Adieu, Maryland. Buenos dias, España!

25Aug10

[I’ve been going a little hog-wild with my new 50mm lens for my Canon Rebel XT DSLR, so bear with me as some entries will just be gratuitous, non-food photos. Like this one. No worries, though– food will be forthcoming.]

Anyway, the last few days of my summer in DC are winding down, and while I was out for my run yesterday, the wind carried subtle hints of autumn. This summer has definitely passed infinitely faster than I ever remember a summer passing before. Where did June and July go? What am I doing in August?

It’s quite shocking, really.

But what’s nice is that things are falling rapidly into place. At the beginning of the summer I had a brief panic session during which I realized that I need to reorganize and redistribute portions of my life in order to live as a healthy and sane human being. So I tossed out some items (i.e., street volleyball) and focused on others (i.e., studying for the patent bar). It made me somewhat of a homebody, and I would spend hours in a Starbucks or Barnes & Noble plowing through multiple practice tests. Once I started work on the Hill, my life was basically: work + yoga (with a run or tennis thrown in).

Life is sweet in its simplicity.

And it paid off, in the end! Happily, I recently passed the patent bar (yay!), and in retrospect, missing some volleyball is not such a bad idea sometimes. I value my knees, and jumping on concrete is not conducive to the longevity of one’s knees. Even if one’s knees are the bee’s knees.

Err, right. It’s been a long day.

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The ABOVE PICTURE is one I took of my mother and my brother in the park across the street from my house. When I moved back to Maryland this summer, I was struck by how green it is here. Living in the city in California, it was easy to forget that much of the rest of America is not a desert. Even parts of San Francisco that are “green” aren’t the type of bushy, thickly-grown tree-covered areas that defines Maryland. There, it’s a carefully cultivated green that is maintained by a system of gardeners who are hired to come into the richer areas of SF to make sure it retains its reputation as a beautiful city (it is– just not in the TL, where the green I usually see . . . does not trace its roots from plant-life . . . )

I’m going to miss it. Blackouts aside, thunderstorms and extraordinary heat provide great fodder for growing huge plants. 😀

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Anyway, I will be leaving the DC area on Thursday for Bilbao, Spain, at which point I will be MIA for a period of time whilst I get my bearings and readjust to life as a wannabe-European. Wish me luck!