And then there is Baltimore's Berger cookie.

Look at that sweet packaging! Looks cool, but it sort of like the nasty old candy grandparents often have around doesn't it? Nope! These cookies are amazing.

There is a soft, butter, cookie which is itself not terribly sweet. This situation is taken care of by a huge schmear of fudge. Actually, some people I know think that the cookie is just there to give the fudge a platform for wider exposure.

Some of these came into our office a couple weeks ago. A quick google search peaked my interest and I became more and more obsessed as the day went on (I didn't get any of the cookies that came into the office because they were eaten before I could get there).

I was considering taking the train to Baltimore, where Berger cookies are apparently so common that you can get them at most grocery stores, but luckily, I have a friend who lives by one of the specialty markets in DC that carries them. The cookies are super-rich and you get like 10 or 12 in a box so I always end up sharing. I'm all about building community through cookies.

This is the image that accompanied the digital invitation to the Washington National Opera's fundraiser, the "Opera Ball."

Opera Grand Rapids has had some pretty sweet artwork over the past few years. The artists have changed but ads remain simple and subtly emotive. Mixed Feelings wrote about Opera GR's artwork a while back.

The image from the WNO is so heavy-handed that I can hardly believe it. There is no irony in using a picture of tony white people in evening wear to advertise a $500 fundraiser. That is who is going to be there. It doesn't really sell the event. People will go because this is DC and you have to go to give out business cards, but not because this advertisement causes a stir of excitement.

This sort of illustrates why mid-sized Opera companies are so necessary. They won't make it if they don't make efforts to bring in new audiences as Opera GR has. WNO was criticized two seasons ago for staging operas with sexy young people rather than good singers as a means of garnering a younger audience.

I spotted this Maruska at a party last night in Silver Spring, MD. I also found some Marüshka blogs and posts: here and here.

This is the second mobile phone I've found just laying on the ground in DC. I found this one while riding my bike home (gotta watch for road hazards). A parked car would have surely crushed it in a few seconds, so I stopped, grabbed the phone and asked the driver if it was hers. She said it wasn't so I checked the contacts and I saw that the "Work Address" was the CVS that I was standing in front of. I took it in and gave it to the manager who seemed like he would do the right thing. I kind of wish I had kept the phone and tracked down the owner myself. Also, CVS pays enough for their employees to have blackberries?

I found an awesome suit in a thrift store near my house. Good finds are hard to come by in DC, but this one was quite nice. I have a theory that I, being a slightly shorter than average man, can find better fitting suits in vintage stores because American men used to be smaller in general. Obesity, giant bottles of muscle builder powder, who knows? I feel like dudes are bigger now than they used to be and my vintage finds support this theory. Next time you are in a store that sells men's pants, try and find a pair of pants smaller than a 32 waist. You'll probably find no more than four pair. This is why I hit the thrift shops looking for things like this little fellow:

It is a vintage Yves Saint Laurent from Woodward & Lothrop. Today, in the right front pocket, I found this note, apparently from the World Bank with a cryptic code:

Where are Tom Hanks and Amélie when you need them?

What should I do with it?

1) The Weather
2) The Library

Yesterday they joined forces to give me the finger in a fun, new way.

Riding up the newly re-paved New Hampshire Ave., I noted how good it felt to ride on smooth, even pavement. The weather was about perfect for a ride and the darkness of the street had a calming effect on the whole neighborhood. Before I got to U St. I remembered that if I took T, I wouldn't have to worry about oncoming traffic. I used to ride from 16th all the way to 11th, but after a few nights out I realized it would only be a matter of time before some drunk guy decided to I wasn't moving fast enough and that'd be the last rev of an engine I'd ever hear.

I noticed, as I started up the gradual incline of 11th street, that another biker was about two cars ahead of me and kind of slowing them down. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to speed up and ride side-by-side just to piss off the drivers. Luckily, I'm not into that kind of protest, especially at midnight on the eve of a holiday in a part of the district known for its nightclubs.

After the cars passed the other cyclist, I couldn't deny the urge to race past him. I passed him slowly, so I wouldn't seem like the dick I was actually being. After I passed him, I rolled through a red light and took the opportunity to use up the whole road until the cars were set loose by the traffic light behind me.

I pumped inappropriately fast. I flew up the hill faster than I had gone on any other part of the trip. Once I finally reached the plateau, I noticed another cyclist. I picked up the pace again.

I hit a rock.

Maybe it wasn't a rock. I don't know. Whatever it was, it wound up right under my front tire at an odd angle. The front of my frame shifted a little to the left and the object shot out to the right making a loud noise against a parked car.

I finally reached Columbia Road and I was ready to turn onto my street. I timed my turn perfectly. The light had just turned green, the SUV had left a bunch of space in between it and the car ahead, so I decided to swerve between the two and head into oncoming traffic. There was a bike lane, and this way I didn't have to worry about making a turn in front of someone trying to go straight.

It was like a tree falling over. Suddenly my base didn't have the strength I had been expecting and I had pushed too far to the left. My front wheel had been punctured by the rock a few blocks back and I hadn't noticed.

I sort of fell and I sort of threw my bike down. I was laying on the ground in front of the SUV, but well away from the oncoming lane. I quickly got up and tried to figure out how I could have fallen. I wasn't going fast. I'd been almost idling, waiting for the light to change color.

