Okay, granted: this new apartment is much smaller. Although the actual living room/bedroom space is about the same size as it was in my last apartment, it seems smaller because it doesn’t have the dining room opening up onto it. In any case, I’m watching the movie, and I think that when you find yourself drawn in and lost into a film the way certain ones have a way of doing, you forget that you’re looking at a 10″ monitor or whatever. I mean, okay, I think to an extent it depends how far from the TV you are — if you’re twenty feet away from a 10″ monitor, you probably can’t see what’s happening. But I think my TV — as small as it might be — is as big as I need in this apartment, and seems larger than it actually is.

Good clip, though:

David Morse makes for a wonderful George Washington, in my ever so not at all humble opinion.

Breaks.

I’m not, actually, used to them. Like, at work, I mean. We have them at the bookstore for anything over a four shift, a ½ hour non-paid mandatory break. Over seven, and it becomes an hour. In addition to these, everyone has, depending on their shift, one or two ten-minute breaks to be used whenever (with the permission of a manager). Personally, I’ve got mixed feelings about these breaks.

I dislike them because they inspire an entitlement mentality. Here’s what I mean: you only get X amount of time for your break. There’s some flexibility with the half hour break, but not so with the hour break – you’re expected to be back in the store ready to work when the clock hits XX:00, and if you stay an extra five minutes on the register helping whittle down a long line of customers, that’s five minutes out of your break, five minutes you don’t get back (although, of course, you do get paid for it). So, the end-result is that, for me, when I’ve spent all day at my professional job, and then I grab the shuttle and run down the Metro and get into work and I’ve got my break at 6:30 and this is when I’m eating lunch and dinner and I’ve only got half an hour to run down to the break room, clock out, then hurry down a block to Subway, every minute is precious. This is when I’m saying into the stupid little radio with headset, “Hey, service manager, this is Snay. It’s 6:25, I’m going on break at 6:30, um, there’s a long line at register, can I get some assistance?” which is followed five minutes later by, “Look, I need food, I’m out, and, um, there’s no one at registers…”

That’s a (bit of a) joke. Actually, my approach is more along the line of, “Hey, if you want me to stay an extra fifteen minutes, I’d be willing to postpone my break …”

The managers don’t like that, but at least it makes them aware of the situation. The worst – the absolute worst – is getting your break at 6pm when you leave at 8pm. It’s like, “Can’t I just skip the break and leave at 7 instead?” But, no.

Aside from that – hey, yeah breaks!

The book, by the way, was incredible. I simply could not put it down.

***

I’m trying to decide if I’ll go to the midnight screening of “The Dark Knight” on Thursday/Friday. I’ve used enough flex time that I only have to be in for four hours Friday (and my team is going to a Korean lunch on the clock), so it’s not like I have to stay particularly awake. I think the easiest thing would be to just go Saturday after I get off at Borders (2pm). There’s a 3:30pm … perfect, I’d say. Anyone want to meet up?

***

Looks like DC will still be banning semi-automatics, and limiting ownership to one revolver per household. That’s fine: I’m a cylinder man myself. Lady Friend, now would be a good time to e-mail me if you’re still interested in The-You-Know-What.

Which is, really, not the thing any cat owner wants to hear. Well, any pet owner, I’d wager.

So here I am, tired after a long day at work, wanting not much else beyond a light supper, watching the second episode of HBO’s John Adams, and reading more of New City (which I found hidden on my bookshelf, by the way), and all of a sudden I’m a frantic mess. I rip open the closet door: no kitty. I’m hurrying through the kitchen opening every pantry door. I freak, because I’m afraid she somehow managed to get atop the fridge and then down behind it onto the window ledge (yes, my fridge just about completely obstructs a window).

So the meowing continues and I can’t find the fucking cat. After a few minutes of frantic searching, I think any cat owner in my position goes from thinking of their pet as a beloved furry companion to “that fucking creature.” Actually, one of my coworkers calls them “rats”, which makes no sense as I think even dog-lovers would find the average feline more attractive than a rat.

It occurs to me, as I glance about, that there’s one door I haven’t looked. There’s a linen closet in my foyer. I don’t actually use it for linens — I have a big old nice reading chair which blocks the door and makes access inconvenient. For that reason, I use the closet mostly for long-term storage, stuff I don’t need to access on a daily basis: lightbulbs, tools, extra paper towels, cat litter. At this moment, my mind clicks. What’d I do before going to work? I took out the trash, and changed the cat litter.

