Happy Hour

A generously poured $3.75 glass of house red

One of the most typical and persuasive aspects of D.C. culture is the happy hour. The after-work time spent decompressing with friends and colleagues over drinks, venting about your jobs, your bosses, and your colleagues who decided not to join you. Often happy hour centers around drink and food specials, but I've found that the time spent comparing stories of the latest "crisis" in your office and catching up on lives outside of work is more important than a generously poured $3.75 glass of house red.

Happy hours are great for folks who are new to D.C. (and there are almost folks who are new to D.C.) to "network." Find your affinity group - Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, college/grad school alums, Russian speakers, or people who are fans of Mad Men - and there will be a monthly happy planned especially for you and your like-minded future friends. But happy hours are also great for those of us who've made it over the 2-year hump - that magic amount of time as a transient resident of D.C. where it ceases to be a place to work and becomes a home. Us long-timers tend to get absorbed in our jobs and our routines, and coming back to the  trusty old happy hour allows us to reconnect and relax.

With an old job ending soon (just two weeks left!) and a new career beginning, I can look forward to plenty of happy hours in the coming weeks to commemorate life's inevitable transitions.

And of course, conversations over drinks are always "off the record."

Seattle Vacation

Usually when I head out to Seattle to see friends and family, my schedule is so packed that I don't have much time to really experience the city. Having lived there for a couple years, I'm not exactly a tourist, but after a several years on the other coast, I don't exactly feel like a local either.

This past weekend in Seattle for a good friend's wedding allowed me to feel a little like a local and a little like a tourist, which was exactly the kind of trip I needed. I don't know when I'll be in Seattle next, so I wanted to do a couple touristy things, but I also wanted to sit in a coffee shop and read without rushing. And I did exactly those things. The rain came on and off, as it tends to do this time of year, so I spent a good amount of time on my friend's couch. During the sun breaks, and when I wasn't attending the wedding festivities, I walked around Pikes Place market, shopped, and ate multiple types of hot noodle soups. I drank hot, strong espresso while finishing up the first Hunger Games book (which was of course better than the still awesome movie). And most importantly, I watched a couple of great friends and amazing people get married.

So now it's a red-eye back to reality and just a month of work before I take a few weeks of vacation to get ready for A-100.

The first iPhone post

So I bit the bullet and got a new toy yesterday, so we'll see how this works out. I'm blogging from my fancy new iPhone 4s, which does all sorts of amazing things I don't know about yet (I'm assured). One thing it does have going for it that my previous droid did not is world wide portability. With an unlock-able sim card, I can take this baby anywhere I go and have access to the local network (even my phone number is still active with Verizon).

Plus, I now have instagram, which lets me to take pictures that look way cooler than my abilities would usually allow.

Scooter Weather

I'm now entering my third spring season in D.C. and I still haven't gotten used to the amazingness that is a real change in the seasons. Seattle is a beautiful place to live, and the summers there are indeed tough to beat, but the transition from one season to the next is gradual and anticlimactic. Kinda rainy to more rainy to really rainy back to not so rainy. And the cycle begins again. And while we have true seasons where I grew up, on the dry side of the mountains in the Pacific Northwest, there are very few deciduous trees to burst back to life and the arid climate tempers down some of the greenness. But here in the swampy mid-Atlantic, spring seems to happy so suddenly. One day everything is dead and brown, and seriously, a week or two of sunny days and suddenly there is grass, and flowers, and leaves, and blossoms. Everywhere!

Here you can see the progression from brown trees, to slightly green grass, to full blown blossoms. I've been able to get out on the bike a few times, as well as out on Bella, my trusty Vespa. I can't believe I've been a scooter owner for over two years, but she now has over 700 miles and a freshly renewed DC registration. I'm hoping that wherever the foreign service decides to send me, I'll be able to take Bella with me, though the thought of scooting through a chaotic African market or a packed Asian city makes me more than a bit nervous. I don't think I have those skills, (a topic discussed humorously in this article by former FSO Dave Seminara titled "10 tips to avoid breaking your neck or your budget on a moped"). So in the mean time I'll just enjoy the spring weather here in DC and get as many scooting/biking days in while I can.