Home Sweet Home

Now that I’ve said goodbye to Van Ness, it’s time to talk about the new place! In May, I moved to a two-bedroom with my friend from Brandeis, Rachel H. We’re located in between Dupont and Logan circles, and it’s such a cute place. In fact, it’s so wonderful that when we saw the place in April, we RAN back to my office so that we could immediately email the application in. We didn’t want to miss out on it – and it toNow that I’ve said goodbye to Van Ness, it’s time to talk about the new place! In May, I moved to a two-bedroom with my friend from Brandeis, Rachel H. We’re located in between Dupont and Logan circles, and it’s such a cute place. In fact, it’s so wonderful that when we saw the place in April, we RAN back to my office so that we could immediately email the application in. We didn’t want to miss out on it – and it totally took us less than 15 minutes to get all the way to Metro Center.

Since I’ve been here for about two months, I can now accurately say what my favorite things about my new home are. In no particular order, they include:

1. This apartment feels much more like a HOME. I moved into my Van Ness apartment very quickly, and while I liked it, it never really felt like I had any sort of ownership over it -- perhaps because I was in a room with a fake wall, but more likely because I didn’t really help figure out how to set it up.

2. Our cute and decidedly full-of-character neighborhood. There's a crazy house next door, with flamboyant colors and odd figurines in the window. There's an abundance of cute and friendly dogs. Some people have baby envy; I totally have dog envy. And best of all, there's amazing people watching, fabulous little front yards, and alleys full of people having summer parties.

3. There's access to not one, not two, but three (!) Metro stations. Of course, none of them are quite as close as Van Ness was, but I am no more than a 15 minute walk away from all 5 Metro lines!

4. In similar, transportation-related reasons why I love our new home -- I can walk to work! This was one of the requirements of moving downtown, and I am so grateful for my 20-minute walk down 14th street every day. (I don’t actually walk EVERYday, sometimes I take one of the very convenient 50-buses there!).

5. I have an amazing new roommate, Rachel H.! She introduces me to great TV shows (see: 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother) and lets me read her books! I'd say it was an uneven relationship, but I DO cook with garlic often, and I feel that that's an advantage in a roomie.

6. The apartment includes a WASHER and a DRYER. in unit. Need I say more? No, but I will. This makes me so excessively happy -- I always ended up in the dorms at Brandeis that required outside travel to do laundry, and at the Albemarle there was always a line to laundry . . . lame. The point it is, this is the best thing since Ethel Merman in Anything Goes.

7. The ceilings of the apartment are soooo high. And it's full of light (which necessitated blackout curtains for rooms, but I revel in it! although I may need some curtains soon), which makes it an altogether-decidedly-cheery place to live.

8. There is wonderful food shopping. I’m a mile from Trader Joe’s, a ten-minute walk from the lovely (if overpriced) Dupont Circle Farmers Market on Sundays, and two blocks (!) from a Whole Foods. Although I sometimes miss the reliably inexpensive almost-suburban experience at the Van Ness Giant, there really is a lot of great food shopping around here. And when I don’t want to cook, there are about a hundred restaurants within short walking distance. Actually.

9. The new apartment is downtown and convenient and wonderful, and clearly other people think so as well, because I have lots of great neighbors, many of whom I knew before but am really excited to be living near now!

Goodbye, Van Ness!

I’ve been in our new apartment for two months now, so I suppose it’s time to write a Goodbye, Van Ness blog post.

The apartment in Van Ness was my first big-kid apartment, and I moved there in January 2009, 9 days before Obama moved into HIS new home, and 3 days before I started my new job at ACEEE. I had spent the past six months living at home in Skippack, and while I loved the time with my mom, I was READY to be on my own.

I originally lived with two lovely ladies -- Jessica G. and Becky W., although Becky moved away in August, and was replaced by June R. I was in a room off of the living room which used to be the dining room, and which had a fake wall. It was a large room, with lovely big windows, but it was closetless. The apartment in general was huge, and particularly I loved the built-in bookshelves in the living room (look at how big that room is! you can do a cartwheel in it!).

Van Ness was also great for its proximity to a number of things I love. These include:

1. The people who were living in The Consulate. I was really lucky to find a great group of friends in Seth, Stacy, Arielle, and Alexa, (thanks to Rachel H!), and it was wonderful being a few blocks away for LOST watching and impromptu snowmageddon excursions. Of course, 3 out of the four of them are moving away, some all the way to LA!, but I will definitely miss being close to them.

2. Giant. I am a self-professed fan of supermarkets, and the Van Ness Giant is for sure the most “suburban” (I mean that as a compliment!) supermarket that I’ve experienced in NW DC. Of course, there are more exciting supermarkets (Whole Foods and Trader Joes), but for reasonably priced food AND well-stocked shelves (unlike some markets coughSovietSafewaycough), you can’t beat Van Ness Giant. And it was on my walk home every day.

3. The Zoo. As you know, I love volunteering in the Amazonia exhibit at the National Zoo, but I love it just a touch less when I have to trek there from my new apartment and the L2 is not coming. It was a much shorter (downhill!) walk in the morning at my old place. Plus, I passed the lovely restaurants and shops of Cleveland Park each way!

4. Alli G., favorite sister and sometimes doppleganger. Well, at least while she was still living at American University. Now that she’s graduated and moved off to FarFarAway (aka Takoma Park), this isn’t an advantage of Van Ness anymore, but at the time it was lovely to live one Metro stop or a short bus ride down Albemarle away from her.

