(I'm headed to San Fran, but ...) If you're out in the chilly Christmas weather and down by the White House around F St, Yannis at Maxim's Restaurant might help you ... try some nice vodka. It's fun to hear Russian spoken around the holidays, and there's usually plenty spoken there. I've been going there for over a year, on and off with injuries. The food is good and meaty and they offer the largest selection of vodka in the area, the review says 90 but the last I checked it was more like 140, MAXIM'S.
[I went to the Veterens' Hospital today for a check-up appointment. I noticed some signs in the waiting room letting Operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom veterans know how to get coverage. About an hour later I noticed another sign that said the estimated waiting time was 20 minutes. When I finally saw the nurse she was the only one talking. While I was trying to tell her my problems she was half-listening, telling me about her daughter's toenail fungus. Her computer was on a stack of boxes next to her desk. She asked about my service record; and gave me the creeps like the woman in the movie Misery. "They want us to take an extra-close look at all the recent veterans," she said. And then asked me about nightmares, she brought it up! I swear she wanted me to have Post-Tramatic Stress Syndrome. Well, at least maybe they'll find my missing meningitis records. After that visit I needed a vanilla vodka and Coke.]
This is Penny the dog. Because Lord of the Rings was sold out, drinking with some friends and playing ball with Penny was the highlight of the evening.
[I've not only been taking a break from school for the past few days, but also from taking many photos. The schedule I was on for getting things finished up the last week of class made me nocturnal. I need to get out and be somewhere.]
I walked down to see the tree in front of the Capitol today. It has decorations made by children from all fifty states.
[I went to my friend Dave's house tonight. He had some friends from Richmond, Va. there. Didn't stay too late, hopefully I'll get back on a normal sleeping pattern.
My friend Jesse from McLean, Va., asked me, "What are all the dudes doing just standing around chillin in your neighborhood." I told him, "In the six months I've lived in Mt. Pleasant I haven't figured out yet." I'm beginning to think it's some sort of cultural thing. A lot of the community is comprised of South Americans. I imagine it might be an aspect from a culture filled with outside markets and a different way of life. The strangest thing might be that it doesn't seem like anyone is out on the streets selling drugs, it just seems like they're hanging out.
[I got a free meal tonight at Tortilla Coast in Capitol Hill for finding a piece of aluminium in my Fajitas. It was similar to finding the coin in the Christmas pudding.]
I didn't go to sleep at all last night, the eve of my final class of the semester. I stayed up trying to perfect a slide show of photos for class. It turned out resembling a music video.
[This is the Columbia Road Discount Center where they claim, "The Best Prices in Town" and, "Los Mejores Precios De La Ciudad." This corner shop in Adams-Morgan reminds me of shops in the Mission District of San Francisco.]
This is a 25 ft statue, by J. Seward Johnson, Jr., that stands in front of the Corcoran Gallery on 17th and New York Ave NW. The steam grate and the street light really work nice. And it's a little gross to think back on, but the steam grate really smells better now that the homeless gentleman, Warren, doesn't live on it anymore.
[I have one more class! My favorite class! Then all I have to think about is Holiday stuff.]
A.J. Schneck of Deleware passes his lighter to Dan Payn from Warren, Vermont. Both are fine arts photography students at the Corcoran College and enjoy a precious moment of relaxation during a final week of classes.
[When I went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh I took photos of student life like this. At the time I smoked cigarettes and remember trying to get as many lights off one flame as possible. Several years later in Jacksonville, N.C., I learned to never light the third cigarette. "It's bad luck," I remember this old Korean War vet, J.O., saying in the Cardinal Lounge. He said by the time the lighter got to the third smoker the enemy would have their sights on it's glow. Bang! It's really safer to quite.]
These are some ornaments I photographed on a walk back from one of my nightly trips to 7-eleven. I might not agree with the discusting acts of man, as far as the dirty-handed deeds of colonialism, but every once in a while the convenience of 7-eleven makes me second guess that. I mean it's cool to live in an age of Economic Imperialism when you can get a McFalafel at the Mickey-D's in Alexandria, Egypt (better than their hamburgers).
[Yesterday I decided to stay home and start writing a paper on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. So I ordered a pizza. In the morning, when I woke up I still hadn't written a word. I ate pizza and wrote all day until my class. Because it was the last class of the semester our professor, Bernard, ordered pizza. Of course I ate a couple slices, free pizza. It was going-away pizza, a ritual event I take part in. I can't wait to see my family all together at Christmas, something that is unfortunately not a ritual to me.]
This is the National Cathedral from Kilbourne Pl NW. All morning we had snow and all afternoon it rained lightly. My brother-in-law from England, Brian, would like this weather. He lived with my sister in Los Angeles for about a decade. They just recently moved to Eugene, Ore. He never liked the heat in L.A. I bet they're having similar weather to the District now, or better yet ... worst! There is something the English appreciate about being in an uncomfortable or harsh environment. The constant drizzling rain. I like rain. I like sun too.
[When I'm on the street and it's raining and the wind is blowing I can imagine myself on a ship in the middle of a dark and stormy ocean. Or I'm running down an unknown path in the middle of the night dodging lightning. I guess you could even include something like hiking 30-some miles through a gassy wetlands carrying everything you need to survive, and all the water tastes like cow crap ... and maybe there was a thunderstorm earlier too. Anyway, my point is how does the guy react when a drink spills on him at a party? It's the people who figure, "Already wet, may as well jump in the swimming pool," who make life. Like England and its gloomy fog, the Middle East and its arid land, Los Angeles and plastic surgery ... ]
I walked down to Adams-Morgan to get some food ... instead I found a religion. Santeria to be ambigous, because this is only one known name for this mixture of Catholicism and African tribal beliefs. I saw this giant statue of the Virgin in a dark complexion and a caucasian Christ and had to investigate. The Botanica, which is the general term for a store that sells Santeria religious articles, was a cultural treasure chest. The website Religious Tolerance notes that Santeria practitioners from South America and Mexico may focus more on the religion's Catholic background, whereas Cuban and other Carribean Islands focus more on the beliefs of the Yoruba and Bantu people in Southern Nigeria, Senegal and Guinea Coast.
[This semester I took a class that introduced me to the majority of my understanding of the African and Buddhist cultures. It seems like most groups believe that the true form of eternal life is keeping your ideas alive, or at least being part of a greater chain of productive ideas that hopfully grow every generation. And there is the physical form of eternal life, that a part of your fathers are with you and a part of you goes with your children.]
Several Terrorism Task Force FBI agents collect evidence in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
(below) Two officers with the FBI's Terrorism Task Force go through the contents of a Chevy Blazer parked in Mt Pleasant on Kenyon St NW. The owner of the vehicle is a suspect in an investigation involving suspicious packages found at a Metro stop in South East Washington earlier today.
[I walked out the door today around 2pm. A block from my house I noticed that the FBI had closed down a part of Kenyon St NW. I took some pictures of the FBI's Terrorism Task Force collecting evidence from a brown, two-toned Chevy Blazer. After a few minutes I kept walking towards downtown. I stopped in an African bar on 18th St NW and talked to a school teacher. He said that the Metropolitan Police had closed off a Metro transit hub by Benning Rd SE due to suspicious packages.]
