i keep wanting to write about friendship. or about my philosophy of life. or just about some of my observations of life.

which is right about when my head empties itself of all its contents.

i also want to write about privacy and blogs. maybe my blog gets only 20 or 30 hits a day. but the potential exists for the entire world to read it (overwhelmed servers notwithstanding). what sort of responsibility does that carry? what responsibility do i have to the people i write about?

what rules do we implicitly follow when we blog about other people? how do we tease out the line between public and private information in a post-blog world? where does the burden lay? is it the reader’s own responsibility for reading something unsettling or privacy-reducing? shouldn’t some (perhaps most) of the accountability reside in the blogger?

i’m having trouble processing that it was only last weekend (thursday-sunday) that i was in washington dc. it feels like weeks ago. i never mentioned that on the way back from dc, i rode with jane and alexa to jane’s sister’s house in richmond. we were wildly exhausted (as previously blogged) but still managed to see a bit of the town and ogle at jane’s new 3 week old nephew luke. i’m still not sure i’ve caught up on my sleep.

halloween happened friday. i dressed up. partied with the new kids. hit franklin street, which was mostly a vehicle for getting to hell. sadly missed the charles/owen hallowe’en soiree. thankfully that party has been thoroughly documented from a number of perspectives: jean’s, jason’s, sarahfalls’s.

post-hell, walked all the way down rosemary and north columbia in my socks, fishnets, and a red dress. made it to jane’s car, made it to jane’s apartment. fishsticks. fell asleep in a bathtub (half full of water and epsom salts, for aching feet). eventually got out of the tub, dried, and into bed. i think my big toes have forgiven me for spending another halloween in size ten women’s boots with three inch heels.

i traveled up with patrick and meg on thursday. they were still recovering from happy hour the night before when we left at 8 that morning. i’m told kathleen is the one to blame for this. i too had not slept enough to be waking so early. for which only i am to blame. four hours or so to dc, with occasional dozing, we arrived in georgetown and had lunch at one of the nifty chipotle restaurants. found our way to the D-O-double-H: hotel harrington. kudos to m-gouge for tracking down the cheap digs, yo.

that night sils held a little soiree. free beverages (but don’t drink too many), free food (but you might want dinner afterwards), and circulating alumni. it was weird. perfect for networking. if i wanted to work as an epa librarian or were considering the smithsonian as a second job. this is where i say a little prayer to usaid: “may you continue to bestow upon measure all the bounty that befits such a glorious international health project.”

in a show of complete disregard for our unbridled exhaustion, we then took the metro to dupont circle. where there is a traffic circle. with a statue in the middle. while a bunch of folks ate at this bookstore-cum-restaurant-cum-bar, an elite splinter group of rogue librarians went out in search of petty amusements. nature called, so we pimped our collegiate looking selves into some john hopkins satellite outfit to use the john and briefly check our email.

friday we saw the library of congress. it was cool. they have many books. it seems one tour was enough to drive me to eat (and drink). fancy pad thai with chopsticks for lunch. even fancier lebanese food (and wine) for dinner. it also seems one tour was enough for this whole trip. though i destroyed myself waking at 6:40AM!!! saturday for the npr tour and never made it, we managed instead to scarf down some breakfast grub at the famous/infamous market lunch: eggs, potatoes, and bacon as thick as a belt.

we made it through an entire unc football game–homecoming no less–losing to arizona state in the last three seconds! when it comes to these sorts of things, i’m all about the stadium food, and being in the south, there ought to be some sort of barbeque. my favorite of course also happens to be north carolina’s favorite: pulled-pork barbeque sandwiches. yummy.

Niamh (pronounced: knee-of) and Eric cooked a fearsome chili and invited the lot of us over to a pre-game git-yer-drink-on-a-thon, complete with corn bread, a birthday crumb cake for kathleen, and dozens (it seemed) of airplane size nips to smuggle into kenan stadium.

continuing our mementoesque descent into past, jean and i managed, almost accidentally, to annihilate jackson/erica and betsy/jason, playing a fairly regulation game of trivial pursuit friday night. when i answered a question with the truly inspired “croissan’wich“, we zipped around the board slurping up pie pieces (as one might slurp up tea, the second most slurped beverage) while everyone stared slackjawed (as one is wont to stare) in a sort of defeated exasperation.

This is from January 1993, a hi-larious thank you note I wrote when I was 13.

Dear Aunt Betsey, Uncle Bob, and Whitney,

Thank you very much for the two Mensa Quiz Books. They are a good challenge and a lot of fun to try to figure out. So far I’ve only gotten a few, but I keep on trying.

I also thank you for the check, it was most generous of you. I hope to use it to purchase a game called F-15 Strike Eagle III. It is a flight simulator for the computer. The reason I like this game is because I can play it with a friend over the telephone lines using a device called a modem. If one of my friends gets the game, and also has a modem we could be flying and fighting in two different planes, no matter where in the world my friend is. He or she could be down the road or across the ocean, and I would be able to see his or her plane flying around chasing my plane as I try to blow his or her plane out of the sky.

Thank you for the Christmas presents you gave me. I love Links 386 Pro. It is one of the best computer games anyone can get. The graphics are so real it looks like you are watching T.V.. Mauna Kea was a great edition to the game. I can play in Hawaii which is really neat.

Thanks for the check as well. I hope to use it for the game above.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love,
Justin