The only person who could ever make me hate Friday

It's truly, truly unbelievable.

Every day of the week, when I exit my metro stop, there is always a different musician at the top of the escalator--playing some familiar song and holding out the hat, as it were. They have varying degrees of talent--there's an awesome guy called Banjo Dan (The Banjo Man) and a man who plays the Spanish Guitar (and wears his hat tipped down over his eyes). There's a man who plays the guitar and lays all of his crazy sort of half-decent splatter paintings on the ground in front of him (we saw him again tonight outside of the baseball park--the Nats beat the Dodgers).

Among the not-so-winning musicians is a t-shirt wearing dude who I think might have found his sax in a dumpster. He stands across the street and plays what I imagine Homer Simpson might play if you handed him a saxophone. It's fairly terrible. I'm almost certain all of his earnings are pity donations. But he's at least funny.

In general, these people range from "this is a treat" to "well that was interesting" but there is one, mother-effing-son-of-a... I hate this guy. I call him the Light-Jazz-Syntho-Dredlock-Asshole. Imagine if you a will, a musician with the ability to use joy to single-handedly ruin every single Friday morning of your life. He's like an ambush, because I always forget that he's going to be there until I've already swiped my metro card and I have no way to get out of the metro without going past him.

He stands at the top of the escalator and plays his god-forsaken synthetic keyboard renditions of casino hits like "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" and "What the World Needs Now (is Love)" and lots of other cheesy, Bacharachy gems that get stuck in your head just at the completely utterly wrong time of your life.

It's Friday, for God's sake. Don't bore me into a coma just when I was feeling good about things, Man. And he'll stop in the middle of the song to utter in this breathy voice "I hope you all are having a blessed, blessed day" and "sometimes when the world has got you down..." He wears sunglasses for no reason. Why does he have dredlocks if he's singing the kind of lite pop music that grocery stores pump in at low volumes to psych people out of shoplifting? Are they even real?

And the "music" is so insanely, unreasonably, institutionally loud. It starts all the way on the train platform as an atonal murmur and by the time you're up the escalator it's drown out whatever legitimate music you've been listening to (or thought you might have been having) and replaced it with canned happiness of the smarmiest most unavoidable kind. It follows you up the block.

The irony of how irate this makes me does not escape me.

And I have no idea what it is, but for the first time in my life, I actually get the physical urge every single Friday morning to go over and kick his keyboard off its stand, smash his amp with his mic stand, throw the keyboard in front of a passing bus, shake my finger in his face and tell him that he actually owes me fifty dollars for ruining every single Friday morning for the past year of my life.

I would feel guilty about these terrible thoughts except that I'm certain that everyone else must feel the same way, but they're all wearing business casual so they can't flip shit. I'm not heartless. I love Banjo Man and awesome Chinese plucky music guy--even teenage flute kid doesn't bother me for the 35 seconds I hear these people one day a week.

But something makes me want to offer Banjo Dan a crisp c note to start a turf war. And if Light-Jazz-Syntho-Dredlock-Asshole doesn't redeem himself or disappear himself soon I might do it.

UPDATE: God does create miracles for the weary; for the first time in months, not was Light-Jazz-Syntho-Dredlock-Asshole not there this Friday, Crazy-Angry-Jesus-Bullhorn-Yeller and Gypsy-Rambling-Frank-Synatra-Loving-Lady weren't there either. Just a bunch of casuall dressed people on a rainy Friday morning before a long weekend. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh...

From here to there.

I can not believe that Tim and I have been here for an entire year already. It's sort of like some kind of strange hallucination. It's a surreal feeling partly because I've just been sloooooowly acclimating to entirely new lifestyle (sometimes I actually miss those 4:00 am nights in the newspaper office, if only because I knew I could sleep in the next day and not risk looking "unprofessional."). It's also surreal because I NEVER would have predicted being where I am now. I can more easily imagine myself pushing a popcicle cart in Florida than I can sitting at a desk all day in Washington DC.

But the biggest thing is that all of my familiar landmarks are all different themselves, and it's a little hard to get my bearings. I don't think hardly ANY of my friends live in the same houses they lived in last year. It seems like nearly everyone--friends, family, coworkers--has gotten married, engaged, had a baby, Moved (with a capital "M"), graduated, started school, changed jobs, had surgery, or otherwise gone off the map in the last 12 months.

It's a weird "untethered" feeling to have, even at the moment when I have a steady job, an apartment, a sane boyfriend... How interesting to be so effected by all of these people even when so many of them are so far away...

