Since I last wrote, things in Washington, D.C. are going much better. We never did discover the cause of the crazy flood waters that overtook my apartment (and my mom, the neighbor, the plumber, the contractor working on the house where I live, the landlords and I all made a valiant effort to figure out where the water could have come from, to no avail), but we did tear out the old, wet carpet and go crazy with a couple of fans and a dehumidifier. (Note: I have never seen a device that sucks water OUT of the air before. Being a nose-bleed prone child from an arid state, I had no need to be taking any more water out of the air. Ordinarily, we were looking for ways to put moisture back INTO the air.)
But anyway, right around the time the apartment dried out, the movers showed up with the rest of my stuff, the carpet guys came to lay down new (and much prettier) carpet, and I finally got to unpack, put together my bed and stop sleeping on a mattress in the kitchen. And somehow--luckily--the only things that suffered any damage from the flooding were my cable box (ironically, I'd been really hesitant to get cable, fearing it would suck up too much of my valuable time) and the biography of Richard Nixon, which promptly started to mold. HA. Karma's a bitch. (And no, I don't really want to explain why I have a copy of Nixon's biography. It's a long story.)
So now, relatively settled, I'm getting into the process of making new friends, reconnecting with old ones, and poaching other people's D.C. friends. Orientation for my graduate school program was Friday, and so far I've managed to stay more excited than scared. I'm not a) the only person who doesn't have film experience or b) the oldest person in the program, although I'm not that far from it.
I realized how old I am, and just how long I've been out of college, when this librarian came to orientation and started talking about appropriate research methods. She said: "I know when you all were undergrads, it was OK to just do all your research for a paper on Google, but now you should be using different methods to research." She says this, and it suddenly occurs to me that I'm not completely sure Google even existed when I was an undergrad. And so my slow descent into old age begins, at the ripe old age of 27!
I guess that's about it for now. I start both class and work tomorrow. I hope it goes well. I hope I don't discover that I'm in over my head. Or really, I guess I'm OK with being in over my head. Everything I've ever really learned from, grew from or been challenged by involved me feeling like I was in WAY over my head. I hope I learn, grow and am challenged by this!
Monday, August 27, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
I'm Living in a Swamp
And at the moment, I mean that quite literally.
So my mom and I got to DC on Monday night, and we've been staying at a hotel, and running around trying to get some of that move-in stuff done (e.g., visits to the DMV, buying groceries, multiple trips to the hardware store and the Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.) Last night--despite the fact that none of my furniture is arriving for about a week and they hadn't delivered my new bed yet, we decided to stay in the apartment on an inflatable mattress I'd brought along.
One small problem: while I can inflate the bed no problem, the cap that keeps the air IN the mattress is missing. So we slept on the very hard floor on top of a deflated air mattress with no pillows. Awesome. (Mental note to me: DO NOT travel without your thermarest camping sleep pad and sleeping bag.)
After a very sleepless night, I got up early, spent about 4 hours at the DMV and car inspection place and ran some more errands. With those out of the way, my mom and I headed out to actually do something fun, like be tourists.
So here comes the swamp part. On returning to my apartment 5 hours later, we found that something, somewhere had flooded, leaving the carpet soaked, everything that had been on the floor drenched (and I do mean DRENCHED--I was wringing water out of clothes I'd left in a suitcase on the floor), and a good half inch of water on the floor in the bathroom (which we had to clean up using a dustpan, because we don't have a mop, buckets, or towels to use yet). That's bad enough, but the amount of heat in the air coupled with all the water in this apartment has given this place the feeling of being a swamp--thick, muggy and utterly disgusting. Add to that a bunch of slugs bigger than my index and middle finger combined and the 30 or so mosquitos who have bitten me in the 3 days that we've been here (leaving behind huge red welts, because I'm incapable of not scratching), and I feel like I've landed in the Everglades. And it's just made me miss California all the more.
I'm hoping that, with the really bad thing out of the way, Washington D.C. can only get better. Seriously, I'm looking for something--anything really--to like about this city.
So my mom and I got to DC on Monday night, and we've been staying at a hotel, and running around trying to get some of that move-in stuff done (e.g., visits to the DMV, buying groceries, multiple trips to the hardware store and the Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.) Last night--despite the fact that none of my furniture is arriving for about a week and they hadn't delivered my new bed yet, we decided to stay in the apartment on an inflatable mattress I'd brought along.
