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Entry tags:
Life: Dancing, Theater, Community Day, and Looking Forward
Hello dreamwidth friends! I had a very exciting and social weekend, so I want to talk about that. I'm trying to cram in as much DC-area socializing as possible before I move to Boston at the end of August and that sure is going.
I. Friday :: Dancing at Glen Echo
This whole weekend was an adventure because it was unbelievably hot from start to finish, something I did not entirely take into account when making plans to go dancing. I headed to Glen Echo straight from work so I could beat rush hour traffic as much as possible, bringing my laptop with the intention of working on some things at the cafe in the park.
Well, the things I wanted to work on weren't playing nice on my linux operating system after being begun in a windows environment, and I didn't have wifi in order to implement the fix I had in mind which unfortunately required internet, so almost no productivity was achieved at all for the FOUR HOURS I was at the park prior to the dance.
But I did get to hang out with Kevin, the cafe's cashier, for several hours and that was actually really fun? I bought an ice cream and sometime later he just GAVE me half of a sandwich and we shot the shit with various other people who came into the cafe throughout the afternoon and it was... Nice. Glen Echo is a great place to play pokemon go and I found out he's been playing again, so now we are pokemon go friends!
And then eventually it was 7:30pm and time to dance. First there's a beginner lesson from 7:30 until about 8:15pm, with the contra dance proper beginning at 8:30pm and running until 11pm. The kicker here is: the dance is held in the Spanish Ballroom, which has no air conditioning. Just fans. I totally forgot about this VERY IMPORTANT DETAIL and ended up drinking literally an entire gallon of water between ~3:30pm when I arrived and ~10:30pm when I left. I sweated through all my clothes. It was UNSPEAKABLY DISGUSTING.
But also sooooooo much fuuuuun oh my god!! I haven't been contra dancing in YEARS; I almost went to the contra dance at Arisia this January but it was too late in the evening, considering the weather forecast for that night was nasty. Before this I just kinda missed contra in a vague, nebulous way of "this was something I did at one point and it was fun so maybe I should do it again?" Actually doing it reminded me how much I love it. I looked into contra dancing groups in Boston a number of months ago so I really hope to attend at least one more dance at Glen Echo and then to look into going to a Boston dance once I move.
Maybe I can even drag Yrin and June to one, sometime.
II. Saturday :: Theater and Swimming
Saturday, I booked pretty tightly: a theater performance with Psiten in the early afternoon, then swimming with my sister closer to dinnertime.
Psiten was super prepared for heat in DC: they brought an umbrella and a water bottle and we only walked a couple blocks in total, first from the metro to a poke bowl restaurant, then from the restaurant to the theater, then from the theater back to the metro. We did a great job not dehydrating and dying!!
The play was Alix in Wonderland: A Gender Journey Down the Rabbit Hole, performed by the summer teen company at a local theater school. It was very much a student performance but it was also really charming; I am subscribed to a DC area theater mailing list and it includes big theaters like Olney and Roundhouse and Toby's Dinner Theater but it also includes little stuff, like this theater school. And it's nice to support smaller, local productions! A lot of the gender discussion in the play was very blunt and direct, rather than being especially subtle. But the writers worked with LGBTQ teens to create something that spoke to their lived experiences and just reading their message in the program about working with trans kids to tell a story they feel seen in made me super weepy. I'm very glad we went!
After the play I visited with Psiten at their new house for a bit, then went off to the pool to swim with my sister! We got Indian take-away for dinner and it was a lovely evening overall.
III. Sunday :: Pokemon Go Community Day
If my sister and I were reasonable human beings, MAYBE we would have decided to pass on community day in DC during a heat wave where the "feels like" was supposed to be between 110 and 120 degrees fahrenheit. We are not reasonable human beings. We packed a shit-ton of water, and snacks, and sunscreen, and after slathering ourselves with the latter as well we headed into the city.
We were reasonable enough to spend the first hour and change in the Hirshhorn museum, where we could enjoy air conditioning and beautiful art and only a small amount of judgmental looks from the security staff who could tell we were playing a game just as much as we were exploring the museum. After that we headed outside, which was absolutely miserable and resulted in my phone heating up so much that the game kept lagging horribly, but by the end of the three hours we had over a thousand mudkip candy and soooooo many little monsters, so like. Worth it.
We concluded community day with the traditional shame gelato near Gallery Place, appraised and culled and evolved our monsters in their air conditioned building, and headed home. It was... Genuinely a really nice time? We didn't dehydrate or get heat stroke and honestly, the worst thing about it was my phone overheating, not me overheating as a human being, which is pretty cool!
The next community day in August is in only two weeks and I'm just hoping the weather is a bit cooler. Pleeeeease I want one last good run in DC before I move to Boston and need to get used to a new community day routine, please let us have halfway bearable weather.
