emigrate to England or he will never leave the house. Well, actually, what I say at that point (when he is wavering) is "I am going now, come or don't, bye" and then I walk away and when I am not followed or called in the next fifteen minutes I think the above and I then say it at a later date. Anyway, with a mild and largely unjustified sense of injured pride and annoyance I head over to the Air and Space Museum, and am promptly snapped out of my mood with THE BEST MUSEUM EVER. Sure, there were too many kids and some bits were a little dull, but there was PHYSICS and PLANETS and THINGS TO TOUCH and ROCKETS and AEROPLANES (interestingly, one of the exhibits in the "early aviation" bit switched rather gratingly between "airplane" and "aeroplane" in its text, with the latter being used for headings and the former for the body. It's more jarring to see the two together than it is to just look at one the whole time...) My favourite was the photography of planets bit and the telescope bit and particularly finding a video in a corner of the telescopey bit playing a rather strange animation of a man ice skating through the known universe whilst the Galaxy Song plays in the background. Oh and I liked the Wright Brothers exhibit too. And the World War I bit was presented extremely well- basically bombarding you with "LOOK AT THIS STUFF WE MADE ROMANTICISING THE AVIATION OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR IT IS UTTERLY STUPID IT WAS A HORRIBLE WAR", which started off being mildly affronting when it is "oh the British thought this was going to happen with the planes but instead they all died oops silly British" but then became understandable when I got to the part of the exhibit where they treated American involvement in exactly the same way. Anyway, it was awesome, and I bought a magnet. The End.

Screen on the Green was significantly less enjoyable this week and led to me coming home in a Right Old Mood. Not sure how that happened. And by that I mean "I am sure but I sure as hell ain't telling you nothing". Bonnie and Clyde turned out to be a very odd movie.

What else? Trying to be cheerful and objective and entertaining in writing is either therapeutic in some way or it just has the same effect on me as spending time with people does, in that I don't feel nearly as whiny as I did at the start any more. I've little to report on the work front; I'm now thoroughly bonded with the other interns which is great but my productivity has taken a bit of a nosedive which is not at all great. A lot of people are leaving in the next couple of weeks which is going to massively change the dynamic of what's happening there, but for now it's nice. We had War of 1812 beer tasting this evening which was one of those events which wasn't as well attended as it could have been but which everybody who was there enjoyed; I tried to get housemates (pl) to attend and ended up persuading one, who I should probably refer to by name more often and whose name is Brendan. This must be considered a success, as it's both unusual and good for him not to be at work past 6. Together we formed the full complement of people not impressed by the establishment of the United States as a major naval power after the War of 1812 (he is a Canadian) and we got to chat to strange and beautiful people and drink a range of good beers. Aaand then we went to return some video tapes (REFERENCE!) and then went on from the awful Dupont Circle video store (/glorified porn rental place) into the heady heights of Kalorama and tried to go to Blockbuster but they wouldn't allow us on account of being foreign as hell. And that is where we left off.

It's good, here.

Age is not important (unless you are a cheese)

Speedblog, deploy! I have to go to Screen on the Green (movies on the National Mall (not a shopping centre) ) very soon but I really want to start this beforehand so that I have something to come back to. This is a very good time to start because the epic yo-yo that is my mood has been stolen by a retarded kid who doesn't know how to yo-yo and has thus spent the last couple of days spinning stupidly at the bottom of its string and getting tangled up and annoying everybody. Is that a good metaphor? I like that metaphor. Let's stick with it. The point is that now the yo-yo is back in the hands of some kind of experienced yo-yo geek who knows how to do more with it than just fail at it all the time, and so normal service is probably resumed

I know better than to be surprised about the above, incidentally. It's been a month, and this is a classic time for the away-from-home frustration to kick in. Plus now I know people well enough for their actions to bother me. And I am very worn out by this insane hidden language barrier (Recent ones are waistcoat = vest; vest = tank top/wife beater; fancy (v) = hilarious; bin = hilarious; accidentally saying "soccer" instead of football and "real football" instead of American football = offence worthy of exile). The answer to the latter is to stop fighting it and just call taxis cabs and the Metro the Metro (instead of the tube) and everybody will be happy, but... this language is all I've got, and I don't want to lose it even temporarily.

But this is now, and that was then (and now I'm interested in smarter, employed men...). You know what's more interesting than emotions? NEW YORK! Which is where I was for three days. In all honesty, it wasn't quite the magical cultural experience I think people are supposed to have when they go to New York, but it was still really fun even if I was not with a group of people who wanted to go to Toys 'R' Us (or indeed the Pokemon store. But I totally swung that one. And I got to go and show off my Bad Badger t-shirt to all the Nintendo folk and it was awesome!) I just don't like cities much is all.

Some pictures of stuff:

Several bottles of white wine and a pot of yoghurt, and no fridge in our horrible dirty hotel room. What ought we to do? Construct an elaborate pile of objects in front of the air conditioning, that's what.

