Thursday, September 8, 2011

D.C. Update

  Well, while we all wait for the motivation to write What I Learned: Part 2 to present itself, I think an update on the new city and internship will tide us over.

  I'm living in Arlington, VA, a nice suburb very close to D.C. I work in the city, very close to the National Mall and all kinds of fun sights (although everything's been obscured by fog and rain of biblical proportions since the day I arrived -- an omen?), and carpool to and from work every day with the woman I live with. There are two daughters at home and a dog. For what is looking like an ever more reasonable price for rent, I get my own giant bedroom, bathroom, use of everything in the house, and a ziploc bag with my name on it and a PB&J inside every morning. As in, they feed me. I honestly don't think anyone has packed my lunch since the early '90s, so this is truly the high life.

  The job is awesome if a bit disorganized (luckily the downtime/time when none of the supervisors are available can be filled by listening to one of the thousands of records that line the walls of the office -- the complete catalogue of Folkways Records and then some). Well, awesome like the last one was awesome: I don't think anyone really aspires to spend their life alphabetizing a huge file box of folders containing business records for a defunct record company, but if you like who you're working for and feel like what you're doing is important and making a difference for the archives, it's no trouble at all. So yeah. More on the work later.

  The other interns seem like good people. There are 5 other people in my area, 4 of whom are girls. 2 are still in college, 1 already has a Master's, and 1 is floating around like me caught between rounds one and two. I actually don't know where the guy is in his education, but I will say this for him: he knows his folk music and is a dead ringer for someone initialed JS. So much it's almost alarming. We're set to work on the same projects, so at some point I will probably address him as J when he inevitably starts praising Bob Dylan's later work or lets that beard get out of control.

 So basically things here are good, and I'm not worried about riding it out til December. Which is just as well, because apparently life in the outside world is terrible and occasionally calls in. Two internships procured, successfully living away from home, and unexpectedly living the high life in D.C. on the cheap: of course it was only a matter of time before Life snuck up behind me and kicked me in the back of the knees. I'm currently selling the contents of our house on Ebay and apparently we are abandoning the S.S. Oklahoma as soon as we can strip the sails. I would say FTS, but that's just life.

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