Tailgating.
So I tailgated on Sunday for the first time ever and it was pretty good! We left the house at 1pm, and everything was set up at the stadium by 2:15pm. We carpooled with Erika and Andy and basically cleaned out the garage for tailgating supplies. I was having fun that day so I didn't take any pictures. Of course now I regret that.
Craig pulled a metal folding patio table from the dumpster a while ago when he first moved here. I thought it was a piece of crap and that he should get rid of it, but now, I see that he was brilliant in snagging that table because that's where we put our ghetto-grill so we could cook at waist level instead of crouching in the grass. We used two of those large aluminum trays that you put a turkey in, nested them, layered pre-soaked charcoal, and put the grill rack from our charcoal grill at home on top of the tray. It worked out perfectly, and the best part is that you throw out everything except for the metal grill rack!
There were 8 of us total and it was a good time. We headed into the stadium at 4pm and got free dishtowels and our t-shirts for the playoff game in two weeks. I smuggled in a leftover Bubba burger in my fleece pocket and got laughed at by everyone, but Craig and I had the last laugh as we shared it during halftime! HA! Take that!
If the weather is good, we may do it again, but it's kind of a lot of work and time consuming. I don't know.
Hippie Festival
This weekend, the Green Festival is taking place at the convention center downtown. I knew about it only because I had picked up a magazine about it that someone left behind in the library. It looked pretty cool. Organic this and that, environmentally friendly things, save the Earth and yadda yadda yadda. I couldn't imagine why nobody would want to go with me!
So I went by myself yesterday. Drove halfway in, then took the metro for the last leg of the trip. There's no way I'm driving in DC if I don't have to. As I got closer, it became more and more obvious who was also going to the festival. Imagine going on a trip to Nepal or Peru, and when you get there, you discover that your luggage was lost, and you are almost certain that you will never see it again. You happen to be in a rural area so you have no choice but to stock up on native clothing. Yep, these folks were there too. And also the activists which for some reason always seem to look kind of dirty. I know you want to save the planet or whatnot, but taking a shower and using soap based products isn't going to kill the environment. (At least not during my lifetime...) So please do not use not bathing as a protest.
I'm not going to get into it too much. Some things were very interesting to me, but they usually revolved around using technology to be more environmentally savvy. There were several booths for home improvements using enviromentally conscious products. This means recycled goods.
There were several lectures and demonstrations, but that amounted to an extreme anti-Bush rally. There were also lots of merchandise booths with bumper stickers and t-shirts boasting slogans like, "Save a tree, Trim a Bush" and "Canada is looking pretty good right now."
Well folks, the door is open. GET THE HELL OUT.
I would never survive in California.
Anyway, I think all of my friends would not have enjoyed the festival with perhaps the exception of Ariel and Tina. It's difficult to pull yourself out of your daily bubble and problems and think and act globally when you are unable to answer simple questions like, "What kind of job do I want?" or more frequently, "What are we having for (lunch/dinner)?"
Moving Along
Sorry for the lapse. A quick recap from where I left off: my car got broken into one block north of Chinatown in Philly. Nothing valuable was taken, nor anything with my identification on it. Driving back to DC sucked with a broken window, but what can you do? As I was headed back on the freeway (and able to compose myself so I could talk without yelling), I called Craig to update him on everything. He listened attentively as this was the first time (and hours later) that he could hear the whole story. I had my sister leave him a quick one-liner voicemail when the whole thing happened.
Unfortunately, at that exact moment, he was cleaning the garage and carrying a large piece of sheet metal that used to be a sunroof of a car. A wind gust hit, and took what basically became a sail right out of his hands and it came crashing down on his foot. A piece of metal gouged out a piece of skin on his inner heel, but didn't completely detach the skin. It's basically like drawing the outline of your pinky, and that was the skin that was hanging. When I got home three hours later, he was still bleeding, so off to the ER we went. Fifteen stitches and several shots later, we were finally done with that weekend.
I won't post photos of the wound, but if you would like to see it, email me and Craig will happily send you photos.
The following weekend, we drove to Atlanta for Craig's friend's wedding. It was fun, but what a LONG drive it was, especially since it took us 10-12 hours to get down there, and another 2 hours to get to the wedding location.
Moving on.
The weekend after that, we saw DC United for free thanks to one of our outdoor soccer friends! It was a good game. We are seeing them this upcoming Sunday where I will be tailgating for the first time ever! I even coordinated the whole thing! One of my tailgating-expert friends commented that I was overplanning the tailgating. Big shock there. There's also a hippie festival that I may attend this weekend, but not sure yet.
The job still blows, and there is no sign of it getting better. I'm hoping I can get into this smaller company that one of my coworkers is going to. They're a development contractor, so they actually do "real" work. It's a baby step to realize short term goals, but I think in the end, I need to get into the commercial world. You wouldn't believe the incompetence that goes on in the world that I'm in. Check this out: we hardly have enough work to do to keep us busy for more than 5 minutes a day, but since we need butts-in-a-seat to make money on the contract, we're hiring more people anyway.
Go figure!