My personal spoils from the Pokemon centre. MAMOSWINE SEZ HAI

A reference. Do you get it? If not, I don't recommend travelling with Brendan and me. Not if you value your sanity.

We went to the Guggenheim and the MoMA. This is the latter. The boring, 40s-70s part of the latter. The less boring parts had Van Gogh (starry night <3)>

Terrible, terrible graphic design (you may have to click to the full sized picture to see why). Still, two birds with one stone?

There are things which were not photographed (or, more accurately, which were photographed but not by me and have not made it to Facebook yet), notably Saturday night which involved wine and vodka and attempted thievery and dancing to Mr Brightside in a club where nobody knew what the song was and a brief thunderstorm, all in a rooftop club overlooking the empire state building. On the way home, I started kicking up a fuss to the taxi driver because I had convinced myself he was going the wrong way, and then we bought burritos and I forgot the buying of burritos and got very confused when I woke up next to one the next morning. It may be a comfort to you, dear reader, to know that my drunken moods are a rare constant in an ever-changing world.

Also, we went to Central Park and saw a sculpture of two eagles eating a goat, and as we were looking at it a middle aged guy with a suit and a backpack started talking to us about it as well. We knew nothing about the statue then, but I do now.

Yeah, we the eagles and prey and we BADASS.

Work is going well. I've been in the office a lot recently and have started to appreciate the atmosphere in there a lot, due in no small part to the fact that I now know quite a few of the Oxford interns and we form a significant minority in the face of the American masses. Thus we can discuss words like "hench" and "fit" and "bare (adj)" and "well (adj)" and particularly "bender". "Bender" is a recurring topic of discussion because apparently the film "The Last Airbender" (which I did not intend to see, but may consider watching just because of this fact) uses the descriptive term "bender" extremely regularly with no homosexual connotations. I find this brilliant. I have done a second draft of the play and have just now (it's now Tuesday, I went to Screen on the Green already :P) been to Maryland to talk to some historical re-enactors about language and stuff. It was awesome, they bought me dinner and we talked geeky stuff like Doctor Who and War of 1812 and they invited me to upstate New York (can't go, will clash with my wargaming) and to come to the re-enactment of the Battle of Bladensburg. I am SO THERE. We might do a reading around the campfire with the other historical re-enactors, it will be fantastic in an awesome geeky way. I think I need to embrace geekiness more than I currently do, especially here. I need to seek out other geeks and we need to geek out together.

But no, I never shall. Because I am but a surface geek, who can geek out a little bit about a huge variety of things, but who will probably never pursue anything deep enough to truly ascend into the ranks of geekdom. I will always be an outsider to all true nerds, and I am definitely never going to get to hang out with the cool kids. What does that make me? Probably "quirky" or some other depressing adjective that only seriously gets used by 14-year-old morons to describe themselves. Alas.

What else has happened? Well, we went to Screen on the Green, which you kinda heard about; we watched "12 Angry Men" and drank wine and then afterwards briefly went to a salsa night but everybody was far too good for us to be able to join in properly. Last week I bought some new dresses from a vintage store, where one was expensive and one was free and I kinda hope that balances out but it doesn't currently feel like it. I tried and failed to tidy my room-space. People I have become friends with are leaving the house and I feel depressed that so many more will be gone in just a couple of weeks' time. I have not been rowing since I finished my course and I desperately hope I will have time on Thursday morning before my tour of the pentagon.

I feel that there must have been so much more to say than this? I could talk about commuter trains (MARC ftw) or say more things about New York (cuban bar = :/) or muse on bugs (how can anybody get used to seeing fireflies? They are AMAZING) or long distance buses or contemplate my own fundamental inability to be content with anything that happens in my life... but no. There is only one thing left to say.

Weather. Hottest day in 20 years on Saturday and I MISSED it. Epic thunderstorm on Sunday and I missed that too. I am a failure as an Englishwoman.

A stranger with your door key, explaining that I'm just visiting...

Yeah, I stopped picking up random people' s conversations a while ago so I can't start things with crazy shit people on the street say any more. So we're going back to the tried-and-tested song lyric title. Yeah I'm uninventive, so shoot me.

There is less to say, these days. That is probably a good thing. Back in Xinjiang, when I tried to do regular weekly updates, I found that the amount I could write about a given week was usually inversely proportional to how personally satisfying the week was. The less I feel the need to express myself to people back on the island, the better I am usually doing where I am. That's how these things work, I guess.*

Erm. So. What did I do this week, and why am I having so much trouble thinking of it? I did a whole bunch of stuff, the most major of which is write a full draft for my first commissioned play. It's not a very good draft, granted, but I'm still chuffed to bits that I've got it out there. What comes next is a couple of weeks of talking to historical re-enactment folk and the like, getting an idea of what the dialogue and tone should be like. I also am probably going to end up reading some Sharpe novels or something. This, and the fact that I am wargaming next weekend, means that I am going to have plenty of time to get in touch with my masculine side, which is no bad thing. There is nothing wrong with man-fun**. Interpret that how you will.