I'm writing this because I'm pretty shook.

This isn't the worst fall I've had. Injury wise, I've just got a scrape on my ankle. My right hand brake is really bent and my tire is flat, but everything else seems fine.

I need to calm down. I felt really strange afterwards. The twenty minute ride elicited almost every possible emotion. Joy, fear, pain and plenty of others. After all that I just need to get my focus away from the accident. I'm pretty lucky I fell when I did. I'm also pretty lucky that I didn't make it a couple more feet into the oncoming lane. Hopefully my streak of luck will continue and a bike shop will be open in the morning.

This dude must have so much free money, that the $10 fee to get into the Hirshhorn's special event for their Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition, is chump change.

In case you don't know who Matthew Lesko is (yeah right), he is the author of such canonical classics as Free Money To Quit Your Job and Free Stuff for Busy Moms!.

Sorry the pictures are kind of blurry, I still don't really know how to use my camera.

This one is better.

I didn't even mean to get him in this picture. I was just trying to photograph "Memorial for the Victims of Organized Religions" by Tillmans (who was also at the event).

Well, when he's in VA, he pushes a Lex.

We were so excited, we took a picture by chris’s SUV. We didn’t hardly see any other Michigan plates while we were there so it’s a good thing we got this one in our first photo.

Since we always hear about the great subway (they call it a metro here though) in DC, we went to ride it. It was pretty confusing and suuuuper busy, but we finally got on the right subway/. We couldn’t really get any good pics in there, though cuz it was soooo dark!

We got pretty close to where we were going and got off, but we still had a ways to walk. On the way, we saw a neighborhood fair going on and we stopped to take pictures with a funny guy who was juggling. Chris thought he might be homeless so we left before he could beg for any money.

Chris is into indie music and hopes to someday find a box of money, so he was super excited when he saw this hip indie music club. Hey I just realized we took pictures in front of a dog and a cat! Haha. LOL!

Later Chris and I joined a tour group and we went to see the Whitehouse.

Doesn’t Chris look like such a fat-ass in this picture? Haha, it was just the wind blowing all around. I guess politicians really do blow a lot of hot air.

Chris took some acid and wouldn’t stop talking to this rabbit. He was trying to get directions, but the rabbit didn’t really speak good english so we left and tried to find a place to buy a t-shirt that said FBI or CIA or I heart DC.

Look! A slice of back home!

This is Chris’s artsy shot. We took it outside a big museum (we didn’t go in, boooo-riiiing) I think he was hoping someone would see him taking it and he would get discovered and become a rich photographer like Anne Geddes. Sorry Chris, I’m a cutie, but I’m no little green baby in a giant fake pea-pod!

Today, L'Enfant is best know as the namesake for tourist's and government employee's favorite metro stop on account of it being the main transfer station to get to the Smithsonian from Virginia and all the government offices located above the stop at L'enfant Plaza.

One exit of the metro stop let's you out near the national mall. There is another that takes you out into this underground mall and giant food court. This place is pretty much solely intended to meet the needs of the thousands of people that work in the nearby offices, as there is really nothing in the way food except for nasty hot dog carts and a few museum cafes on the national mall.

I met my friend there for lunch today* and we ate on what I think must be the actual plaza part of L'Enfant Plaza.

On the way home I stopped and tried to take a picture of L'Enfant's grand design from one of the best viewing points in the city, but my camera work doesn't really do the view justice.

*I didn't get in until early this morning so I am backdating this entry

Some friends invited me to this. The DJs should be pretty good, but I checked out the main guy's myspace site and he sounds really lame. If I can find that 20 dollar bill (paper money, so cute) maybe I can go and take some actual pictures instead of just posting introspective essays about moving to a big city.

In the meantime, I want to share my favorite thing in D.C.

Easily, the thing that brings me the most joy here is running into people I’ve met since moving, especially in my neighborhood. I ran into two people I knew yesterday in Chinatown and another tonight at the grocery store. Yesterday a woman at the Y said she had recognized me walking on my lunch break and we started talking about databases. Constituent databases are not that interesting, but it was still really nice to meet her.

When talking with someone I’ve just met, there is one question that is almost always elicits an interesting response. “Where are you from, originally?” I imagine that in most other cities, the vast majority would answer the question with some place in the nearby region, but in D.C. the answer is rarely, “The District.” This brings me to my least favorite thing about D.C.

Because so many people have roots in other places, many hope to return someday (this is the case with just about everyone I’ve met here from Chicago). Others are so full of ambition that it seems inevitable that they’ll head off to New York, LA or one of those brand name colleges. Some of the native sons swear they’ll never move, but they don’t consider a move to the suburbs to be leaving, per se. I’ve even heard from one friend that the attrition of peers a huge part of her desire to move back home.

Catch me on the right day and I’ll love or hate D.C. for exactly the reasons listed above. Most days however, I try to approach life in the federal district as an opportunity. People are always leaving, but they are also always showing up. This, beyond all the other idiosyncrasies of the city (no tall buildings, Democrats and republicans sharing drinks at Happy Hours, all the diplomatic license plates, etc…), is what makes D.C. a completely unique city in my view. No other place I’ve ever encountered is so steeped in tradition and history, yet so dramatically different from one moment to the next.