Our one-year-in-DC anniversary (Aug. 15) was fairly uneventful, even if this week wasn't. Last Saturday my boss called to tell me that he was officially announcing my promotion to Marketing Coordinator. It's not as high of a title as had been originally proposed, but honestly, for not having any sort of training in Marketing or anything more than one year in the industry under my belt, this makes me feel slightly relieved. I can pay more attention to craft and leave the other stuff to the newly-hired Marketing Manager, who seems like a nice guy so far.

Tuesday I went to see a Neurologist about my migraines. There's not really anything to report other than that I'm trying some new medicine which will either make me a basket case or it won't. I'm not putting my money on one or the other but I'm hoping for the "won't". The jury is still out as to whether it's better to be a reasonable, sharp-minded person with migraines or a basket case without them. Time will tell. Or maybe Tim will tell, since he's the one who has to deal with/take care of me everyday migraine or no.

Last night we went to a house-warming party for my friend Jana and her two roommates. This summer has been decidedly lacking in those sorts of events and that was precisely the perfect way to spend the evening. I've noticed that as far as beverages are concerned Jana and I usually like whatever the other person hates, but she loves dip, and I love dip, and that makes us party food compatible. She also invited Brittany, who worked at Clutch when I first started and who is utterly precious. I DO NOT use that word to describe just anyone. I haven't seen her in ages--she's planning a wedding and I've been traveling all over the country like I have a travel show (which I totally should).

Any party where Tim falls asleep on the metro ride home is a good party.

And today we walked to Chinatown and saw "Tropic Thunder." I'm convinced that Robert Downey Jr. is a genius but I still think that Ben Stiller is a fool, but not in a good way. Afterwards we ate ice cream on the steps of the Portrait Gallery and then walked to the Old Post Office to ride the elevator to the top of the bell tower and see if we could see our building (we couldn't). Very different from how we spent August last year, buried under a giant pile of boxes, trying to figure out where to buy food and how to get it back to our apartment, playing Wii until our thumbs hurt... (OK, maybe that part is not so different, but we aren't spending as MUCH time playing Wii.)

I'm sure I'll look at this post next August and laugh my ass off trying to figure out how I got from here to there.

Good Evening, Wrangler II

Fayetteville, AR: November 4-November 17.
Boulder, Colorado: November 17-December 5.
Dallas/Shreveport/New Orleans: December 5-December 16.
Crawford, Colorado: December 16-January 3.

These are the tour dates for the official "Roxie's Leave of Absence Tour '08." Get your all-access pass TODAY!

How is this possible? you ask. How is this possible for someone with a full time job and no money?

Well, it's possible largely because my boss is a benevolent and understanding soul who appreciates that as long as I am under his employ, I am too busy to plan for my future, but that planning for my future is key to me not going a little Courtney Love everywhere and throwing my computer monitor through my office window. It's true that I'm broke, but in reality, this trip is an investment in a number of ways:

First, the combined tickets were actually CHEAPER than buying individual tickets for Turkey Day, the Longnutzer Nuptials, and Christmas seperately--and in order to attend all or even just one of those things, I would have had to take unpaid vacation anyway.

Second, if I don't apply for Graduate school this year, I will honestly hate myself and I will become a raving, spitting beast in stuffy office clothes.

Third, when I return, I'm taking a new position with the company which I am very excited about. No word on my official title yet, but suffice to say that it's a higher position and a more creative one, which is NEVER a bad thing.

As I told many people back a few months ago, I had intended to quit work as soon as my lease was up, put my things in storage, sleep on various people's couches cleaning out their fridges and shoveling their sidewalks for pocket money until I figured out what I want to do with myself (i.e. not being and Administrative Assistant and sitting on $40K worth of degrees). No sooner had I informed (most of) the world of this decision, than my boss offered me a new position. He looked sort of disbelieving but mostly skeptical when I told him my intended plans but--and this is the incredible part--he negotiated with me to make both of our desires possible.

So Tim and I are signing the lease. We're staying here at least until next August.

At which point I will hopefully have a choice between keeping my marketing job or going to Harvard and getting my PhD in English. Ok--maybe not Harvard, but hopefully somewhere will want me.

If anyone has any tips about taking the GRE or applying for Grad School (or what schools I should apply to somewhere in the Colorado/Louisiana/Washington State neighborhood) feel free to call me and let me know. You know where you'll be able to reach me in November and December.