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.