tortoisegirl

House-sitting at my dad's new place until Wednesday, and it's so quiet and niiiiice here. I was going to spend today walking around the neighborhood to see what around but after a long day yesterday and a long week ahead it was just too nice to laze around all by myself.

And about my long day yesterday! I took the train down to Washington DC for the day, which is something I'd been wanting to do for a while just to see the city and be touristy. And I got to spend most the visit with sandoz_iscariot! We got to do a lot, though I didn't take many pictures and many of the ones I did take didn't turn out well. I'll share what I've got.

Well first of all there was a little timing fail on my part in that there was a Glenn Beck rally going on that day. There were some teabaggers on the train with me, extolling the virtues of Sarah Palin (thankfully not for the whole ride), and sandoz had issues getting to the metro because it was so packed, but we weren't near the Lincoln Memorial rally site and didn't encounter them that much. Based on the t-shirts I saw their rainson d'etre of the day was "honor" - reclaiming or restoring the nation's honor. Which, now that think of it, makes me think of Zuko from A:TLA more than American patriotism. So, lol teabaggers, lol.

Anyway, onto the good parts.



The above building is one the Smithsonian's buildings. We didn't actually go to this particular one (I just thought it was pretty); we went to the Natural History Museum. It was very large and very crowded, but for exhibits we visited the oceans, dinosaurs, mammals, gemstones, and birds.

( Long post is long )

This week has been a bunch of good things/bad things and a serious case of "appreciate the little things or go crazy."

Bad thing: On Monday there were anti-abortion demonstrations on campus, set up right at the belltower. They had the dead fetus pictures (and they were GIANT pictures, 10 ft boards all around the base of the belltower), but them they had to go into Ridiculous and Offensive territory by comparing abortion to genocide. They actually had photos of Holocaust victims and claimed there was no difference between that and abortion. >:( They came pretty fucking close to explicitly comparing pro-choicers to Hitler. I was rage-tastic all day. And I don't care how petty it is, I was glad it rained on their demonstration.

Good thing: They were back on Tuesday, but at least moved to a courtyard I could avoid. By all the entrances to the courtyard there were students with pro-choice sign and pamphlets. :) There were also people in class just as pissed off as I was about them, and not just about the gigantic abortion pictures but about the whole ridiculous genocide comparison. Warmed my heart. Also, unrelated to the abortion thing, but at the belltower there were free HIV screen and free condom, which also made me happy.


Bad thing: I stupidly tried to downloads a PDF of a book and my laptop got hit with a bunch of malware. It's a bunch of fake antivirus stuff that bombarded me with popups saying my computer is infected (no shit, but they listed a bunch of fake infections) and kept asking me to buy their "product".

Good thing: After some googling and some virus scans I got enough of the nasty stuff off so that my laptop is functional, which is good enough at least until finals are over.


Bad thing: DEAR GOD THE POST OFFICE. Getting my passport application in has taken way to long. The first post office I went to didn't process passports. The second did but you needed an appointment, plus the only hours available were during school hours. Ugh. I was carrying the papers and my birth certificate around with me all week; just ripe for identity theft!

Good thing: Finally got to a place that could process the papers for me, and it went very smoothly. The woman who did it was really nice, and well, I'm finally getting a passport! I the application for the Japan program off to the Japanese Consulate and now I'm just waiting to hear back :D