IV. Monday :: Cleaning and Biking
Originally, Monday was going to be "June visits and meets my cat" day. But June had a change of plans and didn't get to DC until late Monday night, so I had the day to myself instead.
I spent a good chunk of the afternoon cleaning out my closet, throwing away tons of stuff that was just junk and unsalvageable, bagging and boxing stuff that is probably salvageable to donate, and organizing what was left. I still have a lot more to do and now there's a bunch of stuff all over my room OUTSIDE the closet instead of stacked floor to ceiling inside of it, but. Progress! I really can't tell at what rate I need to go through my belongings culling them down to what I'll take with me and packing them up, but I choose to believe I'll manage in time for the actual move.
When I'd done enough cleaning to be satisfied, I went for a bike ride. It's been more than three weeks since I last biked and it was just... Nice... To be able to get out. Also, the pokemon nests turn over in two days so I'm glad I got to see what was in them before they change. One is electabuzz and I still need an electivire so that was useful, aside from the thing where none of the ones I caught have good IVs. I hope the weather clears up by this evening because I really want to bike today and catch a few more.
I'm starting to really get mopey about leaving my bike trails behind. There are trails in Massachusetts but there honestly isn't anything as extensive and accessible as the Anacostia trail system ANYWHERE near the city. And there's so much more of these trails that I still haven't seen... I want to try and bike as much as possible before I move but I'm already running out of time; so much of my remaining month is already spoken for.
Also I got caught in the thunderstorm at the end of my bike ride. I was JUST about to leave the lake and bike the last several blocks home when the sky absolutely OPENED UP and poured water on me. Also, lightning struck something a block away from me TWICE on the way home! It was incredibly loud and bright and I totally screamed in surprise but also, pretty cool. Couldn't say lightning had struck so close to me before that!!
V. Moving Forward
All in all, it was a really good weekend! This next weekend I MIGHT still be getting dinner with my cousin on Friday, then Saturday is my aunt's yearly summer pool party, and on Sunday I am going to see Be More Chill in Virginia with my sister. Which means I have to clean up my house and make the second bed sometime between now and Saturday so she can stay the night. Maybe we can go walk around the lake on Sunday before the play? Who knows.
I'm still trying to cram as many plans as possible into this last month, while also leaving time for packing and other necessary moving logistics and it is, wild. It's finally close enough and real enough that I'm talking about my move publicly?? I've written several friends-locked entries about it but this is the first public one that has touched on it.
I'm excited to move but mostly I'm excited to be done moving, ahaha. Thanks for reading, friends!
I. Friday :: Dancing at Glen Echo
This whole weekend was an adventure because it was unbelievably hot from start to finish, something I did not entirely take into account when making plans to go dancing. I headed to Glen Echo straight from work so I could beat rush hour traffic as much as possible, bringing my laptop with the intention of working on some things at the cafe in the park.
Well, the things I wanted to work on weren't playing nice on my linux operating system after being begun in a windows environment, and I didn't have wifi in order to implement the fix I had in mind which unfortunately required internet, so almost no productivity was achieved at all for the FOUR HOURS I was at the park prior to the dance.
But I did get to hang out with Kevin, the cafe's cashier, for several hours and that was actually really fun? I bought an ice cream and sometime later he just GAVE me half of a sandwich and we shot the shit with various other people who came into the cafe throughout the afternoon and it was... Nice. Glen Echo is a great place to play pokemon go and I found out he's been playing again, so now we are pokemon go friends!
And then eventually it was 7:30pm and time to dance. First there's a beginner lesson from 7:30 until about 8:15pm, with the contra dance proper beginning at 8:30pm and running until 11pm. The kicker here is: the dance is held in the Spanish Ballroom, which has no air conditioning. Just fans. I totally forgot about this VERY IMPORTANT DETAIL and ended up drinking literally an entire gallon of water between ~3:30pm when I arrived and ~10:30pm when I left. I sweated through all my clothes. It was UNSPEAKABLY DISGUSTING.
But also sooooooo much fuuuuun oh my god!! I haven't been contra dancing in YEARS; I almost went to the contra dance at Arisia this January but it was too late in the evening, considering the weather forecast for that night was nasty. Before this I just kinda missed contra in a vague, nebulous way of "this was something I did at one point and it was fun so maybe I should do it again?" Actually doing it reminded me how much I love it. I looked into contra dancing groups in Boston a number of months ago so I really hope to attend at least one more dance at Glen Echo and then to look into going to a Boston dance once I move.
Maybe I can even drag Yrin and June to one, sometime.
II. Saturday :: Theater and Swimming
Saturday, I booked pretty tightly: a theater performance with Psiten in the early afternoon, then swimming with my sister closer to dinnertime.