And when is this masterpiece to be performed, you ask? Well, the scheduled date for the grand pyrotechnic spectacular is August 24, 2014. Yes, that is four years and a month away. Yes, the world may well have ended before then. And I'll be 25 AND PROBABLY TERRIBLY FAMOUS ALREADY DONCHA KNOW (ha!). But on the plus side it'll be a brilliant personal time capsule. I suspect there may be advance performances before then, so hopefully it won't just be sitting in a drawer gathering dust for four years. Or maybe it will? Time will tell.

(There are a huge number of helicopters and sirens outside. What on earth could be happening? This happens on a surprisingly regular basis, although it might just be a byproduct of living in the middle of a big city with functioning emergency services, which I have never done before)

I should probably recount some witty anecdotes now, shouldn't I. Errr... well, on Thursday I went to a gay bar and it was really good for a while but then creepy men started getting the wrong idea. Why is it that the ONLY clubs where I get attention from (invariably male) strangers are gay clubs? Maybe they were just dancing but... man. I have developed a Thing about grinding, which is that I do not want you behind me full stop no arguments I do not care who you are even if I am attracted to you I do not want you expressing yourself like that thank you. Front is absolutely fine (unless you are REALLY creepy) but back... eugh. Eughhhhhh. No.

Are my parents still reading? Good... I also now have my grandmother on my Facebook, so she might be here too. If you are around, this is probably as naughty as this is going to get, I promise.***

Sidetracked again. This is ADD blogging again... anyway, erm. We'll gloss over Friday and Saturday (drinking, horrible security at a club, went to Spy Museum, went to sculpture garden and sat with feet in pond for a while, ate Thai food, watched HORRIFIC movie) and go to Sunday, which was slow as Sundays here always are, and largely revolved around trying to go to the swimming pool with a bunch of people. We got there mid afternoon to find it busy but not uncomfortably so, and obligingly hopped in and appreciated not being in the disgustingly hot air for a few minutes; conversation revolved in part around the insanely smug life guard kid, who was clearly enjoying the power trip of his summer job and kept wandering around blowing his whistle and getting people to stop doing inane things just because he could. After fifteen minutes, however, our fun was ruined by aforementioned kid coming along telling us all to get out of the water. We look confused, but obey (1 British, 1 American, 2 Catalans; therefore a 50/50 divide between people with a reluctant but largely unquestioning obedience to authority and those without...); however, the whistle blowing soon turns into a shout of "clear the decks, clear the decks!" This apparently means leave the pool. We look bemused, as does every single other person in the place, and refuse to move. The kid continues, now backed up by some slightly more authoritative looking folk. Eventually, someone does the obvious, and shouts: "Why?"

"Thunderstorm", the kid tells us, with an insanely large grin on his face. We look up into the CLEAR BLUE SKY and grumble. Then we all leave. These people are not so different to the British after all, no matter how many weird words they may use (my personal favourite at the moment is "penmanship", meaning "handwriting". The kid in the library I went to today was like "I apologise for my poor penmanship, ma'am" to the librarian when handing her a form, which has to be the poshest way to say "Sorry about my handwriting" I've ever heard in my LIFE. He was my age...)

The blue sky persists all along the walk to the frozen yoghurt shop (DELICIOUS), continues whilst we eat our frozen yoghurt, maintains itself once we get back to the house and even manages to stay around for several hours, which we spend sitting in the garden talking until dinner time. At around 10pm, there is indeed a storm, and it is the most terrifying one yet, but it was not a reason to leave the pool. Except it was. Bloody life guard kids and their hallucinations.

Monday night is salsa night. It's great fun, except it requires a lot of concentration to keep your arms and your legs moving simultaneously. I am forced to leave for toothache related reasons earlier than I would otherwise have liked. I have a wisdom tooth intent on suicide right now, which is beyond infuriating...

One last thing, then I'll go. I've been at a brand new library again today (I took a picture but my camera is not within reach whilst I am sitting down...) and with new libraries come new exhibitions that I can pop into during my impromptu lunch breaks- this time, I spent a bit of time across the hall from the library in a small modern art exhibition. It was a fairly odd mix of stuff from one lady- some of it I really liked in a sort of "oooh, what nice colours in a nice pattern" way; a few were "ooh I can tell what that is meant to be and it is a nice representation of it", and then a lot were "oh. some colours on a canvas. Nice."

I am halfway through the process of sorting paintings into the three categories, when a woman comes up to me, with a bright "Hello, I'm the artist."

Oh fuck, I think. "Oh, how lovely," I say. We converse enough for her to clock the accent, and then have the obligatory "yes I'm from ENGLAND what did you think I was a South African or something?" exchange (I actually did get mistaken for an Australian once. Bleh.) When she discovers this, she looks excited and exclaims that I will REALLY appreciate this one painting she has done. She then promptly drags me over to a large painting which appears to be a set of squares and triangles in yellow and green on a black background.

