Lonely in DC

Well, I haven’t made arrangements to see my sister & spouse, , or anyone else I know or even e-know in the district. No wonder I’m bored. I’ll be in town tonight, too. Any natives interested in livening up my evening, drop me a comment. I’ll also be in town in two weeks, either tuesday and wednesday or monday through wednesday. For those of you for whom this is unclear, I’m requesting pants-on entertainment. =)

Pride summary

Saturday: Gymnastics, Howl’s Moving Castle (good for disney, somewhat disappointing for Miyazaki) with , Mexican also with Robbie, CGMC concert with where I spotted , Seth, and Wayne. (well, Seth spotted me). The concert was somewhere between okay and good. The summer practice period is pretty short, and they usually team up with another concert for it. This year, they did not, and it showed. While the staging, costumes, and coreography were impressive, the music was less so.

Afterwards, and I walked to the pick me up. Much food was had. informed me of a great deal of the inner workings of lj’ers of which I’d previously been unaware. Fascinating.

Home & bed.

Next day, big-ass, nasty tasting, tequila rich margarita in a plastic cup and bad chili with straight coworker to start the pride parade. Watching the parade with the straight coworkers from the neighborhood. Counting the protesters. (there were 7 of them). The marching band played “jesus loves me” for them. Then off to ‘s party. Wildness ensued, though I took little part in it. I had a drink or two. I remember a beer and a fruity malt beverage while surrounded by bears. I met (and may I say, christian, nice catch) and the cute, sweet, self-proclaimed slumlord, from austin. Dinner at mamacita’s where someone who doesn’t speak english so good apparently had a problem understanding both “no cheese” and “sin queso”. *sigh*. Hugs & home.

Sleep.

Up at 3:30am on a monday packing for a trip to DC. Drug Information Association annual meeting. Another waitperson with english troubles, who also understood neither “sin queso” nor “no cheese”. I miss san fran. Or maybe just El Sombrero in Berkeley.

If I do get and take a position with the gao, odds are good I will try to get a rotation through San Fran’s field office, working for the Natural Resources and the Environment team. I’d try to liver in the lower Haight. Mmmm, axum. Mmm, punky lookin’ guys.

I’m now slightly tipsy after having visited Halo (sadly asocially) and taken advantage of their second drink free happy hour special. And chatting with gay men, while in a bed & breakfast in dupont circle. I was also singing a bit of Sarah McLachlan to myself on the way back from the bar. (over and over again). I don’t think it gets much gayer without another guy being involved. *wistful sigh*

“Hey your glass is empty. It’s a hell of a long way home. Why don’t you let me take you? It’s no good to go alone.”

eminent domain

I’m not as bothered as I probably should be by the recent supreme court ruling on the subject of eminent domain. It will, of course, be used predominantly against the people who are disadvantaged, and strongly attached to their property. I sincerely doubt it will burn me especially badly, as I won’t be owning for several years, and I have a pretty mobile lifestyle as is. I think I’m less sympathetic because I don’t get the mindset. Give me 5-10 and I’ll share the outrage, most likely.

Though I still think the right thing to do is to develop and implement city plans that allow people to know what to expect when buying a home.

Today in the news, military medical misconduct, conflicting war reports, and christians in politics

At work, I don’t use livejournal, because, well, it’s not appropriate, and the last thing I want showing up in the lists of urls I go to is my own blazingly partisan blog. Well, maybe gay porn would be worse. Straight porn would definitely be worse. But I’m digressing.

So, instead, I’ve started keeping up on current events from newssites directly, instead of relying on and others to pick the interesting bits for me. So, I’ll share the tastier fruits I’ve picked.

