Hick in the District

when he leaves the comfort and safety of his parents' cocoon to strike out into the cold and bitter world to make a place for himself. And for some reason they will insist on visiting.

My folks are flying in from Waterford tonight to stay in my barrenly naked room, which has a futon pad, a lamp, mice and cockroaches, in a house with an unmarried couple and lesbian, and is owned by the gay life-partners next door. Hilarity to ensue.

There's a woman who works here at DOE who I have to deliver things to all the time, and who is now working in our office because her suite is being renovated. She's totally nice, but I don't know how to interact with her; her name is America.

For most people who are older than me who don't want me to address them by their last name I will prefer to affix a title to their first name. "Do you have any reports to be taken back, Mr. James?" " Miss Arlene, should I have these taken by courier or hand-deliver them?" "Did you get that concurrence package, Miss America?"

“When are you coming back from Dirkson?” I have to pick up a package and then I’m coming to America.”

How am I supposed to great her in the morning? "Good morning, America!" Uh, no.

Its the little things I miss about California. Things like being safe on your walk home, not having things stolen out of your room, being able to buy beef jerky just about anywhere. What is this, the east coast?

People who steal metro checks ($270 worth) out of my room.

I'm ok with them stealing my sweet maglite, but this just pisses me off.

If I hear one more doe-eyed anchor say 666 is the number of the Devil I'm going to put my shoe through the TV.

Just as I was going to bed last night (read: early this morning) I heard and saw what appeared to be someone trying to break into my window with a torch light welding thingamabobber. Loud buzzing and clacking, sparks and fire flying everywhere, just like you see in the movies. I was not in the mood to be bothered so I charged at the window with my 4 D-cell MagLite ready to throw down with whatever thug was welding a welding torch. Made sense at the time. Turns out the house’s electricity meter was having a spaz attack which caused the house to brown out. I could hear people out on the street flipping out and calling 911 (they got right through, humph), so I called my landlord to let him know there was a bit of drama on our end. Someone very brave came over and flipped the emergency switch so the sparking knocked off, but the rubber insulation was still on fire, a little fire, like 5 inches max. I opened my window to tell him my landlord was on the way, and when he got there (he lives next door) he threw some sand on the rubber and the fire was out. I started to smell and see smoke, which made sense at the time.

Apparently the DCFD takes fires seriously. The showed up with seven (7!) huge trucks and an ambulance and shut down 6th and Q streets and swarmed around all over. I finally understand why women like firemen. Dudes are big and buffed. Really big and really buffed. Some checked out the meter, some wanted me to show them around the house. We went down stairs into my room, which was now hazy and smelled more intensely of smoke. The fire had been out for a good 20 minutes by this time so I was a touch disturbed. So where they. They started feeling the walls and called for an “imager” to come through. About this time the power went out. Over the next 15-30 minutes they went all through the dark house with flashlights and the infrared imager, looking into every nook and cranny, under every floorboard and behind every headboard. One of my house mates was out of town so they had to break down her door (she’s gonna love that), and finally found the smoke coming from a bit of cardboard some genius put in the house’s electrical panel, which is conveniently right outside my bedroom door. To be clear: when the meter exploded outside my window it caused the panel to burn outside my door. Whateva.

The big buff dudes opened all my windows to clear the smoke, so when I was ready to go to bed I had to close them, except for one that an especially big and buffed dude must have opened. I was literally doing pull ups (full on feet off the ground pull ups) on the thing to get it down. Didn’t work. I slept with a window open to one of the busiest streets in DC. I don't know how bums do it. Still no electricity this morning, hopefully they’ll get it fixed sometime today.

My observations:

1. Mom was right, you never know who’s coming over. Keep your room clean.

2. Cockroaches don’t survive smoke inhalation well. They will come out in the open to die.

3. Electrical repairmen will talk about the latest sports stories at 4 in the morning. They won’t care whose trying to sleep.

4. MagLites are AWESOME (ok, I knew that already).

5. The quality of a truck’s suspension is inversely proportional to the silence of its environment. The fourth law of thermodynamics requires a constant level of noise, folks walking down the street will compensate for red lights.

6. Showering in the dark is difficult, shaving is impossible. Being scruffy at work is acceptable during Recess.

7. A 10 pound bag of ice in the freezer melts a lot faster than you might think. Ten pounds of water is a lot more than you might think, especially when it has nowhere to go.