"This one's called 'The Tate'. It's of the Tate." She stares at me, expectantly. I stare at the painting, desperately, trying to think of something, anything to say about it that will get me out of this horrible parallel world where I care about modern art and have something to say about it.

"Oh. Wow. You know, I really like everything with bright colours. i get dragged in by them" I say (truthfully. This happens basically every time I go clothes shopping; as soon as there is a bright thing in a window or just inside a door I AM THERE). I give her a still slightly desperate smile, and hope that this is an acceptable answer; she sort of smiles back but her expression indicates that clearly I have failed some sort of modern art test I didn't even know I was taking. After showing me to her guest book, she wanders off to annoy somebody else.

I return to staring at the painting. It's just some shapes on a canvas. It doesn't remind me of the Tate AT ALL. I'm not even sure what part of the Tate it was supposed to evoke. Maybe I was supposed to ask her this, but I can't say I care what the answer was. After a few seconds more of "appreciation", I go to look at the pretty ones of beaches again. In her guestbook, I write that I like the colours, and that I'm glad she liked the Tate. And that I hope I never see her ever again.

Nah, just kidding. That would have been rude.

-----------------------------------------------------

*Related, I found this vaguely interesting. Specifically the whole "body interpreting depression as infection and isolating you" thing. All the lifestyle shit is bloody obvious- sleep, eat well, don't think too hard about it, get some sunlight, do you really need a book to tell you that'll make you less depressed? Come to think of it, you probably don't need a book to tell you that your depression is making you avoid those things and thus locking you into a vicious cycle, either... anyway depression is for losers and I'm just a fake poser depressive who's never been on a med in her life so whatever.

**You know what? I am even going to give up on the conviction that some films that other people like and I don't are only considered classics because they're boy films. I'll officially concede that Pulp Fiction is a gender neutral classic film, and I just don't like it for the same reason I don't like Catch-22 or Mozart. Or... you know, some girl thing I don't like despite it being classic. Like. Um. George Eliot.

*** And yes I am being safe and sensible and not spending more of your money than is strictly necessary to keep myself in the manner to which I have become accustomed etc. etc.

Yeah I had to teach this Oxford guy how to row, and he kept calling them "bow side" and "stroke side"... how stupid is that.*

So there is something that I just cannot wait to say which is of great importance in the understanding of transatlantic relations. It is nothing to do with language or culture or anything like this, but it's the biggest and strangest difference between countries and I also noticed it way back in 2004, back when I used to talk shit in top-secret notebooks rather than on the internets (I really ought to burn some of those, come to think of it. I know that in theory I'll look back on them some day and be enchanted, or somebody else will find them awesome, but... no. I've spent enough time the past couple of weeks looking at stuff other people have left behind to know what I want to leave behind, and it is not that). It confused me then, and it still confuses me now.

It is, of course, the movement of squirrels. I am not inventing this, grey squirrels ACTUALLY move differently here to the way they move in the UK. Back at home, they all bound around like big fluffy letter "m"s all the time, except when they are actually climbing vertically and have to hold on; over here, however, the things SAUNTER. Seriously. They either walk or do a sort of power walky jog, but it's one back leg one front rather than hopping. Needless to say, I think this is the root of that whole old memey "LOL SQUIRRELS ARE GOING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD" thing that still occasionally pops up. Back home, it's an unfunny juvenile thing to say about a cute fluffy mammal, but here it actually has grounds in the way the fuzz-rats walk about like they own the place. And since last time I noticed it I was in a forest near one of the Great Lakes, it can't just be a regional thing. Squirrels genuinely do move differently in different countries. There is your fact for today.

Ho hum, what else is going down... I'm too listless to upload pictures so no visual aids for you today. I been doing variations on a theme, except now I row as well- I've spent depressingly little time in a boat so far given that I'm paying quite a bit of money for classes, but I think that's due to change tomorrow provided I can get up in time. I'm also bemused by the people I'm in a class with- there wasn't much need for conversation yesterday, but today I was with a father son combo who not only made no effort to talk to me, but did not even SMILE BACK at me when I greeted them on the dock. I know it's early in the morning, guys, but there's reserved and then there's just fucking rude. There's so little class interaction going on that I'm pretty sure most of them don't even know I'm British, which sort of puts me out a little bit. I want the attention from being different so I can complain about it D:

I have also got the phone number for one of the payphones on the Metro so I can try ringing it every time I go past and see if anybody answers. Not quite sure what I'll do if they do... probably hang up in terror. This may seem like a stupid thing, but actually the fact that I wanted to call a Metro payphone yesterday meant that I figured out my phone was lost whilst there was still a possibility of recovering it. This event was the highlight of my Monday, which probably shows you how dismal it was. Today has been better, though, I made a list and then did everything on it which is an anal but immensely satisfying way to feel like you've achieved something even when all you've done is spent about 3 cumulative hours in a library and then gone to the post office. Things are good though even on bad days. I'm not sure if it's the new location or a natural progression away from the general negativity which was second year, but I'm thinking about things in a much better way than usual, which is a welcome change even if it's probably temporary.

