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.