Hello friends,

So I finally broke down and decided to create one of these new-fangled internet journal thingys. I want all my friends and family members (that's you, hopefully) to know what I'm up to in the big city at my new job without having to use ALL of my cell phone minutes and more filling each of you in individually. Of course, I still want to talk to all of you, but maybe this will help keep the bills down to a minimum.

I guess I should start by filling everyone in who may not know exactly what I've been up to lately. I applied for a position at an environmental consulting firm this summer because it looked like a really awesome job and one that I might actually get because I had experience in the right areas (unlike almost every other job I had been searching for up til then). I had no idea where the job was located (the company I'd work for--http://www.erg.com--has offices all over) but I didn't really have a preference so I just applied anyway. Turns out, the environmental consulting headquarters is in Arlington, VA, right outside of Washington, DC.

Now, I've traveled all over Europe, to Dublin, London, Paris, Edinburg, Vienna, Rome, Madrid--but I have never traveled to the capital of my own country! How sad is that? But, hey, there's no time like the present! After two trips up to DC and the surrounding areas to interview for my job and look for apartments, I just moved into my new townhouse in Fairfax, VA two days ago.

So far, I'm just trying to get settled in, buy a bed and a new laptop, and figure out if I made the correct housing decision. I did a test run of my commute to work today. According to www.wmata.com, from my metro stop (Vienna/Fairfax-GMU) to where I work (Courthouse) is a 20 minute ride. According to my roommates' post on craigslist, the walk to the metro = 10 min. I'm not sure that my roommates have ever walked to the metro.

I left here at 8:12 a.m. About 1 minute later I realized that the overcast sky and incredibly muggy conditions could possibly mean rain, so I turned back to get my umbrella. So it's 8:14 and I'm officially on my way. To make a REALLY long story short, it took me 25 minutes to walk to the metro, about 3 minutes to purchase my new handy-dandy SmarTrip metro card, and another 20 minutes on the train. Which made me late for work. If I had been going to work today.

Now we all know that I am not a morning person (if you didn't, welcome to my confession). It is all I can do to communicate in the mornings, much less ambulate. Not to mention, most of the walk to the metro is UPHILL. In the SNOW. BOTH WAYS. Or, will be when Nov? Dec? rolls around. Until then, it's just kind of like walking in a swamp but on pavement and with car fumes instead of swamp gas.

So you are probably wondering to yourself..."why doesn't she just drive to the metro? There's a parking lot there." Well. I don't know. It might have something to do with the $3.75 it costs to park there all day. Add that to the metro fare to work and back, I could be spending around $300 a month just going to work! Plus, traffic here is INSANE and I feel that I would not like to contribute to that insanity (or mine) by placing myself in a motorized vehicle at any hour in the morning if I don't have to. Last but certainly not least, I am an environmentally-aware citizen of this insane place, so I do not want to release any more toxic fumes into the air than I have to driving 1 mile when I really could just walk. Except for the whole swamp uphill toxic fumes in my lungs thing.

My other option is...the bus. There is a very convenient bus stop right outside of the little townhouse row where I live. Conveniently located across four lanes of rush hour traffic. I'm sure there are other people who cross the street there. I'd just like to know how the heck they do it. Because unless I finally grow some wings or do a double-back flip cartwheel over the cars, I can just hear the sickening sounds of screeching tires and blaring horns every morning as I try to cross the street where there's no crosswalk or traffic light.

Do wish me luck. I'm going to need it. I just moved from a place where the highest volume of traffic on the road outside my house was bovine in nature and very slow moving. They still emit harmful fumes but at least they also provide fertilizer... Looks like the moral to my story so far is, no matter where you go, or what kind of shortages there are, there's always gonna be some kind of gas.

Ha. Ha?