I am, as an old acquaintance would have said, "growing up". Always always growing, that has to be a good thing. Maybe not "up" though. maybe sideways. I am "growing away" and "growing towards" and maybe even "growing out" of some things that it's about time I grew out of***. This is a good fact which requires recording.

It occurs to me (or, you know, occurred, in the past. At the Capital South metro station, to be exact) that I have a very high opinion of the low opinions I hold about pretty much everything I am and everything I do. I should work on rationalising that one. Or, you know, using it as a motive to not be such a self-flagellating perfectionist all the time. We'll see about that.

*ROWER TALK: this was not actually said about me but it was said with the intention of me hearing, before the instructor realised I was British (he still doesn't know I'm an Oxford rower too no less). Right after the conversation, we got on sculling simulator things, and he came up to me and was like "yeah, you're a sweeper... you row port, right?" and I had to break it to him that I had NO FUCKING CLUE what that meant because I am a stroke sider. I then explained the whole "it's stroke side because stroke rows on that side" thing, to which he responded with "what if you starboard rig** the boat?" and then "you British have weird names for everything". True, sir, but we also win all the medals. I think tomorrow I'll teach him about "easy oar"- here it's "wain off". WTF.

**MORE ROWER TALK: "starboard rig the boat". I KNOW. WHAT. It's called "bow rigging". Plus calling them port and starboard when you're sitting backwards is just unnecessarily complicated.

*** by this I definitely do not refer to Pokemon or Twilight or Mortal Engines or ANY of those awesome cultural things for kids I love. More... oh I don't know ask me in person and I'll tell you if I trust you enough. It'll be a nice test of our friendship.

"Attention all Metro passengers with baby strollers: do NOT use your child to block the closing doors. Thank you."

Anglicisms people laugh at me for, part 1:

• "Jumper"
• "Gran"
• "Ring" as a verb. e.g. "I'm going to ring this payphone and see who answers"
• "Post" as a verb e.g. "I need to post this letter"
• "The hash key" i.e. on a mobile phone
• "Mobile phone"
• "Toilet"
• "Posh" when applied to a person
• "Prat"
• "Properly"
• "Bah-throom" as opposed to "bay-throom"
• "Sick" as a... actually, what is that? As in "I'm going to be sick".
• Doctor Who

I am VERY ENGLISH, it is a constant observation. There is no way out of it, as soon as I open my mouth all these strange words and sounds come out that make me strange and quaint.

Something too much of this. This is taking me a million times longer than usual to write because I am in a food coma having eaten a very large amount of Ethiopian food, which is actually a very common ethnic cuisine in Washington. Ethiopian food basically consists of a lot of different types of meat (similar to curry) and vegetables (reminiscent of Chinese) and pulses, all put on top of this delicious soft pancakey type bread. You are then brought more of the bread and you use this to scoop up the food (sort of by pinching it with your fingers, but with the bread in the way... you know what I mean) and eat. It looks like this, if you're interested. Bloody brilliant but the sheer quantity of bread means that you get full really quickly. We also had some honey wine which was sort of a cross between desert wine and sherry. The meal was made exciting not only by the epicness of the food but also by the power cut which happened just as we'd finished; turns out this is a fairly common occurence in the city, and had happened to the restaurant for 4 hours the previous day, so they got out candles fairly quickly and everything went on as usual- the power came on about ten minutes later so luckily they didn't have another electricity free business night. On the way home we ended up stopping at an ice cream place where you can choose stuff to "mix in" to your ice cream, something which is reminiscent of being eight years old again and making "ice cream soup" in your bowl with three different flavours and chocolate sauce- oh wait, was that just me? Can't have been. Anyway, they have that here and its a legit way to eat ice cream. Brilliant but now all the blood is in my intestines and I cannot stay awake.

What else has happened to me in the last couple of days? I went on a "field trip" on Friday again, but as it was just me and one other girl we didn't really stick to the plan we'd been told to follow. I spent a fair bit of time in the buildings museum, which is this insanely large late 19th century thing modelled on Renaissance architecture which was actually originally planned as the War Pensions office by a... well, by an egomaniac. It spent a large chunk of its career first as a pensions office and then as a temporary space for lots of different public offices before getting closed down, almost torn down and then reopened as the buildings museum. The building itself is epic:

Unfortunately, the exhibits are all in this sort of vein:

Carparks: an artistic masterpiece. There was a very large carpark section. We all heart carparks do we not.

After this I went to an amazing small science museum and got roped into an infectious disease demonstration with a bunch of school kids (and also talked at by all of the staff for being ENGLISH oh so very English also I know lots about the history of vaccines thanks to the Medicine Through Time course back in GCSE history, so that won me brownie points too). I was supposed to be at the post museum, which I'm sure is *great*... but nope.

