Daugust

Things you absolutely must be aware of:

How much laundry did I do in August?
5 loads of laundry (that's possibly some sort of record!), separated by color. Three whites, two colors. I bleach the whites, and use more than the recommend amount of detergent on the colors. Why? Well, I suppose it's because I think I know more than the back of the detergent box. I realize now that I think about it that I'm probably wrong about this.

Any haircuts?
No. No haircuts.

Less interesting data:

Average Mood: 49%
This is ZEN NEGATIVE! But not significantly different than 50%, so it means nothing. As usual.

Miles Jogged: 25.8
Average Speed: 4.23 mph

Situps (yes, it's ON again): 296

Restaurants Visited: 6

Bars Visited: 6

Weight at end of month: 221
New stat. For public auditing purposes. Yes, I'm a bit chubsy.

Wines that have been pre-approved by me:

You're welcome! Here's the top 6 (of 15 total) list from June, July and August:

6. Cabernet Savignon - Red Diamond 2007
5. Chianti - Da Vinci 2008
4. Pinot Noir - Mission Point 2006
3. Chardonnay - Toasted Head 2008
2. Riesling - Fetzer 2009
1. Chambourcin - Linganore Winecellars (2010?)

The Fetzer Riesling was extra tasty, and the Mission Point is the best Pinot Noir I've had yet. Go buy them all, they're great. And cheap-ish. $10-$20 At Trader Joe's. Screened by yours truly, so you don't have to do any work. The Linganore Chambourcin was by far the best, but hard to get a hold of (Maryland stores only, it seems).

Things that happened:

August 1: About 2 AM at the least awesome of the many Jumbo Slices on 18th - This is the first thing I ate this month:
Rule of thumb for Adams Morgan Jumbo Slices: The quality of the giant pizza improves as you move north up 18th street. I now have enough data to claim this with confidence.

August 7: Pool party in Virginia. My chest hairs saw the sun for the first time in a long time. Later that night we watched a midnight showing of Ghostbusters at E Street Cinema in DC. There was a lot of yelling of movie lines by the audience of drunken 20-somethings. Good times.

August 8: The Safeway down the street closed. In October, the grocery store next to our apartment closed so that a condo building could be loudly constructed (starting around 7 AM every weekday morning), and now we lose the second-closest store. Conspiracy!

August 9: Finally finished The Wire. The last (fifth) season was pretty good, though not as good as the fourth. If you are looking for five seasons of a show to watch that will keep you entertained fairly consistently (though not as amazing as many people will tell you), I'd recommend it.

August 12: Giant fire across the street from where I work, in the building where my girlfriend works. An underground transformer exploded. Large plumes of black smoke mixed with occasional giant flames shooting up from the ground. Many, many firetrucks blocked the streets. Hundreds of people filled the sidewalks. Quite the sight. Our neighborhood lost power for the first time in 24 years (so they said, anyway), but it was back on within 4 hours. Good job power company.

August 21: Afternoon at the National Gallery of Art, drinks at POV Bar. POV, the roof bar of the W Hotel next to the Treasury and White House, has a great view of those, as well as the Washington Monument. And they've got tasty drinks. Tasty, expensive drinks. Also there's pretty much always a line to get in, and the clientele is mostly the kind of people who dress up and frequent that expensive bar you don't go to because you don't like the clientele. You know the one I mean. Needless to say I've only been this once, and don't plan on returning any time soon (but it was well worth the one visit). So we took a picture. If Obama were in town, I'd bet you'd see more snipers on that white-ish house in the background:


August 25: As it has been two years since I'd moved into Washington, DC (I'd spent 8 months before that in Alexandria, VA), I had to get my car re-inspected. It is a substantial pain in the ass to do this in DC. But it was done, and I passed. Good for two more years.

And later in the afternoon, the bag of Szechuan Peppercorns I'd ordered the week before arrived, which made this day just totally super. If you've never tried Szechuan Peppercorns, you've missed a chance for your shoes to be exploded by your socks being knocked off. Try them, you'll see.

August 28: Walked down to the Mall to witness thousands and thousands of people gathering to show off their American flag t-shirts and beards. And that we did see. Quite a sight. We walked all around the reflecting pool, squeezing our way through the crowd, listening to a surprising number of arguments between agitated Glenn Beck fans about whether the country is already burning in hell [figuratively?], or just on its way there. The distinction is important, apparently.

It was quite the thing. See:




August 29: Laura and I accidentally started a tradition last year by going to the same restaurant on 8/29/2009 that we did the previous year on 8/29/2008, when we first went for dinner at a Peruvian place called Inti to celebrate our 6 months of surviving each other in the Dating Realm.

So we went back this year for our third time on 8/29/2010 (that marks 2.5 years of us being victorious in the DateSphere, in case you were curious), and I had some excellent a lo pobre style (fried egg on top) Peruvian beef with fries, hot sauce, rice, black beans and a friend plantain. Sounds awesome, right? It was. It deserves a picture:

Though I suppose that's not really a very good picture... But you get the point.

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Well that's it. And now you know.

September comes after August, I'll see you then.