I have spent all weekend with the college bowl team. On Friday we went to the Newseum, which is much better than the old one that was in Arlington. It’s a full-day excursion now, and I recommend seeing it all in one day because the $20 admission is a bit steep.

Friday night my wife finally got to meet two of my best friends because we went to a 4th of July party! I’ve never seen the DC fireworks in all the time I’ve lived here (basically my whole life) but my friend Geoff’s apartment building has a rooftop so we were able to view them from there. It was lots of fun! Good party.

All day Saturday was College Bowl, so many tons of questions. I was sleepy from having gotten in late the night before so I was probably not as good as I really can be. Saturday night was…packing and packing and packing. And bed.

Today we had College Bowl in the morning, then a break, then we reconvened in the afternoon. Now we are at Dave & Busters blowing off steam…needless to say we scared everyone away from the trivia game so we are sticking to other stuff! I hadn’t been to Dave and Busters before; they have a serious deficit of skeeball machines.

I still can’t find my debit card. I am using my credit card for all purchases, which doesn’t thrill me, but at least it’s available. A has given me her debit card in case I have an emergency and need cash.

I was supposed to take a picture of a geocoin at the Washington Monument. I drive past the damn thing every day, and I’ve had the coin for so long the owner asked me to please move it along. So I promised to take it to New Orleans, but…I won’t be driving past the Monument between now and then. I feel like a complete dork, so I am planning to take the coin to the top of the 6th Street garage on campus, from which you can see the Capitol dome quite well, and I’ll take its picture there. But…oops.

Everybody is going home for the holiday. One of my friends asked me if I was staying in town, and I said “um…I live here, so…yes. And my family lives here.” I am going to have dinner with my family on Thursday. I am kind of envious of all my friends making travel plans and being excited to go home - I don’t have anywhere to go! Although we did get confirmation today that the Los Angeles trip in January is definitely happening, so that’s fun. I’m sad that I won’t get to sign with anybody from Tuesday night until Monday morning though, everybody is going to be hearing all weekend, and I love my deaf friends. Two of them are going together to the house of one of their families, and I am jealous…I want to spend a whole week with my friends, too! Sometimes I hate living off campus. I have the most awesome friends but I have to leave them every night, blah. Don’t get me wrong, I love my wife and my kitties and my kitchen and my restaurants and all the other benefits of living at home…but I wish I could see my friends for longer and more often. Le sigh.

I would have thought that most people would respond to fireworks with “Happy Independence Day!” or wild cheering. But no, here they respond to it with “let’s drive stupid” and standing in the street. All I wanted to do was run to the drugstore and pick up some medication we were out of, and I found myself dodging people who were more interested in the fireworks than, oh, driving their car. Unfortunately they were behind the wheel of an operating car at the time. Nice, guys. Real nice. I’m not a party pooper, but let’s not be stupid, okay?

My “Easter” eggs from today:

• “Happy Hanukkah” with a star of david
• gay pride egg
• Hello Kitty face egg

We had fun. I had candy. I’m tired again now. Interpreted for Lee Harrington again and some other stuff. Yawn.

For some reason BitTorrent is not working for me right now. Last night I downloaded the Borat movie to watch on the bus to New York (we have a headphone splitter), and then this morning I tried to download a movie that A wanted to see, but for some reason it wouldn’t download. I tried a different movie and that wouldn’t work either. I guess I will just convert the Borat movie to iPod format while we’re doing family stuff the rest of the day, but I was hoping to queue up another movie for conversion so I could do two at once. I suppose I could always rip something from a DVD we already have, not that I know how to do that…

Oh well, back to brushing my hair and admiring my new boots that I got at TJ Maxx for $30.

Geeking ensues, then some philosophical stuff.

I want to spend money! I think I am going to get the wireless headphones via Amazon. Unfortunately they come from a seller who charges almost $12 for shipping, but it’s still better than finding it slightly cheaper on eBay and having to pay out-of-pocket. As long as I can apply my $75 Amazon GC to them, it’s neither here nor there.

