Tag: washington dc

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gavin the cockroach

My ninja-like reflexes intercepted something crawling around in my bed this morning. Half-awake, in the pitch black* of the early morning, I sensed it – reached, grabbed (heard slight crunching noise) and threw. As I gradually became properly conscious, I noticed there was a cockroach leg on my bed sheets. I brushed it off, and turned on the light, and looked over to the wall, where a half squashed cockroach lay upside down, dying. That’ll teach it to make me feel like I’m leaving in some sort of ghetto slum.

(* poetic licence may have been invoked, it’s never dark in DC)

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doggies

And the reason why the police dog was outside my window, sniffing a tree, was because he was on his way to the Doggie Happy Hour held at the hotel down the road. Yes, that’s right, I live in the middle of a yuppy enclave. Everyone here owns a dog. You can’t wander outside morning or evening without fighting through swathes of residents out walking their dogs – during the day you’re more likely to come across the professional dog walkers. Shops have bowls of water out the front, the local jogging paths have water bowls built into their bubblers. Dogs of all shapes and sizes, heaven forbid you should have the same breed of dog as your neighbour.

Camera update: Sony H1 ordered and on it’s way apparently.

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endearing

I usually get a lift to and from work with my supervisor, seeing as we live in the same area. One of his more unusual traits is his tendency to become obsessed with ideas, and be able to talk about the one idea for most of a car ride, and then return to that idea time and time again (for example, the ‘inside lane theory’).

One of his more endearing obsessions is his desire to buy a horse, and ride it to work. Despite the fact that most of our drive to work is along a major freeway, he’s quite convinced that if only he can find a way to get the horse over the bridge, it would be a fantastic idea to ride the horse along the grassy verge that’s sometimes at the edge of the road. His plan is to hobble the horse while it’s at work, leaving it to wander around eating in the patch of wilderness across the road from work (hence he shouldn’t need to buy much extra feed for it). And it will live in the 6 by 6 foot backyard of his townhouse – which, being built in the 1800s, has a ponywalk, which is what inspired the whole idea. Which is why scientists should be safely locked up in their workplaces and not allowed to interact with the rest of the world.

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but if we didn’t have ears, we’d look like weasels

Happy dandelion for a hot and muggy day.

squamish

After a chance meeting with one of the other people living in my apartment block (well, it’s not really a block, just a converted townhouse, but anyway) I discovered there were air conditioning units living in the basement. Last night was stinking hot and muggy (I understand this trend is to continue for the next couple of months, and probably get worse – am unimpressed). I eyed off the ac unit lurking on my kitchen floor. After some awkward manouvering, there was then an ac unit in my kitchen window. I poked it. It wobbled. Hmm, it didn’t seem to stabilise in any position. So I closed the window on it, and hoped I wasn’t going to come home to the prostrate corpse of a passerby who had been crushed by my air conditioner. My kitchen’s nice and cool now though. I might have to start sleeping there.

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washington dc – the city built on the swamp

 

bike path swamp

Apparently it’s lovely in Summer. Stinking and humid, and lots of mossies (which the Americans seem to call mosquitos, or bugs, as they can’t bring themselves to abbreviate words).

bike path swamp