The audacity of mope

Washington is a great place to spend the summer. There is more history in the offices I get to walk through each day than can fit into one person's mind, and the city is full of smart and interesting people. An outgoing person could cull a lifetime of stories from the museums and monuments, or sitting in on hearings and briefings, and maybe randomly opening meeting room doors here and there. I, myself, started the summer on a hot streak. I am now up to date on Krakauer and Roth, but since the majority of my work responsibilities here involve reading silly politician language, my desire to finish the last 1300 or so pages of the two Neal Stephenson books I've started has died off. I'm trying to write these posts as a way of memorializing the next few months of my life before I start working toward buying a large SUV. I get really annoyed at myself when I read what I've written though, so this is almost certainly going to die pretty quickly. So now I spend my idle time wandering the spectacular and non-scary parts of the city, and even that has become kind of tedious.
Midway into my 11th week, I'm used to the novelty of being an intern in DC. My time with people who are either very politically inclined or all too wary of the politically inclined has also weakened my ability to buy into the moment's powerful political rhetoric, so at least I don't feel that I'm suffering without access to the DNC.
I have enjoyed the work here, and feel smarter for having been here, but the place I've rented in DC has no television, and the open wifi connections I can typically poach from my couch lack the strength to consistently stream video. Beyond that, I somehow erased my computer trying to install Ubuntu (my fault, not Linux's), so I lost all of the movies and itunes music I'd built up over the three week periods following the quarterly disbursement of my grad school financial aid. That leaves me with few options for entertainment after work, so I walk around. I also buy gallon jugs of water from the 7-11 a few blocks away a couple times a week.