It's been a while.....

Oh dear. My vision is blurry, I have an artificially inflated sense of self-esteem and the sun is still shining outside. Oh yeah, and for every three letters I type I have to delete two. Diagnosis: daytime drinking.

In my defence, I only went to the Lucky Bar to watch the Arsenal but (tragically) they have a $10 (which essentially means three pints) minimum spend policy. What is a man to do?

You see, my Tuesday afternoon off this week happily coincided with the Champions League games, so instead of diligently confining myself to the library for an extended study period - I have two mid-term exams next week - I toddled my way off to Dupont Circle and took refuge amongst D.C.'s expats Irish, English, German and Italian. And very glad I am that I did, as I watched a very solid win for my boys (reassuring after losing to West-bloody-Brom on Saturday) but one that only served to highlight quite how dependent we are on Henry. Pleeeeeeeease don't go to Madrid Thierry.

And in other news.......

Okay, so I haven't written much in a while and maybe the photos don't say as much as I thought they did. Here's a quick and distinctly haphazard run-down of recent events this side of the pond.

A few weeks ago I skipped my Thursday afternoon class and zoooooomed up to New York on the Greyhound where I met up with Ed and Kit for the evening. Proceeded to get nicely sozzled, kipped on the floor of their hostel, woke up with an horrific hangover and went and sat with the boys in Central Park to recover. Pictures to come.

Studying obscenely hard. Before any of you had even picked up a pen I had taken two mid-term exams. Still haven't got my U.S. Foreign Policy result back but snatched an 85 for Bureaucratic Politics (not as good as it sounds, they actually mark out of 100 here - I know someone who scored 100.5%. WTF?). Is that subject as dull as you think it is? Umm, yes.

As you may have read, I was up in Pittsburgh the weekend before last to stay with Chris. I was pleasantly surprised. With Pittsburgh being a steel town I had expected it to be an American equivalent of the grim grey-ness that is Sheffield. Actually it's much nicer and much greener. Although it does only have three taxis running an any given time which meant I speant the first two hours of my stay in the city waiting at the damn bus terminal. It was a fun weekend. UPitt students seem to be much less uptight than those of GU and don't all seem to think the sun shines out of their........ dad's wallets.

Last week was fairly quiet. The baseball playoffs have begun and I am a fan of this game so I've watched many a match from the comfort of my dorm lounge (not actually all that comfortable). During one of the infinite number of commercial interludes there was an advert that began "Tim Kaine opposes the death penalty. Even in extreme cases." An ad for the upcoming gubernatorial contest, my initial (and very naive) thought was that this Tim Kaine fella sounded like my kinda guy. Except this was not meant as promotion for the Democrat candidate but for his Republican opponent Jerry-"fry 'em, don't try 'em"-Kilgore. This my first real look at the use of negative advertising in US politics and i was not impressed. I'm not inclined to launch into a big ol' anti-death penalty rant but I fail to comprehend the meaning behind "an extreme case". Surely any murder trial is fairly extreme? Who's to say that one murder is worse than any other? Secondly, I struggle to understand a political system that could be simplified to such an extent that people will vote for (or against) one guy or another purely based on his policy on a single issue. The U.S. political system seems to me to be in a bit of a mess but are Americans really that dumb? Mebbe - mebbe not. Anyway, enough of that. Moving on....

Speaking of murders and other nasty things I saw today int he paper that D.C. has just announced its lowest murder figures for 40 years. That should prove reassuring to all of you who may or may not be aware that Washington used to be the gun-death capital of America. On a less positive note, last weekend saw a number of shootings in the NW quadrant of the city. And this is sposed to be the nice bit. I think i might stop walking around late at night with my headphones in.

I went to my first gig in D.C. last week. I've been suffering from live music withdrawal and had missed a few that I wanted to get to so I took a gamble on Anna Nalick at the 9:30 Club.
It was a lorra fun although musically good rather than great. She had laryngitis so performed an acoustic rather than rock set which I think was probably nicer than it would have been. She chatted a lot to the crowd, reprimanding an older couple for "making out" and making everyone sing Happy Birthday to one of the audience.

Umm, what else? I wrote the one essay I have for this term at the weekend: A two-thousand word-er examining the representations of bureaucratic theory in A Few Good Men. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn.

Okay, I'm done. I have a camera cable of my own now, so I'll throw some more pictures up soon.