Then, home, playing Monkey Island 2 (finished it... fabulous game, obviously; loved most of the update but still uneasy about the way they changed Guybrush's model. The retconning of his character to fit in with the Dominic Armato loveable moron just didn't work as well, what with him actually being a MASSIVE DICK basically the whole way through this game, more so than in any of the others. I did really enjoy it though, especially as some of the puzzles in this one are much more tricky and less memorable than the SOMI ones, so I actually had to use their hint system a fair few times...) and then dinner and drinks and spilling wine all over Janina's wall and then out to Eden for another roof top party, which coincided with a rain storm hitting D.C. Danced through all but the very worst of it, and even that I only backed off from because my passport was in my bag and I didn't think it was a bright idea to get that soaking wet (especially as one of my most important visa documents got wet the other day and the stamp saying when I entered the country ran and is now illegible...). Brilliant night.

Yesterday a group of us (me, Janina, Stefan, Deborah, Enikő and Celine, to be exact... I know all those names mean so much to you, dear reader*) went to Philadelphia for a day trip, which was also fit. We were only there for 5 hours so we didn't see everything, and in particular we didn't get to go pose outside the museum steps where Rocky got filmed (this is probably a good thing for me actually... do I really want *that* quoted at me any more than it already is?)

Anyway, maybe it is just because I was only there during the day but I thought Philly was one of the best places I've been to in the USA. Big skyscrapers right next to pretty historic buildings which are themselves right next to charmingly run down streets full of small restaurants and shops and bums getting angry when you don't listen to them... yeah, I am under no illusion about how charming I would find those districts after dark, fear not. Crime capitals of the United States are not to be over romanticised. Not even when they are also regular capitals of the United States, like this "home" of mine is. But I'm an Urumqilik, I've seen my fair share of run-down but awesome places** and I love them all as long as a certain amount of personal safety is present. We saw the Liberty Bell and some halls and a random square full of chess pieces and dominoes and ludo counters and ate Philadelphia Cheese Steak.

PICATURES (will be uploading lots to facebook as soon as I have enough decent ones to make an album worthwhile... which will be a LOOONG TIME.)

This photo is like one of those old school portraits where everything included is symbolic in some way. I think. (luckily, the jeans which spent the entire day halfway down my arse because I didn't have a belt on are out of shot...)

I am listening to Bruce Springsteen AS WE SPEAK.

Cheese steak. Delish.

Notice that everything is grey. This is actually a GOOD THING- it rained all Saturday morning which made for a long bus journey there, but it had stopped by the time we got there and the rain meant that it was cool enough to be comfortable walking around. High 70s is such a relief when you're spending your life at 90+ (By the way, UK heatwaves? PSSSSH. I laugh at you both because here is hotter and because we have air conditioning.)

And here is a professional lying down game man.

And courtesy of Janina, who is a far more adept photo-taker than I (mostly due to her ability to get people to take photos for us at every opportunity), here is The Crew:

L-R: Hungary, Netherlands, UK, Puerto Rico, Germany, France. We should form some kind of intergovernmental organisation.

Work is fine too. Frustrating. Have still found nothing new. I despair of ever finding something new.

And now, far earlier than normal, I go to bed... oh by the way I'm ROWING at 6.15am tomorrow and every day next week. WHY DID I THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA? I just don't know.

*That's reader literally in the singular, I suspect. Hello mother.

**Not Huntingdon.

Cheesy chips? Is that like nachos?

So it hit 100 today, in weird temperature. It's quite apt that that's such a milestone; whilst no, the water isn't ACTUALLY at boiling point, it damn well feels like it. The humidity in the air makes everything prickly and sticky and burny, and the heat itself is... well. It's 100. Bloody boiling, innit.

But enough weather chat. After a pleasant long weekend, it's now back to work, or what passes for it. I've spent today in the library of congress again, this time in the manuscript room, where the restrictions are extreme and the room is boring but the staff are very friendly and respond to thanks with either a curt "yup" or a long, drawn out "mmhhhmm". I absolutely love this, once I get used to it. I have found absolutely nothing of use today but I did get to read lots of people's letters from the original, and at one point I found a guy's atlas from 1822 which was really ripped up but totally awesome (of particular interest to me: the Asia page has both Xinjiang and the entire Himalayas region subsumed into the "Chinese empire". Along with "Corea" and a really big chunk of Manchuria. On an unrelated note, it also labels the north of Canada as "New South Wales"...). there were also loads of memoirs from a chap called Herman Sawyer, who went deaf from cannonfire in 1813, got captured by a guy called Captain Falcon (lolz) in the great lakes and then spent the later years of his life writing out his letters and cutting out newspaper clippings that mention him as a war hero.

*24 hours later*

OK, I just said no to salsa so I can play Monkey Island, but I realise that I must complete this before I play Monkey Island or I will be forever a failure.