5. Politics and Prose. Even before moving to DC, I heard about the wonderfulness of Politics & Prose from my Dad, who once purchased a biography of George Washington for me there. It’s this cute bookstore/coffeeshop about half a mile north of Albemarle Apartments on Connecticut Ave, and in addition to being a wonderfully well-curated independent bookstore, it's the site of daily author talks. While living there I got to hear a lot of great authors speak, although my favorites were definitely Taylor Branch (who recently wrote The Clinton Tapes, and who is famous for his history of MLK) and Walter Isaacson (who wrote great biographies of two of my favorite historical characters -- Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein).

The best part of Politics and Prose, though, is the abundance of sale books downstairs: needless to say, I spent a lot of my salary there. They're actually selling the store, and if I were 20 years older and a few hundred thousand dollars richer, I'd want to run it in a heartbeat -- what a wonderful place!

So that's the story of my first apartment. Goodbye, Van Ness -- you were a wonderful location for my first apartment and site of many glorious guacamole-related moments:

the lusty month of May in which June busts out all over

oh dear. That's quite the unfortunate amalgamation of musical theater lyrics . . . anyway.

It's been quite a while since I last blogged, for the very good reason that I've been too busy to blog (which really is the best way to be, even if it makes goal-achieving difficult) AND I've had to contend with a computer meltdown of monumental proportions. Since I last posted something on my birthday about two months ago, I have explored a new city (Chicago), moved to a new home (in Dupont/Logan Circle), gone to the White House, celebrated my sister's graduation, and more. In classic Assessing the Wreckage style, I've decided to present my goings-on in list/picture form. I present, eight of the best things that have happened since I turned 24:

8. One of my best friends, Mat S., is away in Brussels for the summer, being amazing and working on human rights law and eating frites and drinking beer as often as possible (at least, I sure hope so). Before he left, though, he had to a. celebrate the end of his 1L year with Scottish festivities (we learned that the word "forfochen" means exhausted, and I got to see Leah and Steph for the first time in a year!) and b. move from his apartment in the east 90s to the West Village. Along the way, I got lots of time with college roomie Katherine C. (including her first trip to Katz's AND first knish of life), a shabbos walk in Riverside Park with Jonathan H., and a viewing of Sondheim on Sondheim starring the fabulous Vanessa Williams and Barbara Cook at Studio 54!

7. At the end of June, I participated in Relay for Life with Jason F., Kate B., and many of their lovely friends from the RAC. Our team raised over $5,000 for the American Cancer Society, and had a really meaningful and fun evening of luminaria, track-walking, late-night chats, and astroturf. Also, I Zumbaed. Fact: I am a decidedly ridiculous Zumba-er.

6. ACEEE published another federal legislation scoring paper, this one on the Kerry-Lieberman climate change proposal! It was a lot of work, and may have slightly taken over my life in the later part of May/early part of June, but the release involved a Senator (the very cool Jeff Merkley of Oregon!), and was definitely one of the most collaborative projects I've ever dealt with. It's still unclear what its impact will be (since climate/energy legislation is rather up in the air right now), but I think it pretty clearly demonstrated the benefits of enhancing energy efficiency efforts, and that's pretty cool.

5. Miriam F. visited D.C.! Miriam F. is one of my best friends from college, and she just spent a year studying at Pardes and will be spending another year in Jerusalem learning to be a rabbi at HUC. Needless to say, I needed to get me some Miriam-time during her short visit home, and she obliged with a mid-week visit in June. This resulted in a day of my favorite D.C. things: friends, the Library of Congress, Eastern Market, Good Stuff milkshakes and onion petals, and Mandu happy hour!

4. At the beginning of June, Jason F., David K., and I traveled to Chicago for the wedding of Ilana D. and Jeremy F.! We spent the beginning of the weekend gallumphing about the Art Institute, guffawing at Second City and Baby Wants Candy (musical theater improv! amazing!), and generally gadding about town causing a commotion. We spent the second part of the weekend celebrating at Jeremy and Ilana's beautiful, sweet wedding, and got to see a lot of wonderful Brandeis friends while we were at it.

3. Alli graduated from American University, in badass Gold family fashion! I knew I had a smart, fabulous, talented sister, but apparently the rest of the world knows it, too! Alli and her college bff, Seth C. jointly won the highest award given to undergrads at AU, the President's Award. Translation: great seats for us, lots of people saying nice things about Alli, and vigorous Gold/Dwork family kvelling.

2. I moved to a new apartment with Rachel H.! Although this ranks very high on the cool-things-in-the-past-month list, I'm thinking it's going to get its very own blog post very soon, so I'll hold off on that one for now.

1. I went to the WHITE HOUSE (!) for the Mexican State Arrival, thanks to the lovely Emily G., who gave me one of her extra tickets (she got them for being a decidedly cool and vigorous advocate for young women!). Apparently, the White House holds this big ceremony on the South Lawn with the Marine Corps Band (!) and the Fife and Drum Corps (!) and other forms of awesome salutin' every time there is an official State visit. It was one of the coolest experiences of my D.C. life to date - any day involving the Obama and the Shelly O., close proximity to the West Wing (!!!!), and the Rev. Al Sharpton is going to rank high on any list of mine.