I'm also very happy to be in a decent concert city again. The Tampa area (Tampa, St Pete, Orlando) had quite a few concerts, and then Nashville had very few. As an avid concert-goer, that was actually one of the biggest disappointments about Nashville. Well, basically every band comes through DC or Baltimore (45 minute drive) on their tours. I've already gone to a Rilo Kiley show (great video for "It's A Hit"), which was decent, and the lead singer is really hot. On my calendar for the next two months alone are the following shows that I'm at least somewhat interested in:

• Apocalyptica
• Kool Keith
• Henry Rollins
• Rogue Wave
• The Notwist and Themselves playing together as 13 & God
• Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Le Tigre, Bouncing Souls
• Q And Not U
• The Pietasters
• These Arms Are Snakes, Minus The Bear
• Porcupine Tree, Robert Fripp
• White Stripes and The Shins
• Sufjan Stevens
• The Lemonheads
• Oasis, Jet, and Kasabian
• The Pixies
• The Decemberists
• Nada Surf, Say Hi To Your Mom
• Beck
• Architecture In Helsinki
• Foo Fighters, Weezer
• Lyrics Born
• Jethro Tull
• The Fiery Furnaces
• John Vanderslice
• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
• Stars, Death Cab For Cutie
• Ghostface Killah
• Nine Inch Nails, Queens Of The Stone Age
• Digable Planets
• LCD Soundsystem

And I'm sure some others will be coming toward the end of those two months that haven't been announced yet. Ah, shows, how I've missed going to thee.

I love the DC Metro system. It's so great to go out without worrying about anyone driving. The metro stops running a bit early (3am on weekends), but bars close early here anyway (2am). The city's slogan is "Taxation without representation." It's on the bottom of the DC license plates and everything. I think that's way cool. Almost as cool as Austin's "Keep Austin Weird." Speaking of which, I saw a "Make Austin Normal" shirt on someone the other day. That's no fun. That's like the Vote For Pedro / Pedro Lacks Political Experience shirts. Why rain on the parade?

I didn't realize how little I liked Nashville until I got here. Of the places I've lived, Tampa is pretty cool, Austin is amazing, Nashville is super boring, and DC is awesome. Nashville has no culture, unless you consider touristy country-music related t-shirt shops to be culture. There's nothing particularly bad about Nashville, and I absolutely loved Vanderbilt, but Nashville just lacks so many things. I decided the other night that I wanted to see Broken Flowers, the new Jarmusch film, and checked Fandango to see if it was playing anywhere in DC. In other cities, it would only play at one theater, and then for only a week or so. Here, there five theaters playing it, with showings basically every half hour. Two of the theaters were in walking distance. I ended up not seeing it, but it was an option, and that is so cool. I do still need to find a Flying Saucer type good-beer bar.

Sushi is good here, and reasonably priced. I've been cooking every weeknight. My roommate and I are getting along swimmingly, despite my unfounded misgivings. I love to cook, he loves to do dishes. It's perfect. I've already made a lot of delicious stuff. I should start taking pictures of meals I make, and turn this into a food blog.

Speaking of my room and my tiny, tiny kitchenette (my oven is a cube that is 18 inches on each side), I took some pictures of my apartment. Notice that my range only has three burners, not four. They just had to implement that last little cost-saving measure. It's more insulting than it is actually impractical.

My room is quite large. Much bigger than any of my Vandy dorm rooms. And I endeavored to take much less stuff to school this year, so it feels terribly empty as compared to the other rooms in which I've lived. For decorations, I got a couple lame lame lame Urban Outfitters wall hangings, and got a bunch of 8x10s printed of photos I've taken in the last couple months, including a set of lava lamp pictures for which I used my computer monitor as a lightbox. I also made a pretty cool lighting setup by painting and hanging some wood blocks I had from before, then stringing a coathanger between them, and hanging lightbulbs on wires from the coathanger. Pretty cool I guess. I also hung up some nice postcards I got from a little gallery/boutique in Louisville with Chris.

The view from my window is alternately shitty or cool, depending on the angle from which you are looking out. From my bed, I have a perfect view of the clock tower at Georgetown Law. But from anywhere else in the room, I have a nice view of the wall of the adjacent building.

Though I'm not on a high enough floor to have a view of the capitol building, there are nice terraces on the upper floors, from which the view is quite nice.

And this is probably boring, but here is my hall. And check out the little plaque.