Okay, a couple of quick hits courtesy of Amanda, who really should have her own blog.

• I learned why shower curtains billow and stick to you.
• I learned that, well, in Amanda’s words, “mallard ducks will occasionally practice homosexual necrophilia.”

But, really, I can’t fucking think straight at all this week.  You see, it’s tourist season here in DC, the time of year when the tax for living in a great city comes due in the form of hordes of strangers clogging up my world.

I cannot paint a vivid enough wordpicture to convey to you, dear reader, how obnoxious these people are.

For instance: Washington has a wonderful Metro system, but it relies on a few simple rules.

1. On escalators, you walk on the left and stand on the right.
2. When you get on a train, you move away from the doors so more people can get on.
3. When you hear the chimes, the doors are closing — if you’re not already on the train, back away.

Pretty simple.  But tourists don’t get it.

Honestly, I could go on for a long time about how much I hate having these people wandering around my life, making it unpleasant, if not impossible, to go about my business.  But this blergh isn’t about complaining, it’s about learning.  Well, it hasn’t been about much of anything lately.  But here’s what I have learned:

• I have discovered the one sector of the American economy thriving in this recession: smart-ass T-shirts.  You know, the not-terribly-funny ones.  Pretty much everyone between the ages of 7 and 27 is wearing one on their family vacation to our nation’s capital.  I saw one kid, apple-cheeked and adorable, wearing a shirt that said, “IT’S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL YOU REALIZE IT’S A SAUSAGEFEST.”  And there was a cartoon of a guy at a party where all the other guests were sausages.  Really?
• Also, all children now have iPhones.  I will admit to giggling when one kid’s parents ignored Rule #3 above, leaving him on the train and the rest of his family on the platform being speedily left behind.  But then dude just whips out an iPhone.  That’s no fun.
• People have no idea what to take pictures of.  I saw several tourists today taking pictures of Union Station — with their backs to the fucking Capitol dome.
• The farecard system is simply too complicated for this country.

In short, I have learned that everything you hear about how people in DC don’t understand “real America” is absolutely true, the end.

-andy

Today I learned that the single best thing you can bring to someone else’s house is a wad of bread dough.

Because a wad of bread dough becomes fresh bread.  And, before that, it makes your house smell like baking bread.  And that is fucking awesome.

Okay, that’s not the point of this post (although it is true).  The snowstorm was every bit as epic as it was made out to be, and the city I’ve always thought I knew and loved really surprised me.

Sure, there was plenty of the stuff that pisses me off about living here: the ridiculous “I was never in the cool kids group in high school and I’m going to overcompensate even though I’m way too old for this” snowball fight, the inexplicable run on french toast supplies, the FUCKING TWITTERING JESUS CHRIST.

But after assuming I’d be an indoor cat all day, I went out tonight after the snow had stopped and walked around the neighborhood a little bit.

It was gorgeous.  Still, silent, alien.  The cars looked like hippos, the tree branches looked painted onto the sky, and the people — well, they were barely there.

People who have never lived in a city (and probably think I’m a liberal elitist jerk) often think there’s a dichotomy between the reason people live in cities (lots of people, lots of stuff to do, you can walk everywhere) and the reason people live elsewhere (quiet, pretty, comfortable).  DC disproves that better than most cities I’ve lived in.  And never better than tonight.

-andy