I pull the chair forward and open the door. Poor Tippy. She spent ten hours on the second shelf from the bottom, with no light, and little room to stretch or relax. The cat practically exploded out of the closet into my arms and showed her gratitude by rubbing her face in mine, purring, pawing at me, and then, finally, stretching her rump out into the air so that I’d scratch it for her. All this accomplished, she fled to the futon, where she’s spent the last half hour stretching out and contorting herself and rolling about.

I’d say that perhaps she won’t be interested in the closet the next time I open the door, but I think she probably will be. I feel so silly for not checking the closet. For all that they fight, my two cats are actually pretty closely attuned to the other’s noises. I think Tippy was probably crying for rescue every time she heard a noise: every time one of my neighbors opened their doors or walked past my apartment. And I think that was probably torture for Guy. Right now he’s lying at the foot of the futon, his back paws stretched out, his front two tucked under his white chest, his head inclined slightly up to where he can see through the slats of the frame as Tippy cleans herself.

They look so cute, you’d have no idea they’re ferocious bug-hunters with deadly claws. Oh, and totally antisocial to boot.

I take the Ride-On from Grosvenor to work, and back again. Coming home, I get off at Cleveland Park and walk south. Going in, I head down to Woodley Park. Leaving or coming, I’m always going downhill, although, admittedly, I do use Woodley Park coming home from the bookstore at night: it’s a shorter walk.

I wear my Smartrip card in a lanyard. Also in the pouch is a single dollar bill, two quarters and two dimes (two-way fare on the shuttle if I forget to bring coinage). There are no car keys on my key ring, which seems ridiculously lightweight.

It’s weird: I remember, when I got back in touch with my friend Russell, how I felt when he said he lived car-free, taking the Metro to and from work, and walking everywhere else he needed to be. That was about a year ago. Now he’s down in Atlanta, and I’m living in DC, without a car, taking the Metro, the bus, or my feet, everywhere I need to go.

I love it. I love DC. I grew up down in this area, so it’s sort of like a belated homecoming. Don’t get me wrong, Baltimore’s a great city, but it’s a bit harder to live without a car down there, and I don’t know how safe I’d feel walking some of those streets after dark. Oh, and there’s the whole thing about how I got a job down in the DC area (not the Baltimore one), too.

So, what’re my commuting costs?

.35 for the shuttle, one way. .70 cents per day.
$2.35 one way for the Metro, depending on what time I go. What’s that make it, $5.40 per day or something? How much does it cost you to get to work?

I have some book reviews: Soon I WIll Be Invincible, a send-up of the comic book genre I read this last weekend. It was hilarious, even for someone like me, who is mostly familiar with comics through the movies based on them.

Little Green Men by Chris Buckley: very funny, although not his best, I think.

Working on Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants. I’m actually only about 20 pages into it so far, but right now, I’m really enjoying it.

I can’t find two books. I think this means they were packed into long term storage (or loaned away), sadly, because I’ve been thinking about re-reading them: Simon Ings’ Weight of Numbers and Stephen Amidon’s The New City.

On my TV right now is a BBC production called “State of Play”, a six-part miniseries. Here’s what Netflix’s envelope says about it: “Powerful politico Stephen Collins (Chris Morrissey) is embroiled in a scandal when his research assistant dies in a freak accident and his former campaign manager Cal McAffrey (John Simm), now a reporter, realizes the incident may be linked to the death of a drug dealer. As McAffrey digs deeper, he uncovers a dangerous connection between government and big business in this exciting conspiracy thriller from the BBC.” It’s pretty good, and is, of course, being Americanized into a film set for release in 2009. But the movie won’t have Bill Nighy.

So Monday was my last day to clean out my old apartment: and I did. I also stocked up on alcohol: a full case of Boh, half a case of Bass. Today, I braved July 4th traffic to sell my Matrix to my dad. Pending the arrival of the lien release, and the official turning in of the license plates, I no longer own a car.

I do own a bike: after a few attempts to locate one on Craigslist failed (”Oh, sorry, just sold it…”) I went up to Target and bought one. Ran me about $150, a bit more with accessories: a bike pump, a lock, a helmet. Took it out very early this morning on the dead and desolate streets of Woodley Park where my legs burned after about half an hour of mad vicious cycling. It’s going to take some getting used to. At the moment, it’s parked in my (gigantic closet): soon, it’ll be in the bike storage room in the basement (once I get a key to it).

