Mr. Duncan Goes to Washington

Duncan has had a difficult transition to the city. When we first got here, he went crazy over all the new smells and couldn't help but try to make new friends with every dog he saw even if they were half a mile away. Walks became quite annoying. Luckily, he's growing more accustomed, and he's realizing that this is where he lives now.

One of our favorite walks is towards the Lincoln Memorial, which is a little over 2.5 miles. We walk in front of the Capitol (he usually has a good potty there - not sure what kind of statement he's trying to make) and down the National Mall to the Washington Monument. Sometimes we just walk around the monument to the White House, and other times we cross the street and go to the WWII Memorial and down to the Lincoln Memorial. You never know what or who you're going to see on these walks. Yesterday, we watched the presidential motorcade go by.

He always loves these walks. He loves the outdoors and the smells it brings. He always gets stopped by children who want to pet him, and little ladies who share their ice cubes. And he makes a few four-legged friends along the way. It's also nice to get outside and enjoy the history that's literally in my backyard.

Bumper Cars

When you're driving around DC, you see very few really nice cars. You have your occasional Mercedes or BMW, but that's about it. It's because DC has the worst drivers in the world. On the road, it's all or nothing. I've never driven so defensively anywhere.

You have to parallel park almost everywhere, and odds are that your car will make contact with another car sooner or later. (I confess, I may have tapped a few while parking, but no scratches yet.)

The road is even worse. Point in case, today I was driving to pick up my CSA share, which is located all the way across town. I saw a car that was parallel parked up ahead on my right. I was in the left lane of a 4 lane road. I noticed the car start to inch up. To jump into the flow of traffic in the right lane, right? Not even close. The car hurriedly swung around and did a U-turn right in front of me and in front of cars that were coming from the other direction. I gave him a very long honk, and he in turn told me I was #1. Stuff like this happens all the time.

If you notice in the picture above, there's a very long scratch along the tire along the rear driver's side and a loosened mud flap. This all occurred the other day when Collin was driving my car in front of Union Station, which is a 3 lane traffic circle. He noticed a guy directly on his left starting to come into his lane (he was in the middle lane). While honking, he quickly ran through his options, which were to get into the right lane, speed up, or slow down. The right lane had a charter bus so that option was out. He went for speed up, so instead of taking out the whole left side of my car, the guy only got the back half. Things must happen like this all the time because Collin wasn't sure if the guy was going to stop afterward, which he reluctantly did, and if the vehicle is not totaled or there's no injury, the police don't even make a report! They just show up and act as a mediator. My insurance is working on taking care of it all right now.

The last bit of DC driving annoyances are tickets. Now, I've had a few tickets in my day, but they were all given to me by real, live policemen. When I came home today, I had 2 lovely little notices in my mailbox from the DC DMV. On the top in big bold letters, it said "Notice of Unsatisfied Photo Enforcement Ticket." It continued to tell me that I had an outstanding ticket that I had not paid, and they were now adding a penalty to my fine. Now, this is the first I've heard. They snapped a picture of my car (on a 4 lane road where the speed limit is 25 mph), issued a ticket, and forgot to tell me! I'm going to let my sweet lawyer boyfriend handle that one and take the bus/metro from now on.

The Beginning

I've been meaning to start a blog ever since moving to the city - 2 months ago. Creating a title has stumped me. Everything I came up with was either too cheesy or not creative enough, so I finally settled for simplistic. The main purpose of this blog is to keep my mom informed of what's going on in my life and to have some record of the stories and anecdotes that occur on a daily basis but somehow get lost in memory. So, here goes...

I've finally gotten settled in my cozy little basement apartment here in DC. The only thing I'm missing is a dining room table, which I'm working on. The apt hunt here was much different than I've ever experienced. First of all, I'm living in an area where the average home price is close to $500,000, so you can only imagine what rents look like. I started at a place that has not failed me yet: craigslist, and over the course of 2-3 days, I looked at about 15 apts. The search was stressful to say the least. Some had no washer/dryer, some minimal parking, others no dishwasher, some felt like dungeons, etc, etc. The one I ended up liking the most was, of course, the very first one I looked at.

Liking it is just the beginning. It's not like other places where it's first come, first serve, put down your deposit, and it's done. It's a place your application, hope the owner "likes you best," completely random free-for-all. So I scurry to fill out my application, write a check for the fee, and attach a sweet little note full of Southern charm (and on flowery paper) about how I'll be the best tenant ever. Then I had to wait. Waiting is this weird in-between state because you've found the apt that you like but don't know if you'll actually get it, so you're forced to continue the long, tedious, and now half-hearted search. Luckily, after a week of waiting, the owner picked me!









The moving part was hard and stressful, but I'm so glad it's over. I would written about that had I started this blog earlier, but it was not a pleasant experience, so I'd prefer not to remember. My stuff had been in boxes for months, and a few things were missing, but it's all put back together again. I'll try to put pics of the completed product up soon!