May 31, 2006
Bridge Bison
One of the Bison statutes at one end of the Dunbarton Bridge on Q St. I think. I can't remember now. Is that right? Anyway, these bison are cool!
May 30, 2006
Georgetown Under Threat
Dark storm clouds hang low over M Street in Georgetown. My friends and I wandered up and down the street window shopping and people watching on the Memorial Day weekend.
May 29, 2006
Silence and Respect
A sign at the JFK Memorial in Arlington National Cemetary. It's a good reminder of why we have this holiday.
May 28, 2006
Chief Stones
Tombstones of Supreme Court Chief Justices Burger, Marshall, and Blackmun, all together at Arlington National Cemetery.
May 27, 2006
Rocks and Walls
A rock wall and archway over a small creek on the fringes of Rock Creek Park. L. and I discovered this last week on a walk between Massachusetts and Connecticut down in one of the nooks and crannies that border Rock Creek Park. This creek runs under and along side a narrow, winding road that leads to big, quiet houses that enjoy lots of shade. These homes are just minutes from downtown D.C., yet they're so quiet and tucked out of the way that they could be miles away in mountains or something. Pretty cool.
May 26, 2006
Carsharing
One of the new carshare signs springing up around the city. (At right is a blurry shot of the other side of the same sign.) These new signs mark places where you can pick up (or drop off) a Flexcar or Zipcar. The city has recently made many more prime parking spaces carshare-only spaces to encourage people to use these services and thereby reduce road and parking congestion. Seems like a good idea to me.
I also think these signs are just cool!
May 25, 2006
A Demuralized People
This is a bit more of the Adams Morgan mural posted yesterday. Funny, but true!
May 24, 2006
Mural Poker
Odd characters play some sort of table game in one corner of a large mural in Adams Morgan. The image at right shows the mural in its entirety. The mural is on a wall next to an alley near the corner of Calvert/18th and Columbia.
May 23, 2006
Bye Bye Bench?
A beautiful and comfy park bench in Kalorama Park. I took this picture on May 13, 2006 and posted a Flickr set about it
and the little notebook tucked underneath. Ten days later I was wandering past the same spot and the bench was gone! Click the thumbnail at right to see the empty space left by the bench's removal. I hope it's just been removed for some temporary reason—maintenance or something. Otherwise we may have to consider the possibility that someone broke it up and used “the wood to light a fire to smoke their crack.”
May 22, 2006
Fit Is Go
A bus stop ad for L.'s new favorite car. I gotta hand it to Honda's advertising agency for this Fit ad campaign. L. has always hated these little station wagon cars and the Fit is, aesthetically, pretty identical to at least a half dozen of its competitors. Yet these kooky “Fit is go” ads have made her forget her aversion to wagons and fall in love with this car. It has a fin! And the ads are all like video games and all your base. I don't fully understand the magic these ads work, but I do know it is magical. Now if only I could find some way to influence L.'s preferences as powerfully as these ads....
May 21, 2006
Graduation
A photo of a ticket to the GW law school diploma ceremony. I took this shot several weeks ago before I gave all my tickets away. In a couple of hours my classmates will walk across a stage and a Dean or other “VIP” will hand each of them a diploma. Congratulations, everyone! I will be happy to celebrate this accomplishment just as soon as I get a job and pass the bar. ;-)
May 20, 2006
Rocket, Please!
A travel agency sign on U St. NW. I guess you can book trips there to travel by rocket. I haven't checked on the details b/c I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to afford it.
May 19, 2006
Adams Morgan Skyline
Rooftops on lower 18th St. NW. I know I'm going to really miss common D.C. area sights like this once we've moved away...
May 18, 2006
May 17, 2006
May 16, 2006
Table Graffiti
Graffiti on a bar table at Cafe Deluxe. We went there again for brunch last weekend—big mistake. It was mother's day and the place was mobbed, even though we arrived only minutes after it opened. We ended up sitting at the bar where the tables have been covered by graffiti of the sort pictured here. I thought this list of ten things to do before you die was not bad, and I especially enjoyed the quotation from Lloyd Dobler.
May 15, 2006
Contemplating American Gothic
Looking down the hall at “American Gothic,” the famous Grant Woods painting, currently on exhibit at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery. (Photography was not allowed inside the exhibit rooms themselves so this was the best I could do.) The gallery is just across what used to be Pennsylvania Ave. from the White House and Old Executive Office building and is currently showing a large amount of Grant Woods' work, including the customized door to his studio in Cedar Rapids, IA, pieces of furniture he made and designed, examples of work from different periods in his life, and, of course, “American Gothic.” It all shows that Woods was a very talented and accomplished almost “renaissance man” of an artist. The exhibit is definitely worth a stop if you're in the area before July 16th, 2006.
May 14, 2006
K & 20th?
Spring dusk in downtown D.C. near the corner of 20th and K, I think. It's definitely K st., and it's most likely 20th, but I can't remember for sure. Helpful of me, huh?
I've always found this building interesting w/all it's aluminum or stainless steel cladding around the windows. It's kind of pretty but also a little bunker-esque.
May 13, 2006
Returned to Sender!?!
The stamp on my application for the only job I really want. My application was returned to me today, the day after it was due! And this after I put two 37-cent stamps on it! It was only about 5-6 sheets of paper folded into thirds and they're trying to tell me that two stamps was not sufficient!?
I rushed to FedEx to overnight it so it will arrive on Monday morning (one business day late) inside the original envelope marked “return to sender.” My hope is that they will see that I made every effort to be on time and will still consider my application along with those who did make it on time. (I'm sending an email to explain, as well.) I'm not sure I would do that if I were in their shoes—deadlines can be pretty crucial in the law biz (i.e. the deadline to file a motion in a case is something you have to meet regularly as a public defender and it's not usually something you can fudge). Still, maybe they'll be more lenient than I would be.
