DC's best awning

Hey, that's the first time I think I've ever typed the word "awning."

I gave up on the blog, thinking that nobody was actually reading it, anyway. Actually, I was spending 60+ hours a week writing/editing TOEFL books, and was no longer in the mood for recreational writing. It's not like I ever wrote this crap because I really though that anybody (besides Norm?) was reading it...

Then I've gotten a couple of "where the hell are you, there's nothing on your blog" emails in the past week or so... which suggests that maybe four of you might be reading this. Because all four of you are sooooooo special, I'm back to writing.

Well, unemployment also helps. Starting in a week or two, I won't be writing any more TOEFL books, at least not for awhile. Some financial issues at the TOEFL mothership. Not a pretty sight.

Somehow, I now live in Washington, DC. I have the same zip code as the president. Not sure if I'm proud of that or not. (In case you're wondering, the DC thing was entirely Amber's idea. I just follow her, since she's prettier than I am and speaks in complete sentences.)

I figured that DC would sort of feel like a smaller, more government-y version of New York. It's the east coast, so I thought that nobody would pay any attention to anybody else on the street... unless, of course, they want money from you. Not mean or rude, just indifferent.

I was wrong, or at least it seems that way so far. I've only been here for a grand total of about four weeks--came from Korea via San Francisco in early March, spent two weeks apartment-hunting and furniture-shopping and TOEFL-writing, then left for Asia again... I've been back for two weeks now. So I can't claim to be a DC expert. I'm still basically a tourist here. Okay, a tourist with an overpriced apartment lease.

Surprisingly, people in DC really don't suck. Thanks to the random kindness of DC strangers, I installed my first Washingtonian hangover last weekend. Amber and I were wandering home from dinner on Friday night, and it started raining. It turned into a really ugly, hard, slanting thundershower... far worse than anything the California weather gods ever unleashed on us. We're dumb, so we walked a few blocks in the worst of it. By the time we ducked under an awning, our asses were soaked.

Not interesting, huh?

But wait. Two random guys walked by, and invited us into their apartment. Our asses were soaked, how could we say no? They offered us beer. Beer is good... We played with their golden retriever. Dogs are usually good, though this dog was named Molson. That should have been a warning to us.

After a beer in their apartment, they invited us out to a club across the street (which I'd walked past a few dozen times--from the outside, it looks like a lame steakhouse for Midwestern grandmothers, but it's actually a three-story Eurotrashy nightclub with a rooftop deck). They bought us more beer. When they suggested another club, we couldn't say no--we still had to reciprocate and buy a few rounds.

It gets pretty blurry from there. At least three more nightclubs, a few rounds of shots (my dumb f**king idea), some greasy pizza, probably some barf, maybe some transvestites (I don't remember)...

Anyhoo, the point is this: people in DC are friendly, maybe even more friendly than your average Midwesterners. These dudes weren't trying to get into our pants or anything, as one might suspect in, say, our former home of San Francisco. Just friendly. Same seems to apply to the neighbors--I get into random conversations all the time around here.

Who knew? I'm pretty much amazed that DC doesn't suck. I haven't visited any of the memorials or the capitol or anything like that yet, but I can tell you this: the awnings in DC are awesome.