Got to keep the loonies on the path...

I'm not sure if it's the same everywhere, but looking for an Apartment in DC was ridiculous. Tim and I had to restructure our game plan once or twice a day (a discouraging amount of strategery in what we expected to be a fairly straight-forward process). In the end, we only filled out one application-to-rent because we only found one place that wasn't remarkably silly.

If all goes as planned, we'll be moving into Carmel Plaza apartments in mid-August. I'm so excited about being able to eat anything in the kitchen, wall-to-wall carpet and a view of the Capital Building. And about being 4 blocks from Chinatown, which means about 6 blocks from the National Portrait Gallery and a Chipotle, two things which Shreveport sorely lacks.

I think Tim and I may have been the only two people who didn't fly into the city to see parades and fireworks. But see parades we did. After seeing a New Orleans Parade and a Crawford Parade, nothing in the middle will ever really be as exciting. But someone in the Capital really knows how to put on a fireworks show.

I can't watch Fireworks without crying. I don't know what it is. Something about the sound and the power and the pure humanity of it. What other creature would go to such cost and risk just to see the stars explode on earth? I love it. (That's the Washington Monument in the middle of the picture--again, what other creature...)

In other news, I have a new cousin, which makes me officially 24 years older than the youngest of my 12 first cousins. I don't know how long it will be before I get to meet this new little girl since I don't see my uncle Miles much (I've never met his wife), but it's exciting nonetheless.

This is my favorite picture from DC. It's a truck from Pakistan, and the coolest vehicle I've ever seen. Be careful before you talk shit about Pakistan, is all I can say.