Do you know the etymology of the word curmudgeon? Do you know what etymology means?
Second things first. Etymology is basically the origin of words. Unfortunately, the etymology for curmudgeon is pretty much unknown. I just have been throwing this insult around at people recently and I would like to know where it came from. I once read something that it had something to do with a dog (cur).
Is it digressing if you never got to the point in the first place? I didn't know how to start this one so I'll just go with the beginning.
After work on Friday I went to pick up my new contacts for next year. The prospect of what those contacts will see is overwhelmingly exciting, if I were capable of getting that excited.
I volunteered to hand in the rent check this month so I bussed it from Farragut to north Georgetown. Georgetown is what it is but north Georgetown is a lot what it was, which is nice--until you get north of north Georgetown--because it has things like Holy Rood Cemetery where I am sure someone significant is buried. Not that there are insignificant people, but you know what I mean.
So I got back on the bus and kept on riding up Wisconsin until I hit a metro stop, which happened to be the Tenleytown one. I got off and walked in circles thinking what I was going to do then as it I didn't really want to just get on the metro home but wanted to figure something out quick because people in the restaurant right there probably perceived me as they would a lost dog, just less cutey.
There were bikes from the Capital Bikeshare right there so I got one and headed east hoping I would eventually hit a road that I would know to take back to my house. I don't know the last time I rode a bike. Do you? Well there are reasons I don't operate vehicles of any kind. My head is constantly on a swivel, which if I were a football linebacker would be a good thing, but when in a one ton piece of metal or on the road with said pieces of metal, lives are in danger. So, obviously, I rely on public transport now. I rode through Rock Creek Park and came across this building, which left me speechless. But there was no one there so I wasn't really talking in the first place.
Eventually I ended up on Park Road, which, incidentally not ironically, is pretty much the street on which I live. So that worked out. I got home, the roommates were grilling out and going out but I went to bed not to much later because...
Saturday was our first touch football game. Background: I can do one thing well in life and that is throw things. I played baseball down here a couple summers ago and we had only two decent pitchers so I pretty much ruined my shoulder throwing too much, or at least I thought I had. I hadn't thrown a football in a while so I just assumed it was still hurt. It isn't. So I have that going for me and now I can look forward to throwing things with my kids. Short story short: we sucked and got dominated in the rain-drenched game. But it was a great accomplishment being that productive that early on a Saturday.
People I know went to the bar for the Final Four games but my aversion to crowds and my lack of awakeness kept me on the couch for them. Post games we decided to do a Mt. Pleasant bar crawl. Do you remember my rant about how it's impossible to find a bar in DC where you can sit down without having to get there at like 4pm? Well I was wrong. The answer to the riddle was Mt. Pleasant, which just so happens to be relatively close to my house. And I have a new-found infatuation with DC with the lack of people in the bars in Mt. Pleasant (this one actually is not Mt. Pleasant but on 14th but we stopped there nonetheless) and the awesomeness of the architecture (not a good picture, I know, but just cruise down the Google Street and check hopefully you'll get the idea) on my Friday happy hour bike ride home.
We were hungry so we stopped in the 7-11. The others got taquitos. I got gummy blue sharks, crab chips, and japeno pistachios, naturally, and we called it a night. This actually might have happened before the last bar, but what's important is that it happened.
On the way home on Park Road this lady stepped out from a house and my intoxicated friend said "ooo a party?" She invited us in and someone, not me, asked if there was booze. She said no and was like "what a party is only worth it if there's alcohol?" She was looking right at me when she said it (I must have that look) and I said I didn't say it but was thinking "Lady, I need to be socially lubricated quite sufficiently if I am stepping into a stranger's house where I do not know anyone." My one friend disappeared inside and the rest of us followed about a minute later because I had to go to the bathroom. We found him around the keg because that lady was a liar. Later though she and I almost bonded over an improperly weighted hula hoop. People were dancing ironically to Jay-Z and conversing about things like the dark novels of the Brontes. I couldn't decide if that was the type of crowd I would like to have as my own. In any case, as is usually the case, we left after we finished our beers.
Have you ever seen the recent hit Leonardo DiCaprio film, Inception? The suburbs of DC are a lot like the dream city that Leo's character creates in his mind with its entirely inorganically sprouted high rise buildings centered on nothing in particular. The location I am referencing is that right off of the Eisenhower Ave metro stop, where I ended up to see the current Jake Gyllenhaal psychological thriller, Source Code.
I have this mentee, and by mentee, I mean a high school senior that needed a mentor to be eligible for this scholars program at his school and I needed some interaction with people outside of my normal group to experience something different so I volunteered to be a mentor. I really have nothing to offer him because he is pretty mature and level-headed and, honestly, he probably provides me more than I him as some of the better conversations I have are when we meet up. Anyway, this month we met up at the movies. I don't know enough about the logistics of time travel, but I won't pass judgement on Source Code until I do as I was pretty preoccupied with its incongruities (do you like that word as much as I do?).
I have off every other Monday because I work 36 hours one week and 44 the other in a two week pay period to make 80 with one day off. Yesterday was that day. I scheduled a dentist appointment, or at least I thought I had. The secretary at the dentist said it was for tomorrow. Whatev. I wasn't really feeling into being tortured dentally then anyway. On my way back I overheard a kid ask what I assume was his grandfather what his favorite color is. He said the shade of gray that oranges are. The kid said oranges aren't gray and the grandfather said he was colorblind so everything is gray to him. Classic. So that was worth it.
Then I went grocery shopping. Then I went to read at Sticky Fingers a couple blocks from my house, which is a vegan bakery and won Cupcake Wars on TV recently. I had a peanut butter fudge one and, well, I don't really know what goes into a non-vegan cupcake but it was as delicious as a normal one. I had asked my roommate Alexander Rud and my other roommates if they wanted to have a beer at Bier Baron, which was Brickskeller and pretty much still is except the beer menu is laminated now, after work. Only Rud agreed so I Capital Bikeshared it again on over to Dupont because it was like 80 degrees out and while my destination was a low-lit basement, at least I would be enjoying the weather on the way. They have happy hour mystery beers for a very reasonable $3 where they wrap up random beers in paper with '?'s. I got a Full Sail IPA, which I had had once in Portland, and it was as delectable in a bottle 3000 miles away from its source as it was on tap at its source. Rud got a Becks. Sucker. We conversed about things like our dream jobs, which was actually the second time this came up for me this weekend, and both times I realized my dream job would be having a phantom source of income that allowed me to not work at all but read and write and volunteer and sleep all day and hang out with friends, which is a lot like my time spent in Guatemala so I know it works. People say they couldn't handle not having a job. I am not one of those people. Rud said having a brew pub. I would want to be "dream unemployed" near that.
Anyway, we got back and had a good hookah session with all the roommates on the deck before the hideous disappointment that was the national championship game.
No comments:
Post a Comment