Last Days of Summer

County Fair 2009

Beat The Heat

4th Street NW

Apparently, opening a fire hydrant is illegal. This begs the question of how ordinary citizens manage to wrench the cap off, anyway? Half the time I can't open a mayonnaise jar.

A Photo Blog is Easy, Right?

Harpers Ferry 12 July 2009

Blogging will resume

as soon as I get some free time again. Until then, just be patient come clean my house call me at work add me on Facebook.

Leprechaun Kitsch

I lived in Boston for a few years back in graduate school, and on this continent at least, it's generally accepted that Boston's about as Irish as a city gets. So imagine my surprise when I visited Tiny and family in New Orleans and discovered that if any city goes all out for St. Patrick's Day, it's that one. To the truly Irish: try not to wince too much at the shiny Leprechaun kitsch that follows.

(note to self: must ask English Mum if anything like this went on in Cavan over the weekend)

I'm just

very, very busy.

The Difficult Thing

The difficult thing about my ongoing quest for the perfect Marriott-style bedroom is that the orange cat hair just keeps coming back.

You May Not Know This Sender

Screen shot from an email in my inbox this morning:

Thank you‏
From: President Barack Obama (info@pic2009.org)
You may not know this sender. Mark as safe Mark as unsafe

I mean, we're not on a first name basis yet or anything but he seems pretty safe to me.

One Big Party

My day in pictures. Since I'll be at work tomorrow, I headed down 7th Street from H all the way to Jefferson and Pennsylvania Avenue to catch some of the celebration.

No Celebrity Sightings

Well there were most certainly no celebrity sightings, but we did get to network with the Red Cross and FEMA. Anyway, it's only Sunday; Oprah may still turn up.

Offer Of An Air Bed

Make sure you keep an eye on CNN tomorrow. I'll be hanging out with these guys for 12 hours and angling to catch a glimpse of Bono, Oprah, anyone. Today I drove down to 3rd Street and Pennsylvania Avenue to take a few photos for those of you who didn't take me up on the offer of an air bed for the week. Leave me a comment and I might consider getting you an official souvenir...

No Ball Gown

About once a year in middle school we were bused into Washington to the standard field trip venues: the Vietnam Memorial, the Smithsonian, the National Gallery, the Washington Monument.

On one especially electrifying visit the intent was to see Congress in action but Mr. Pishnick got the wrong tickets and so we were let loose in Union Station for six hours instead. I believe that was also the year no one counted properly and Morgan Travers got left behind; the rest of us were too busy chowing down on astronaut ice cream to notice.

In any event, this is shaping up to be way better than any of that. Plus, no ball gown required.

I Wasn't At Ben's

Oh, man. I can't believe I wasn't at Ben's today. Look what I missed.

New New Year's resolution: eat more pork products. Then maybe I'll be in the right place at the right time, next time.

Saturday Photo

U and 12th Streets, NW. Happiest tooth ever.

Two Distinct Camps

Somewhere along the way my life turned into an endless series of meetings where we all gather together to discuss the inauguration. At every meeting, people quickly divide into 2 distinct camps:

1) the pessimists, who punctuate each comment or question with god forbid, as in, "if there's a mass casualty event, god forbid..."

and

2) the optimists, who prefer to end their statements with knock wood, as in, "then the back-up generators would kick in, knock wood..."

I can't decide which viewpoint best suits me so I usually just sit there looking surly, wishing I'd booked that trip to Mexico.