The Summer Everyone Was Talking About Bon Iver

Since I am a hopeless nostalgic, I figured I oughta capture my feelings about my first summer in DC, a place I always said I would never live unless I was rich. Rich is relative. I feel rich in experience and spirit.

• Trading in my typical summer activity of co-hosting baby showers for hosting happy hours.
• Getting to know a lot of awesome new friends. And reconnect with old ones, like my besties Sudeep and Beam, who comprised half my bridesmaid brigade at the Amsterdam nuptials of 2010.
• Walking around outside since it wasn’t too hot to be walking around outside.
• Having some Tangy Sweet yogurt whilst getting a pedicure at my new nail place, Golden Nail (singular, not plural. I have no idea why)
• The great debt ceiling crisis and the visit to the Senate Cafeteria (which Politico’s Mike Allen calls the Dirksen Bureau), getting awkwardly flirted with by Kent Conrad and overhearing Jon Tester on the phone saying “They’re not putting any pressure on these guys!” What was he talking about? Congress or someone who does his lawn? I will never know.
• Spending July 4th in remote West Texas after a blustery winter and spring in a town full of people who walk fast, aren’t that nice to strangers and take themselves way too seriously.
• Dragging my ass to Pilates reformer classes and having Tami the trainer react with sheer bewilderment when I and the others were not able to do her “mermaids” or other tricky moves that required muscles.
• Spending every other weekend out of town, going to random places like Salt Lake City and San Antonio.
• Learning Saidee didn’t have doggy cancer.
• Cookouts with my cousins when my little brother was in town, which was a lot, even though his home is in Beijing.
• My irrational obsession with seeing Crazy, Stupid Love for Ryan Gosling, and then finally seeing it and feeling a bit let down. Expectations were too high.
• Pool time in Crystal City with the Beam, where even though we were just lying there for a few hours, we wound up famished at the end of our time in the sun and had to go gorge at nearby Chik-Fil-A.