One small problem: while I can inflate the bed no problem, the cap that keeps the air IN the mattress is missing. So we slept on the very hard floor on top of a deflated air mattress with no pillows. Awesome. (Mental note to me: DO NOT travel without your thermarest camping sleep pad and sleeping bag.)
After a very sleepless night, I got up early, spent about 4 hours at the DMV and car inspection place and ran some more errands. With those out of the way, my mom and I headed out to actually do something fun, like be tourists.
So here comes the swamp part. On returning to my apartment 5 hours later, we found that something, somewhere had flooded, leaving the carpet soaked, everything that had been on the floor drenched (and I do mean DRENCHED--I was wringing water out of clothes I'd left in a suitcase on the floor), and a good half inch of water on the floor in the bathroom (which we had to clean up using a dustpan, because we don't have a mop, buckets, or towels to use yet). That's bad enough, but the amount of heat in the air coupled with all the water in this apartment has given this place the feeling of being a swamp--thick, muggy and utterly disgusting. Add to that a bunch of slugs bigger than my index and middle finger combined and the 30 or so mosquitos who have bitten me in the 3 days that we've been here (leaving behind huge red welts, because I'm incapable of not scratching), and I feel like I've landed in the Everglades. And it's just made me miss California all the more.
I'm hoping that, with the really bad thing out of the way, Washington D.C. can only get better. Seriously, I'm looking for something--anything really--to like about this city.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
The Free Lunch? It Really Doesn't Exist.
I've been home in Colorado for about a month. That's been nice, but kind of. . . well, boring. As a way to alleviate some of said boredom, I went with my parents a couple weeks ago to volunteer with their service group--The Lions Club--at a sporting event for blind athletes. At the event, I got to talking to another member of the club--Jim--about my future plans and why I was interested in pursuing documentary filmmaking.
A few days later, my mom asked if I wanted to come to the bi-monthly Lions Club meeting that day. I wasn't really interested, but she said there'd be free lunch, and who passes that up?
So I went, ate my free lunch and politely listened to the club members discuss the orders of business, one of which was a proposal to start inviting non-club members to come and talk about whatever it was they did. At this very moment, Jim-the-guy-from-the-other-night pipes up and says he'd really like it if I could talk more about what I was doing and why.
Suddenly, every head in the room swiveled to stare at me. The president of the club announced that HE thought it was a great idea (with my dad very thoughtfully seconding him) and asked if I'd be willing to come back and present at the next meeting. Before I could try to back out, my dad had assured them I'd be happy to do it.
So much for free lunch.
So yesterday, I came back to the meeting, got up in front of this club of mostly old, slightly cranky Republican men and talked about how JVC and the union had turned me into a crazy lefty commie who believes in obscene things like empowerment and equal rights for all and how I was going to take all of those beliefs and use them as the basis for propaganda. Ahem, I mean documentaries. (Or at least this is how I am sure what I said--which I really tried to make as neutral and non-partisan as possible--was perceived. Seriously, when I mentioned--JUST MENTIONED--Michael Moore in passing, eyes narrowed, lips curled, and I thought at least one guy might attempt to jump me and shake those liberal values right out of me.) Needless to say, it felt like a tough crowd. I definitely earned that damn lunch.
A few days later, my mom asked if I wanted to come to the bi-monthly Lions Club meeting that day. I wasn't really interested, but she said there'd be free lunch, and who passes that up?
So I went, ate my free lunch and politely listened to the club members discuss the orders of business, one of which was a proposal to start inviting non-club members to come and talk about whatever it was they did. At this very moment, Jim-the-guy-from-the-other-night pipes up and says he'd really like it if I could talk more about what I was doing and why.
Suddenly, every head in the room swiveled to stare at me. The president of the club announced that HE thought it was a great idea (with my dad very thoughtfully seconding him) and asked if I'd be willing to come back and present at the next meeting. Before I could try to back out, my dad had assured them I'd be happy to do it.
So much for free lunch.
So yesterday, I came back to the meeting, got up in front of this club of mostly old, slightly cranky Republican men and talked about how JVC and the union had turned me into a crazy lefty commie who believes in obscene things like empowerment and equal rights for all and how I was going to take all of those beliefs and use them as the basis for propaganda. Ahem, I mean documentaries. (Or at least this is how I am sure what I said--which I really tried to make as neutral and non-partisan as possible--was perceived. Seriously, when I mentioned--JUST MENTIONED--Michael Moore in passing, eyes narrowed, lips curled, and I thought at least one guy might attempt to jump me and shake those liberal values right out of me.) Needless to say, it felt like a tough crowd. I definitely earned that damn lunch.
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