I have irregular wi-fi access in my apartments. My attempts to get Comcast up here have met with disaster: I canceled one because I thought I had a work-related event, then realized it was actually for the day I’d rescheduled. When I rescheduled that, I asked for a Thursday install date, and assumed that the date I was given was correct — it was actually for following Friday. I figure I’m going to wait a few weeks before trying to reschedule — I do, on occasion, have wi-fi I can steal (this being one of those occasions), and it isn’t like there isn’t a lot else to do in this city without internet: Adam’s Morgan is waiting to be explored, I haven’t been to the Zoo since I moved here, and Cleveland and Woodley Parks offer a whole host of entertainment opportunities (there’s another work related event a block north of the Zoo this coming Thursday, and if you’re reading “work related event” as “happy hour”, you’re right on the money).

My living room windows are open: it’s raining, but not quite the thunderstorm they’d been calling for on WTOP, DC’s local FM talk station — I can’t quite figure out if they’re right-leaning or left-leaning, but I do know they broadcast from “the glass enclosed nerve center.” If you’re driving in this area, 103.5 for all the traffic info you could want (it’s like almost all they do). There are odd hoots and exotic animal noises drifting this way from the Zoo, but my cats are curled up under the bed hiding from the cleaning I’ve been doing: I spent an hour today putting my giant walk-in-closet together. If anyone has a Billy bookcase from IKEA and would like a pair of glass doors for it, please e-mail me: they’re beech, they’re missing some of the hardware (which you can get from the Swedish superstore free of cost), but I’m reasonable on pricing.

My apartment looks nice: I’m totally unpacked (I even brought some stuff out of storage because I have more room than I’d expected), my fridge is stocked, my pantry is stocked, my carpets could use a cleaning, and I’ve got a few lamps I need to get plugged in, a few books to put back on the shelves, and a run to the trash-chute to make this place done.

I’ve got pretty basic plans tonight: I’m not fighting crowds on the Metro (after handing over the car to my dad, he dropped me off at Silver Spring and the crowds that popped up at Gallery Place were about as touristy-hellacious as I can stand), especially when I’ve got a roof-deck available to me with a fantastic view of the District. So my plan is to relax, drink, read, drink, have dinner, drink, then head up to the roof-deck around 9pm, drink, maybe meet some neighbors, watch the fireworks, then come back to my little 400-square foot part of DC and … drink some more.

Exciting, I know.

The full-time job is going well: I just had my three month review yesterday. Hard to believe I’ve been there that long, sometimes. It can be a hard job, and there tends to be a lot of turnover. Within my department, probably half the staff has started after I have. Some of this is attributable to the expansion they’ve been working on — there’s talk of a wall coming down and a physical enlargement to take place soon — some of it is just people moving on to other jobs. Still, my review, went well. My team lead was very complimentary, and in addition, a fellow blogger, who swore he’d have nothing to do with my company if we got in touch with him, was gracious enough to spend time on the phone with a new colleague who I’d shown the ropes. (But at this point we’re getting too much into specifics, and I do want to keep that job out of this blog, although I have trusted a few of my coworkers with the address for this blog — god help them if they actually read it!) Back to the review: this was primarily a “where you’re heading” review, so that I could make course-corrections if necessary before the big six month review comes around in three months. There are a couple of things I need to work on, but all-in-all, a pleasant way to end the work week.

So is the part-time job, actually. I hate working the register, but I’m getting the hang of the rest of it. It’s a bit of a weird store, mostly in terms of hours: weekends are dead, weekdays post 6pm are fairly slow. Within the company, it’s the number one store in the nation for the politics section, and that, economy, and history sections are some of the largest I’ve seen in any big box book store. Most of my coworkers are very cool — sadly, a lot of the hot bohemian cute college girls from the nearby colleges have left for the summer — but some are not: thankfully, none have yet to chide me for engaging in lightsaber duels in the multimedia section (rather, they drastically discounted them and now they’re almost all gone: bastards!)

I turn thirty in a little over a month. I’d been dreading that birthday for the last couple of years, but not so much lately, and I think it has to come with something a friend of mine said about two years ago or so, when she was coming up on her thirtieth. “My twenties weren’t that great,” she said. “I’m hoping my thirties will be better.” I think, so far, the last few months of my twenty-ninth year have been pretty damn good: I’m not delivering pizzas; I’m living in a city, which is something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time; I’m living in a city with a pretty good public transportation system, and with a lot to do that doesn’t cost anything: the Smithsonian — all those museums, the Zoo, are free; on weekends and holidays, the roads in Rock Creek Park are open to hikers and bikers and closed to traffic. Okay, sure, the Uptown Theater is fucking expensive, but, hey, it’s the fucking Uptown, y’know? And if you don’t, you should!

So that’s what’s new. Hopefully, tourists will stand on the right and walk on the left of the Metro escalators, and soon wi-fi will become more regular, and I can post more frequently, but only time will tell and I’m not counting on that first thing to happen … ever.