(Incidentally, my facebook profile is awash with the cries of a thousand people who think its a travesty that this opening is not in the remake:

I am one of them. Undoubtedly. This thing is nostalgia crack. Although maybe that makes it a good thing that they didn't remake it, I dunno? The bit of the MI2 remake I have played is good, although I don't like the way they've updated Guybrush's facial expressions. His pixely ones are soooo cute. And so is his beard. The only beardy man I will ever love, and you can quote me on that.)

Anyway, enough Monkey Island. My past self spoke about the manuscript library; in the present, I have just spent my day at the National Archives which was a singularly brilliant but frustrating experience. Brilliant because what I read was fascinating (two folders of letters from 1850-ish basically consisting of workers denouncing each other as "Know-nothings" or asserting their Democrat loyalties or whining about being fired... there was even one which was addressed to the president, asking him to find the sender work at the Navy Yard. I guess it got forwarded on to the right person so he was on to something?) frustrating because EVERYTHING is irrelevant. Nobody wants to talk about that time Washington got torched, and still fewer want to discuss the Navy Yard in particular. All records have a telling gap between the middle of August and the first few days of September, after which one mention is made briefly in a letter of the "disaster" and then that's it. TALK, MEN. Or WRITE. WRITE is better.

Also, I believe that it is our collective duty as members of the human race to take pains to improve our handwriting. This will be difficult, especially if you write like me, but it is important. Bad handwriting makes so many records so painful...

Washington is unseasonably hot, I am told. 105 is not normal. Yes oh god that's 40 UUUGH.

Anyway, my long term goal here is to talk about Independence Day and put up pictures, so lets do those two things. Independence day first. On July 4th, we celebrated America's 233rd birthday, which was very nice for them. After a lazy morning in which I missed all parades and readings of Declarations of Independence and all that other shit, and a nice sit-down dinner, we made the long walk down to the National Mall (not a shopping centre) to spend an afternoon chilling out and wait for the fireworks. The "we" I speak of refers to these fine people:

And no matter what Kayla says, this photo is made MUCH better by her misfiring camera. The sky really was that pink. Honest.

The park was epic good times, we sat in the shade and I ate far too many biscuits and blueberries. I also angered a crazy lady by sitting a little too close to her whilst somebody else spread a blanket out, which caused her to rail about "my space... you know, my PERSONAL space?" I think you had to be there, probably. There was also a band, who alternated between playing great songs which I loved and patriotic American songs which I am not so hot on.

And then, at 9... PSSSHOOOM! or some other such fireworky sound effect.

Michelle's photo. Big big fireworks. Happy Joy.

(Fun fact: I am having more trouble with my surname here than I have ever had back home. People get confused EVERY SINGLE TIME I show them ID, and the woman today assumed my surname must be Felicity. Even my official intern registration apparently calls me Joy Adrienne. Fuck the what, America.)

Anyways, that was then and this is now. Now I work much of the time, although sometimes I do not go to it until past 11, because I am too busy checking things on the internet. Although most of the internet checking relates to work... honest. I work in buildings that look like this:

Library of Congress' Madison building, horrible younger sibling of the Jefferson building:

Jefferson has a lovely reading room that feels a bit like the library from Beauty and the Beast (although not nearly enough shelved books. What's with that?) Madison is like what would happen if George Orwell and Jean Paul Satre's books married and had a love child. Horrific massive columned exterior, interior is a bunch of identical corridors with identical- but colour coded- doors, behind each of which no doubt lies some sort of drawing room with a letter opener and a bunch of pretentious folks torturing each other with their existence. And the lights never go off.

This is a nice National Archives building with insanely high security. Don't destroy history, folks! America's only got a few hundred years of it and they're guarding it jealously. Seriously, 7 billion bits of paper is a pretty hefty number so I guess I'd hoard that too if I had it.

And now for something completely different: BISCUITS OF LOVE

OH OH AND WHAT COULD THIS BE OM NOM NOM NOM NOM

Uhm uhm what else do I want to say. A million things. I want to share every tiny observation that comes into my head every moment of the day, but nobody is there most of the time and if they were I wouldn't really want them to be. Oh how tiresome it is to be a person.

It's hot. Did I mention it's hot? It's really rather hot. I live on the other side of the room to the air conditioning unit, and right next to our big bay windows, which means that the heat is seeping through the windows and attacking. Also i went to the bathroom without sandals yesterday and it burned the soles of my feet. That's 105 for you...

Boy is this long. And now done! Laters.

Stranger 1: You're really pink! Stranger 2: Yeah, I'm a Maine Lobster. Rarrr.

I'm a bit on the morose side, but I will try to keep this interesting despite that.