Psiten was super prepared for heat in DC: they brought an umbrella and a water bottle and we only walked a couple blocks in total, first from the metro to a poke bowl restaurant, then from the restaurant to the theater, then from the theater back to the metro. We did a great job not dehydrating and dying!!
The play was Alix in Wonderland: A Gender Journey Down the Rabbit Hole, performed by the summer teen company at a local theater school. It was very much a student performance but it was also really charming; I am subscribed to a DC area theater mailing list and it includes big theaters like Olney and Roundhouse and Toby's Dinner Theater but it also includes little stuff, like this theater school. And it's nice to support smaller, local productions! A lot of the gender discussion in the play was very blunt and direct, rather than being especially subtle. But the writers worked with LGBTQ teens to create something that spoke to their lived experiences and just reading their message in the program about working with trans kids to tell a story they feel seen in made me super weepy. I'm very glad we went!
After the play I visited with Psiten at their new house for a bit, then went off to the pool to swim with my sister! We got Indian take-away for dinner and it was a lovely evening overall.
III. Sunday :: Pokemon Go Community Day
If my sister and I were reasonable human beings, MAYBE we would have decided to pass on community day in DC during a heat wave where the "feels like" was supposed to be between 110 and 120 degrees fahrenheit. We are not reasonable human beings. We packed a shit-ton of water, and snacks, and sunscreen, and after slathering ourselves with the latter as well we headed into the city.
We were reasonable enough to spend the first hour and change in the Hirshhorn museum, where we could enjoy air conditioning and beautiful art and only a small amount of judgmental looks from the security staff who could tell we were playing a game just as much as we were exploring the museum. After that we headed outside, which was absolutely miserable and resulted in my phone heating up so much that the game kept lagging horribly, but by the end of the three hours we had over a thousand mudkip candy and soooooo many little monsters, so like. Worth it.
We concluded community day with the traditional shame gelato near Gallery Place, appraised and culled and evolved our monsters in their air conditioned building, and headed home. It was... Genuinely a really nice time? We didn't dehydrate or get heat stroke and honestly, the worst thing about it was my phone overheating, not me overheating as a human being, which is pretty cool!
The next community day in August is in only two weeks and I'm just hoping the weather is a bit cooler. Pleeeeease I want one last good run in DC before I move to Boston and need to get used to a new community day routine, please let us have halfway bearable weather.
IV. Monday :: Cleaning and Biking
Originally, Monday was going to be "June visits and meets my cat" day. But June had a change of plans and didn't get to DC until late Monday night, so I had the day to myself instead.
I spent a good chunk of the afternoon cleaning out my closet, throwing away tons of stuff that was just junk and unsalvageable, bagging and boxing stuff that is probably salvageable to donate, and organizing what was left. I still have a lot more to do and now there's a bunch of stuff all over my room OUTSIDE the closet instead of stacked floor to ceiling inside of it, but. Progress! I really can't tell at what rate I need to go through my belongings culling them down to what I'll take with me and packing them up, but I choose to believe I'll manage in time for the actual move.
When I'd done enough cleaning to be satisfied, I went for a bike ride. It's been more than three weeks since I last biked and it was just... Nice... To be able to get out. Also, the pokemon nests turn over in two days so I'm glad I got to see what was in them before they change. One is electabuzz and I still need an electivire so that was useful, aside from the thing where none of the ones I caught have good IVs. I hope the weather clears up by this evening because I really want to bike today and catch a few more.
I'm starting to really get mopey about leaving my bike trails behind. There are trails in Massachusetts but there honestly isn't anything as extensive and accessible as the Anacostia trail system ANYWHERE near the city. And there's so much more of these trails that I still haven't seen... I want to try and bike as much as possible before I move but I'm already running out of time; so much of my remaining month is already spoken for.
Also I got caught in the thunderstorm at the end of my bike ride. I was JUST about to leave the lake and bike the last several blocks home when the sky absolutely OPENED UP and poured water on me. Also, lightning struck something a block away from me TWICE on the way home! It was incredibly loud and bright and I totally screamed in surprise but also, pretty cool. Couldn't say lightning had struck so close to me before that!!
V. Moving Forward
All in all, it was a really good weekend! This next weekend I MIGHT still be getting dinner with my cousin on Friday, then Saturday is my aunt's yearly summer pool party, and on Sunday I am going to see Be More Chill in Virginia with my sister. Which means I have to clean up my house and make the second bed sometime between now and Saturday so she can stay the night. Maybe we can go walk around the lake on Sunday before the play? Who knows.
I'm still trying to cram as many plans as possible into this last month, while also leaving time for packing and other necessary moving logistics and it is, wild. It's finally close enough and real enough that I'm talking about my move publicly?? I've written several friends-locked entries about it but this is the first public one that has touched on it.
I'm excited to move but mostly I'm excited to be done moving, ahaha. Thanks for reading, friends!