July 13, 2007

• Summer Life

  DC is hot and humid and there's no freakin beach or even a pool I can go to!  But...can't say it's been all bad.  I'm living in Alexandria, VA which is 10 miles and anywhere from a 20 min. - 1.25 hour drive from NRL.  I'm carpooling with this guy who, go figure, goes to RIT (Sean went there).  I also met another guy in my apartment complex who, turns out doesn't work at NRL but Carder Rock, and is named Sean (hm).   It sucks not having a car, but I've learned to take the bus quite frequently grocery shopping or to the gym.  The Metro, as everyone knows, is so awesome and nice and looks like Space Mountain inside.  I think the Thailand MRT and BTS still win, though, for the nicest subways I've been in.  The Chicago "El" is just sad...

  The first few days were quite lonely, I must admit, but I've made some friends since then.  I don't know what else people do except for drinking on Friday and Saturday nights...it gets kinda old...or maybe I'm getting old?  Either way, I really wish I were by a beach (or at least an outdoor pool)!  Yet another reason why I am absolutely settling down in southern CA.  Okay, I HATE to admit this, but I miss my cushy Orange County life!  Haha.  I miss going swimming and playing tennis and going to the jacuzzi at night!  Pools and jacuzzis and tennis courts are NOT standard in every single apartment complex and it really puts a damper on things since I actually used them quite frequently in Irvine.  As much as people complained about The Irvine Company monopolizing all housing and charging so much, well, it really wasn't bad.  I pay way more here and in Chicago and housing is definitely not as nice...I miss the Spectrum!  I finally realized how cool the Spectrum really is.  You got all the stores and restaurants and movie theaters you'd ever need.  You really can go back week after week and not get sick of it.

  Of course I've been able to do things that I definitely can't do in Irvine...so far I've been to the American Art Museum, Natural History Museum, the Archives, Foggy Bottom, Georgetown - M street craziness, Old Town Alexandria, Burke Lake, etc.  I've also been going to the gym pretty consistently and went rock climbing yesterday!  It's hard to live in a place where you really don't know many people and there aren't many people who socialize on a daily basis after work.  Most people just go home and you don't want to bother them...so in order to fill my time I enrolled in Blockbuster.com!  I can finally try to catch up on all those movies that everyone else has seen and talks about and maybe someday I'll be able to partake in those conversations, too.  No more "What?  You've never seen ____?"  haha.  I think I'm pretty behind in music too.  I haven't downloaded a song since FRESHMEN YEAR at UCI.  Can you believe that?  That's 5 years.  I don't listen to the radio, I buy a CD maybe once a month, I don't listen to music on my laptop because of the crappy speakers...so...basically I am completely out of touch with the whole music scene, too.  Oh, I did, however, get a TV Tuner so I can start watching TV again.  I'm trying to catch up on "Friends" (yeah, still haven't seen all the episodes).  How sad am I...I'm so out of touch with the world.  I doubt I'll become one of those crazy scientists though because that's just way too hard to do...they are way too far gone.

  Work is slow for the time being.  Still waiting on material from school so I've been learning some image processing stuff, got to do some FIB stuff in the clean room with the bunny suits!, polishing til my doom, and last but not least YAHOO GRAFFITI.  It's a semi-daily thing and a couple of us from NU MSE put up some pretty tough competition.  Yep, so that's what we do in grad school.

  I've been meaning to find a church here, but don't know where to look.  There's a Calvary Chapel in Alexandria but still 20 minutes away and I have no car!  There's this gospel church right across the street from me and man, they cause a raucous!  They are awesomely loud and soul-ful and you can hear them even just standing across the street every Friday and Sunday and sometimes Saturdays.  I kinda wanna go but I'm a little intimidated. 

  My studio apartment is very spacious, btw.  I got a walk-in closet, queen size bed, and lots of empty floor space!  Kinda still smells like gas even though I've bugged the maintenance guy plenty of times...hopefully it's not too bad and no long-term effects...(uhhh yeah).

  • 10:28 am
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