mr. zero

when i was eight or nine years old, my mother held a sealed envelope in front of my face and said, "this doesn't mean anything to you right now, but this is my last student loan payment."

and she was right. it didn't mean anything to me then.

but it's meant something to me every month for the past several years as i have slowly but surely paid off my own student loan. every time i submitted a payment i would think to myself, "man, i can't wait until the day when i can say, 'this is my last student loan payment.'" and i would also think to myself, "man, i hope i am not still paying this loan by the time i have a nine-year-old child."

dreaming about that last student loan payment month after month, i could taste the relief and freedom my mother must have felt with that envelope in her hand.

it was, i suspect, the same relief and freedom i felt today when i logged into my student loan account summary and saw this:

principal balance: $0.00
fixed payment: $0.00
current due: $0.00
past due: $0.00
late charges: $0.00
total due: $0.00

that's right, friends.

$0.00

six-and-a-half years out of school and my student loan is gone.

done.

paid off.

finito.

$0.00

(and turns out paying it off before i had a nine-year-old was a cinch. which might have less to do with my money management skills than other things, but i will leave that be. and if you want to stay my friend, you will, too.)

so that's one goal down. 27 to go.

picked a peck

it is a fact that autumn is pretty much my favorite season, and, as far as i know, always has been. (and i don't know how anyone would know any differently, but i thought i would build in a loophole just in case.)

i think my attachment to fall has mostly to do with my attachment to nostalgia, which fall seems to be filled with. i was born in the fall, started college in the fall, left on my mission in the fall. fall is full of remembrance for me. plus i always happily salute the return of scarves and gloves and hats and other adorable outerwear.

unfortunately, fall has been a little slow to make its way here (though it is cooling off quickly and pouring down rain, so it might have finally arrived) and it occured to me a little while ago that i hadn't yet celebrated my favorite season adequately. so emily and i set about to rectify the situation on monday (thanks, columbus!) with a trip to maryland to pick apples.

the air was crisp, the leaves were richly and brightly colored, the picking was good (despite the sign that said, "apple season is over. no more apples until 2010," which turned out to be an inexplicable lie) and before you know it, we had amassed 20 pounds of apples.

that's a lot of apples, folks.

i had, in fact, seen on the orchard's web site that the price of apples per pound dropped if you picked 20 pounds or more, and i distinctly remember thinking to myself, "who on earth would pick 20 pounds of apples? or more?"

me. that's who.

not that having 20 pounds of apples stopped us from buying one more, of the caramel variety. because it didn't.





swarms of bees did force us to enjoy said caramel apples in the car, though.

we spent the rest of the afternoon baking our many pounds of apples into many delicious things. namely apple ginger cupcakes and butterscotch apple cake and german pancakes with apple (which we enjoyed for lunch) and apple crisp.

by the time everything was out of the oven we couldn't stand to look at another apple let alone eat anything with an apple in it, so we called in reinforcements. it is amazing how many people will respond to a plea to consume fresh apple baked goods.

we still had about half the original haul left over at the end of the night, but split between the two of us it didn't seem so impossible, and uncle bob and aunt joyce have been making short work of the apples i brought home. (i still haven't been able to eat another one, though my saturation level is starting to come down.)

welcome, autumn. i think we did you right.

eat your heart out

the other day my dad made the observation that it seems like pretty much all i do since i moved to d.c. is eat. which is a fairly accurate assessment. especially since it is what i spent basically all of saturday doing.

it was the taste of georgetown festival, you see, wherein delicious restaurants from all over the city set up tents on wisconsin avenue and serve little sampler tastes of some of their most popular dishes, and you just walk around and trade tickets for little pieces of heaven in the form of clam chowder and lobster rolls and paella and ribs and chocolate tarts, or whatever else strikes your gastronomic fancy.

and, as if it could get any better than that, uncle john was in town so i had a partner in gorging. (that stack of plates only represents part of our consumption.)





but, never fear! that wasn't the end of my daily caloric intake (though it probably should have been) because later that night i met up with out-of-towners becky and marina for dinner in dupont circle. (seriously, i wish there were gay rights marches in washington every day. they bring all my favorite people to town.)






and then i had to roll myself back to the metro.

i would say maybe this is perfect preparation for a side career as a competitive eater, but i don't think i could pour a bunch of water on hot dog buns and mash them up into a ball and then stuff them in my face.

a cake, maybe. but hot dog buns? that's just gross.

alive and well

hello, friends!

i just didn't want anyone to worry about my well-being, what with the lack of action on the blog lately. i am happy to report that it is a direct result, not of a fatal illness or debilitating accident as you might have feared, but of lots of action in real life.

which i will report on more fully soon, when it is not so close to my bedtime, and when i am not so engrossed in (not to mention grossed out by) a book about the curious lives of human cadavers.

deal?

i'll find my way

i ran out of work totally late last night, just in time to catch the last hour or so of a set by brandi carlile at the 9:30 club. if you do not already love brandi carlile, you should. and that is all i am going to say about that.

the opening act was katie herzig, who i had never heard of before, and who i probably never would have heard at all if she and her band hadn't come on stage towards the end of brandi's set (or should i say the end of the end of brandi's set) to perform "wish you well."

and it was heart-felt and it built and it fell and it was loud and soft and everyone was smiling and you could close your eyes and sway and not feel ridiculous and it could have gone on forever and i would never have been sick of it, which is just how a song should be.

i couldn't find anything online that came even close to the awesomeness of last night, but here it is anyway.



according to the little postcard i got on my way out of the club, you can visit www.katieherzig.com and get a free copy of her acoustic record, "acoustic trio," which also seems like something you should do.

and that's all i am going to say about that.

when the moon hits your eye

dr. siak has a little saying about pizza that goes something like this:

pizza is a lot like sex. when it's good, it's really good. and when it's bad, it's still pretty good.

cristy and i are not convinced this assessment is exactly accurate, having heard (through the grapevine, natch) that bad sex is actually pretty bad. we can state from our own experience, however, that the pizza at red rock pizzeria, voted one of the two best pizza joints in d.c., is pretty darn tasty.






anyone out there willing and able to validate (or refute) our theory about sex, please feel free. (and please bless that it is not one of my parents.)

virginia is for lovers

today i put virginia license plates on my car.

and just like that, with the swift turn of a well-placed screw driver, the last vestige of my formal life was replaced. the transformation is complete.

(except that it wasn't really a swift turn at all because, man alive, those screws holding my utah plates on were rusted on there pretty tight. in all honesty, it was sort of a battle to get them off. but that is not as poetic as a "swift turn." though, on the other hand, i guess it could serve as a nifty analogy for my own final, emotional resistance to letting go.)

really though (and you know this is true because it is out of the parentheses), i am feeling really good about taking the last step and putting both feet firmly into my new life. i've had those plates for a little more than a week now, but today i was ready.

(also, my utah registration expired yesterday and i do not think an arrest would help engender any good feelings towards my new home.)

i hope you're ready too, virginia, because i am here to stay.

also, on a completely unrelated note (except for generally being about virginia and love), today as i was running down the stairs so as to only be five minutes late for work, i passed uncle bob and aunt joyce's room. and there they were, curled up in bed, him reading aloud to her from a book about the history of the constitution. it was straight up darling.