It is 12:30am and I've been at my dorm for about half an hour. This is my everyday now. I work around 3pm to whenever they close the suburban edition which is about 11:30. These times can flex an hour to and hour and a half in each direction depending on their need for me. My weekend starts tonight. I have Wednesday and Thursday off and that serves as my weekend. My schedule is all kinds of wack, but that's what you have to expect with newspaper design I guess (for all of those who might not know, I'm pretty knew to the newspaper game). It is kind of surreal at first to go to work when everyone else is practically packing up to go home. What have I been doing in the mornings and early afternoons? Nothing. I have gmail open and chat with Savannah while she is at work but other than that not much at all. I've literally watched every episode of The Daily Show and Colbert Report that hulu can offer and today I've recently started tackling other shows, today being NOVA on PBS (yes, nerd). And for those who are interested, I watched a piece about America's secret spy astronauts that never flew a single space mission. Long story. I also watched a piece about the switch to alternative fuels in cars. All that while I eat a microwaved pizza.
On that note, if you ever see a Trader Joes, don't go there. It blows. Everything is Trader Joes brand and they literally have one choice for every item. So unless you're a fan of communism, I suggest to take your business to a more conventional capitalist store. Trader Joes also happens to be where I got that awful pizza.
Work is getting a little better every day. I still feel like an idiot sometimes whenever they have to explain how to do something for the fourth time. They are giving me a lot of support though, saying "when I started it took me X-amount of months to really get it down." Good, I'm only here until the end of August. So I'm guessing I'll finally start getting good and fast at things by my last day.
After reading Breia's last blog, it made me realize how similar public transportation works in every major city. You know the tourists when they are talking on the Metro. If you're a "local" you are usually reading Express (one of the paper's pubs and familiar to Breia and Kelsey), listening to an ipod (like me), looking down or sleeping. Not much else. I tend to stay away from the music that might be embarrassing in case someone can hear my headphones. Also, like from Breia's post, I find it very entertaining to think scenamatically when I listen to music on the Metro. I like to think of setting a scene to music. I wonder how many people out there do the same thing. There could be a number of people in the same Metro car doing the same thing I'm doing.
I'm sure there's some things I'm forgetting here, but I can get to them when I remember. I do have all of this time in the day. Lately, however, I've only had the motivation to sit around and find things on hulu to watch. I miss TV. I'll try to work harder at reading everyone's blog posts and emails. I must admit, some of those email threads throughout the day are intimidating to open if I've left it hanging too long. I need to catch up!
I'm starting to get in the groove. Now I have to start liking it.
Stuffed wolf posed as an ominous predator at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
Bears!
An obscene sculpture at the national sculpture exhibit.
Half pizza cutter half runaway shopping cart wheel?
I look at the Hall of Statues in the Capitol building. It was rather nice.
The Capitol rotunda. How very rotund.
A look at the east side of the Capitol building.
The Library of Congress. Looks European.
The 45 carat Hope Diamond. That's a lot of ice.
This is the star on the floor beneath the rotunda. This marks the center of the city and the point at which the city is split into four parts. This is why you have to specify which quadrant on any piece of mail going to D.C. I'm in the northwest quadrant, as is most of the things you might recognize in D.C.
Here is the Lansdowne portrait by Gilbert Stuart. This portrait looked something like ten feet tall. It was pretty huge. That's what she said.
Portrait of actor Jack Nicholson by photographer Mark Schoeller. The reproduction was about 6ft x 6ft.
So was this portrait of President Obama. They prints were huge! I'd never seen so much detail in someone's face.
The cast included the late Phil Hartman, Andy Dick (before he became famous for being a real dick) and Maura Tierney before her more famous role on E.R. I enjoyed this show as a child so the hulu reruns have been quite nice. Also, there happens to be something like 40 episodes ranging four season on hulu, which is rare because most shows that are still running only have five or so episodes at any time online. So, that has been quite a treat.