  1. New York Times
    1. Doctors helped in the torture and interrogation of guantanamo bay prisoners
    2. A U.S. General says Iraqi insurgents are recruiting like crazy and haven’t significantly reduced in overall strength in congressional testimony
    3. Rumsfeld says that setting a time by which we’ll leave would help insurgents
  2. The Economist
    1. World’s opinion of the U.S. in decline
    2. Religious Right has become a force to reckon with in US politics, and it won’t just go away
  3. A book review I ran across on drug companies and tthe development of new drugs discovered while doing work related research. I won’t comment on it, because it’s work related, but I wanted to share it. I ought to share other articles to give a fuller perspective on the matter, but I’m lazy.
  4. And finally, from an article on a politically oriented college for fundamentalist christians

Commentary:
1.1 Makes me sad. Doctors should not be involved in torture. Not that the hippocratic oath means much, but still.
1.2 It’s good to hear frank truth, even if unpleasant.
1.3 He’s probably right, but staying in there doesn’t seem to be slowing them down much.
2.2 United States religious extremists are a force to be reckoned with, and rational people aren’t as dedicated to keeping them where they belong, on the margin. The article is sadly accurate.
4. I found this article scary and sad at the same time.

Plans for the next three weeks & recent fun at work

Over the next three weeks, I expect to be spending 6 or 7 days in DC, attending the annual Drug Information Association conference (prescription and over the counter. Not even discussing medical marijuana from what I saw), meeting with AMA (American Medical Association), PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), Public Citizen, FDA (Food and Drug Administration), and possibly Tufts’s CFDD (Center for Drug Development) and a harvard lecturer/former editor of the new england journal of medicine, sitting in on a congressional testimony by my supervisor’s supervisor, and briefly (very briefly) presenting my observations of it at a meeting of the top dogs in GAO. Also, I have found and made reservations at a bed & breakfast in dupont circle with wireless. All but about $10/night of it is covered by my lodging allowance.

Meanwhile my former stats partner and fellow intern, in the same office, on the same thematically related team, will be matching up the addresses of registered sex offenders and nursing homes, while working on a listing of medically oriented first responder training programs with someone in dallas.

I’ll have to remember that neither of us are getting what one might call a representative experience, though she’s probably closer.

Even so, I did have to do an hour of the most onerous, tedious task that GAO analysts do. Imagine reading a 30 page paper aloud, noting every capitalized letter, and every punctuation mark, to make sure that when someone transitioned from Word to PDF, reformatted, and edited for readability, they didn’t fuck anything up. We made it through about 7 pages. And , I have not been driven off. If that were all there was to the job, I’d be driven off. But I can take a little pain. It’s about 8 man hours / project shipped out the door. Most teams have 2-3 people on them. Most project last about 6 months to a year. So, being a little pessimistic, it’s one work day out of every year. I can handle that.

Regardless, my impending travel will almost certainly delay my much thought about, if not much planned bay area travel. Unless there is a conveniently timed e-saver. And even then, ugh.

I did decide to move up my departure from GAO date by a week. I’m serious about going to Europe. Now I just have to decide where….

“Gain an hour, lose an hour. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”

past two days

No notable difference from the outness at work. Of course, in an office where one of the top ranking people is a homebody homo, and at least one of the people a step down from him is a gym bunny homo, I think it may safely be said that I have little to worry about in terms of glass ceilings.

I went out to da burbs to game w/ & friends. His friends do seem pretty min-max-munchkin-tastic. One was unabashed in his boredom with roleplaying and his preference for rollplaying. The cute, slightly short, quiet, and pretty clearly het guy was good to look at, and seemed to use his brain for things other than code (at least, more so than the other new-to-me guy), though maybe I’m painting the picture I want to see on a blank canvas. *shrug*

I may play the bastard son of a merchant clan, with another clan’s magical birthmark, turned paladin. Now, to play a homo male, or my more typical (for me) asexual male character (asexual female is most common, followed by nympho female, followed by asexual male). I may also want to consider ways to insert conflict into the party. Rob’s ideas may be a bit over the top for me, but something to shake these guys into at least trying to roleplay their characters would be a bonus.

Drive back to say hi to . Much conversation on the way and there. Clarification of Jen’s girlscout sadness. Receipt of vegan girl scout cookies. A funky, dark sweet beer that involved plum and some other fruity thing. Sleep. Early morning train ride downtown. Buy a ticket at the station, lose the ticket, buy another one on the train, pay $2 penalty for not buying ticket in advance. Ugh. Back to work.

Ride back home on L. Try to nap. Fail. Chat with kid about to start freshman year of high school. Strange chat, kinda fun. I didn’t feel uncomfortable. I think I feel uncomfortable with the _idea_ of associating with youngish kids. With the possible stigma. *shrug*

Sleeeeep. So much to do, so much to say….