I spent last night partying on a club rooftop, just down the road from the White House. After some frustrations trying to get up there in the first place (which basically entailed following the savvy people around trying to get a stamp, and then waiting for the goodwill of the completely ridiculous bouncer who accepted other people's stamps but apparently not ours) and the continuing annoyance of being short-changed $10 for a Vodka Red Bull (although... I LOVE that making a vodka Red Bull here just entails pouring both into a glass simultaneously, none of this measuring out a shot rubbish). It was warm but not hot, crowded but not quite the crush of Babylove or Kukui or any of those other Oxford establishments I remember I hate 10 minutes after I get in the door. Dancing with your bag is somehow much less frustrating than the same experience at any of those establishments, so cloakrooms are unnecessary. Oh, and there are live bongo drummers accompanying the really rather good DJ. I am with a group of people who represent at least 5 continents (Australasia is in doubt), some of whom I know, many of whom I recognise and all of whom have made significantly more effort to put nice clothes on than I have. In my defence, I have put mascara on and thus also feel quite dressed up. I am dancing with people who dance better than I do, and I am also watching a couple of people in the corner trying to connect. She is attractive, he less so (I base this judgement mainly on his being about 5'4". You know how I roll). He has gone in for a kiss so many times I lose count, and each time she somehow manages to escape; and yet she doesn't walk away. I feel a great sense of solidarity with my fellow wrong-man magnet; my own encounter with the odd short Frenchman on the roundabout last week has luckily come to nothing but I keep worrying that he will track me down at a world cup game or something and start chatting about how cute I am again. It's a big city, I guess. Hopefully I'll get away with it.

By 2, I am standing by the wall with Kayla from Oklahoma, about ready to go. We are, unfortunately, in the way of pretty much all the "traffic" going from the bar to the rooftop tables, so people keep bumping into us with various objects. At one point, the crush from the dancefloor proper pushes a guy (6'2" or thereabouts, a bit stocky) into me. He glances, apologises, then looks back at me with an odd expression on his face and shouts "You're really attractive" into my ear, before walking away with his friends. I left very shortly afterwards, but not before an additional burst of energetic dancing. I think he must have been my soulmate. Maybe one day I'll meet him again, and it will turn out that he loves Ace Attorney, Doctor Who and Jasper Fforde and wants nothing more than to find a mentally unhinged immature Brit to travel the world with. Or maybe that chance has passed forever. Alas...

Seriously, though, I can't gloat enough about how much I love being 21 in this place. Honestly, I don't know what underage people do with their nights here but it can't be nearly as entertaining as mine. Hell, I don't even LIKE clubbing 99% of the time... but this is different. We'll see how I feel about it in a couple of weeks though, I guess.

A week has already gone by since the ball, and almost a week has elapsed since the day of plane journeys. I am now able to explain to tourists how to use Metro ticket machines. I have a phone. I have a Library of Congress reader card. And I have a new word for corkscrew ("Wine key". It's brilliant, except it sounds quite a lot like "wanking".) And I have friends, which is always a big step in the right direction. People here are by and large brilliant, charming and interesting. Life is good.

I went to Arlington cemetery today, on a mistaken assumption about where Thomas Tingey is buried (he's actually in a DIFFERENT riverside cemetery, one which was around before the Civil War). I was also hoping that it would be a nice spot for a green wander, although I had been warned by a Canadian transhumanist sympathiser that a lot of the grass is forbidden to walk on, and the sub 90 temperatures didn't actually materialise in the way they were supposed to (side note: I understand Farenheit! sub 90 is anything under 32, and actually splitting temperatures into 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s etc. is significantly easier to work with than having to work with"mid 20s" or "low 30s" or other Celsius measurements. Seriously.) In fact, I hated it for a good long time. The whole place is absolutely enormous, which is not bad in itself but that fact coupled with the shuttle buses, the fact that you can't walk to the graves and must therefore follow the roads around the front, and just the sheer weight of tourists excitedly wandering from one famous grave to the next (or even sitting on a shuttle bus and having the general direction of famous graves pointed out) without even considering the other thousands of people in there just made it really distasteful. My opinion changed when I got over the hill to the slightly older graves, where people aren't buried with identical headstones and you CAN walk on the grass. There, it felt like any other cemetery, although no other tourists bothered to venture this far down. I did try and get enthused about the whole famous people thing again after a while communing with the boring dead, but it didn't work and in the end the only famous person I saw was Ted Kennedy (which I guess makes up for him cancelling on the Union...) I didn't even find Thurgood Marshall, which genuinely is quite depressing. Maybe I'll go back on a rainy weekday or something.

Meh. I guess that when you don't have historical diversity to make your city monuments, you have to go for scale and quantity. And that is definitely the D.C. strategy. Lots of big ostentatious marble things everywhere, quotes carved into everything, and shuttle buses for when you get tired of hauling your ass around manually. I fucking love the American Dream.

Speaking of, 4th of July tomorrow! Maybe fireworks at the Mall or maybe a rooftop party. It depends on if I get on the right guest list or not. But it's nice to have people putting me on guest lists in the first place.

Blueberries still have me enthralled. Getting served beef stroganoff for breakfast does not.