The good news is that the deadline was not firm. The original ad listed a closing date of 5/12 and said something like “we encourage you to apply by May 12 but we will accept applications after that until positions are filled.” The ad now lists a closing date of May 26 and says the jobs are “Open until filled. Application materials will be reviewed on a weekly basis. The application pool will be considered for employment opportunities up to November, 2006.”
Still, I wanted my application on the very top of the pile. Here's hoping things still work out that way...
May 12, 2006
May 11, 2006
May 10, 2006
Sidewalk Storage
Trunks and other things on the sidewalk near the corner of 21st & K St. NW. This was late last week, but I had seen the same stuff in the same place a few days earlier. It was all locked up w/a length of chain, but not such that anyone who tried even a little couldn't take something. Who would leave this stuff here? Why do people leave it alone like that?
Of course, whoever left that stuff there is probably homeless and has no other place to put it. I've noticed caches of homeless stuff like this other places, too. Bus stops and park benches seem to be good places for people to deposit belongings for long periods. In recent weeks, the park at 20th and Pennsylvania has had one bench permanently occupied by a bunch of stuff underneath a tarp. The tarp is weighted down with rocks or something, and for at least a while there was a cardboard sign next to it saying something like “private, do not touch.” I guess such warnings are sort of respected b/c most people think there's probably nothing there worth taking. Perhaps most people also feel sorry for anyone who is in a position to have to leave their belongings on the sidewalk and don't want to kick those people when they're down by taking or molesting what may be their last possessions.
I also wonder if there's something about the trust, audacity, and plain strangeness of an act like this that makes people hesitate to mess with this stuff. I say that b/c when I was cycling through Europe I would regularly leave my bike in random places (like parks) while I wandered around a city or town. I would always lock it with a u-lock, but the lock was too small to lock it to anything, so generally I would just lock the wheel to the frame so the bike wouldn't roll. That obviously made the bike harder to move, but what about all my luggage that was strapped to it? I never secured that in any way. If someone had wanted to take it they would have needed only about 30 seconds to strip most of my stuff off my bike and be gone. Yet, that never happened. Why? Why did people leave my bike and my stuff alone? Like I said, maybe they just thought it wasn't worth their trouble, but I always wondered if maybe those people who might have otherwise been prone to take something that wasn't theirs just thought, “no, that person needs that stuff.”
Of course, there's one more possibility: People are generally good and don't want to steal from others or destroy their things. I think that has something to do with it, too.
May 09, 2006
Glazed
A Krispy Kreme doughnut glazer spins away inside the store at the corner of Dupont Circle and Connecticut Ave. The white stuff you see is mostly frosting and that's a conveyor belt of some sort. This this is always spinning but I don't think I've ever seen any doughnuts in the midst of being glazed so I can't say I really understand how it works.
May 08, 2006
18th Century Shingles
Paint peels from the ornate wooden shingles atop a side building at Mt. Vernon. Texture!
May 07, 2006
18th Century Scales
A set of scales hanging in the storehouse at Mt. Vernon. The storehouse sits just across a little path/road from the kitchen so that supplies would be w/in easy reach. The storehouse also was the place to get thread, leather, and just about anything else a plantation might need.
We were at Mt. Vernon yesterday. It was my first visit and I enjoyed it, but is it really worth $13/person? And where is that money going? Anyway, the short drive down there from D.C. is pretty and the grounds are beautiful, as well. I esp. liked the 16-sided barn, but I'm just weird like that.
May 06, 2006
Burrito Board
A Chipotle ad near 19th and J I St. NW. That's a lot of burritos. There was a time when I thought Chipotle was a pretty good thing to have around for a tasty lunch, but not so much anymore. Perhaps I just had too much of a good thing, but for some time now I have not enjoyed my burrito bowls that much. Plus, the last time I had one I bit down on a big chunk of plastic that was nicely hidden by all the beans and rice and beans and salsa—I thought I'd broken a tooth! I don't think it did any permanent damage, but you know, just not something I'm really going to miss when we live where there's not one on every corner.
May 05, 2006
Mourn : Honor VI
The regularly-updated display of the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded so far in Iraq. I wanted to update this one last time before I left the city. It's a reminder that I don't ever hear anyone say anything about, but if you drive down K St. NW in downtown DC it's pretty hard to miss. When will this tragedy end?
Previously in this series:
May 04, 2006
Final Final Blurry Board
A quick snap of the chalkboard telling me where my final law school final was held. As usual I walked in just barely in time so I didn't have time to make sure I got a good shot. The point is: I never have to look to this chalkboard again to see where I will spend three hours of my life regurgitating from my notes or memory in order to pass a class. That's because I never have to take another law school final. Ever.
Of course, that's assuming that I passed this final, which, well, it didn't seem that bad. I would be stunned to see anything more than a B on the old report card for this class, but I'm sure I got at least a C. Ok, you can never be sure, but you get the idea. For now I'm going forward on the assumption that I passed and I'm done. Done! Yeah.
May 03, 2006
House Hunting
A needlepoint welcome inside a house in Billings, Montana. L. was there recently for a job interview and she checked out some houses, as well. Prices are obviously much lower than in many larger markets, but the selection in our low low price range is not the best. Still, it's fun to contemplate being able to afford a house rather than throwing thousands of dollars away every year on rent.
May 02, 2006
Charging Gadgets
L's collection of gadgets gulping power in preparation for a recent business trip. We heart gadgets.
May 01, 2006
On the Alert
Sisu waits outside a store for her person to return. If you didn't know, even though she's supposed to be my dog, I am not Sisu's person. The honor of being leader of the pack belongs to L. I'm just a musher.