But there’s a bunch of other stuff I want - stuff from my wishlist that I had put in my cart for later because I was going to buy it used. And yet I have to refrain from putting it all in my cart, because Xmas is right around the corner. But I want the headphones NOW! I am trying to refrain from ordering anything until after Xmas; even though I know nobody’s getting me wireless headphones, they might have gotten me the very same used items from my wishlist. Augh! I did buy an A/C adapter for my new iPod, but I got that off eBay - no point spending $20 on the official Apple one when I can buy a non-OEM version for $6 shipped. I do have the official Apple A/C adapter for Firewire…but the 5G iPods don’t charge via Firewire, only USB.

Can you tell I’m a little hyper today? I am. I didn’t take my meds today, because I forgot to fill my medbox last night and so I had none left when I was leaving this morning. The really weird thing is that I think I was a better interpreter at a meeting this morning. I’ve known since starting this career that interpreting was a good fit for someone with ADHD - very little paperwork, you don’t have to retain information for long, etc. - but I didn’t think that having ADHD could make my output better. Very strange.

Oh, and I hate everybody who brings in junk food for the holidays. Today I successfully resisted the assorted truffles that were in the office kitchen, and fortunately they were gone after a couple of hours. I even resisted the mini PB cups that were in the candy bowl when I stopped by there for a Starlite mint. Yay for me. I’m hungry though! Is it time to go home yet?

It’s December again, and Xmas decorations are popping up all over. My aisle has some tinsel and ornaments on a few cubes, the next aisle over has ornaments on every cube. The flowers in the planters in the hallway are now red with green leaves, the door-decorating contest is in full swing, and there’s a giant Xmas tree in the main atrium, which will have its own special lighting ceremony this week.

I am seriously considering putting up a little Hanukkah decoration in my cube. I don’t know what it will be, and I don’t have a color printer so it won’t look too great, and I’m not even really intensely Jewish. But I do have Jewish heritage, and I was raised Unitarian Universalist, and the entirely Xmas-related decorations are kind of overwhelming. It’s time for a little diversity up in here. I just have to find a good printout, and maybe some magic markers.

Some holidays are known around the world - Christmas, New Year’s Day, Easter. Some are strictly religious observances - Rosh Hashanah, Eid-ul-Fitr, Ascension Day. Others are specific to individual nations - Waitangi Day, Bastille Day, Australia Day. But in the United States, we have some unique Hallmark holidays that are not widely observed by anyone other than greeting card companies. Some are even acknowledged by the federal government as nationally proclaimed holidays, but this does not guarantee increased recognition by society.
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Rather uneventful day today. Had lunch with A, her co-worker, and her co-worker’s partner. I did stick to my diet; I heated up my Diet to Go lunch before driving out to Chantilly and I just kept it hidden until everybody else’s food came. The server didn’t seem to mind. When I came back to town I tried to go to the library prior to my doctor’s appointment, but it was closed for the holiday - duh! The doctor was running late, and then we had a very long chat about my family medical history. I now have a prescription for bloodwork, because I’ve never really had my cholesterol checked, and my father and my mother’s father both died of heart failure. She gave me a couple of prescriptions and I brought them to the pharmacy to be filled; I went to the grocery store while I waited and bought some plain fat-free yogurt to substitute for the two glasses of skim milk I’m supposed to be drinking daily. I’m not really a big milk drinker; I don’t mind milk but I don’t just pour a glass to drink too often. Yogurt is also more interesting than plain milk; you can dress it up a bit more, and it’s eating rather than drinking, so it’s psychologically more appealing too. Anyway, I changed the sheets on the bed, etc. etc., not much interesting happened today I guess. Oh, but we are watching Stand by Me, and I just love seeing skinny little Wil Wheaton! I’d never seen the movie all the way through before, so we rented it from Netflix.

Oh, also: I am down to 180.0 on the scale.