So long, for now

I left Washington DC on Sunday, after spending a whole day touring with my parents, taking pictures next to monuments. The weather was hard to bear in the other extreme, when I got here in August, it was humid and too hot. When we were walking on the Mall, it was windy and too cold. Helen hung out with us for part of the time, and she cooked me a breakfast of mimosas, french toast, and veggie bacon. I fell asleep as soon as I sat down in the car, so I did not give DC a proper final goodbye.

But I don't see it as a goodbye, I will be seeing this funny but charming city soon enough. I decided (don't worry, there is good chance I will change my mind again) that I will go to law school, either a specialized program or with a combined masters, after a year or so of working in DC. I concluded this looking at snow-covered pines somewhere in Pennsylvania, thinking that I would like to take my skills anywhere, not just our nation's capital. But, in the meantime, DC is just as fine of a place as any to hang one's hat at the end of the day, and it is one of the few places that has ample jobs for what I have been trained in my undergraduate career: to umm... be critical and political!

So, see you later, DC. Hopefully you will have an affordable apartment waiting for me when I get back. Please?

I smell.

My roommate came into my room to avoid working on her paper. She said something in my room smelled. I told her it was most likely me.

She agreed.

Oh, Lord have mercy!

I am in the midst of writing a research paper on U.S. sanctions on Burma. It is a typical story. Girl has assignment, girl avoids thinking about assignment, writing assignment, up until a week before it is due. Girl regrets her consistent past decisions to not work on her assignment, for it would have made this current week a lot more easy for her. Grant it, this particular story has some sweet plot twists, like this evening, for example.

I finally saw the Detroit Cobras! I manage to miss out on seeing them every time they come by either Detroit or Cleveland, but thanks to my mentor, I had a ball with Jane Claire as we drunkenly twisted and mash potatoed to garage rock covers of old R&B tunes. It was fun to just go out and dance to a live band, and judging by the lack of a crowd, it seems not too many people want to do that these days...fuck them.

I am actually appreciating the process of writing this paper. I wake up, I create, I go out and have fun. Its an honest way to be. A part of me is pained that I am not outside, fully enjoying DC and its first fall of snow. I have about a week left here in DC, and I dare say, I will miss this town. There are so many more museums I have let to see. Hello, Air and Space museum? And all the African American historic sites I never got around to seeing because I am a bad white person! Argh!

No, its not just that. I have fallen for living in a new place, making new connections, living my life. But lets stop beating around the truth. I am smitten by a certain someone, someone I would rather not leave to go back to Ann Arbor just yet, and would rather spend my time with than writing about Burma. The reason I am typing frantically over sanctions and this troubled Southeast Asian country is because I have spent too much time falling in love. I wonder as I write this assignment if I will regret my choices if I do not receive the grade I feel entitled to, if my undergraduate career of last-minute bullshitting will not carry me through. Should I place a footnote for the professor, explaining that being alive is just as important as, if not more than, producing a 20+ page qualitative research paper on some social/political topic? Or perhaps all my charm and graceful encounters with Ifie will rub her the right way and she will give me a good mark. Or she will see right through me. Either way, I only have the moment.