Puns abound. Bex: Twenty-something nonprofit communications gal inside the Beltway. Here for art, culture and interesting people. I use a lot of semicolons; it's an issue.
Museum Identifies New Van Gogh Painting in Amsterdam. The work, entitled “Sunset at Montmajour,” was painted in Arles in 1888, a period that is considered to be the height of the artist's career.
I always just say that I live and work within the Beltway, because if I say the actual state I live in, people will just identify me with that state, which doesn't seem entirely accurate if I can drive into the District of Columbia within about 10 minutes (which I used to do when I took a wrong turn on my way home from work after first moving here).
So DMV really is an excellent term because DC is sort of square/diamond shaped so it eats up random portions of both Maryland and Virginia. And something like "the greater DC Metro area" is a mouthful. This is an interesting area, since there are smaller urban-ish areas and regions with their own identities, yet somehow they all seem to feed into DC, whether because enough people commute into the city to work or go to events, or because it's large and powerful enough to have an effect on the region that surrounds it.
Also, the Metro is extensive enough that there are multiple stops that are easy to get to from my own place that can take me straight downtown to the Smithsonian or The Mall, which for someone who hates parking and city driving is peachy. I took it out last weekend to Vienna which was too long and too hot of a train ride for my taste (I'll hazard the Beltway the next time around) but is still a good option if I want to spend a day out and about. I get hopelessly lost when I try to walk around (I still do it in New York all the time) so I am a big fan of trains.
Trying to decide whether or not to go into DC tomorrow, and I realize that this is a luxury that I feel thankful to have.
We've all been there. Living with a large group of people, whether it's an apartment building, dorm, or house with roommates, leads to the inevitable clash over the use of appliances. And the most frustrating and contentious of activities one has to face in a communal living space is undoubtedly laundry.
Currently I live in a house with five roommates, two on my floor and three the floor below, with one washer and one dryer in the basement. The beginning of the Laundry Dance for me is cautiously opening the door to the basement and sticking my head in. Can I hear anyone moving around? Is the hum of the dryer or whooshing of gallons of water audible from the stairs? If all is quiet, I sneak down, trying to silence my flip flops on the stairs as I descend.
There's always that moment of suspense as you reach for the lid of a quiet washing machine. The ones with clear doors eliminate those seconds of anxiety, where you hope against hope that no one's soggy clothes lay within, freshly pulverized in the previous spin cycle.
And when there is a load of laundry, and for me it always seems to be aggravatingly small, whose is this, I think. Should I take it out? SHOULD I TAKE IT OUT???
Usually I wait. Maybe the machine cut out like 5 minutes ago, I reason. Maybe they're on the phone. I give them the benefit of the doubt. 30 minutes. Timed.
I trudge up the stairs, temporarily defeated, anxiety brewing because of possible passive aggression to come.
Now the absolute worst thing to do in my opinion, because it's petty and rude, is if you live with coin-operated machines, to actually open the door or lid of the machine of the person who took your clothes out, probably because you were a lazy asshole, thereby causing their spin cycle to stop and them to have to pay for an entirely new load. Who raised you.
Though I do not have to pay for each load of laundry in my current residence, when I do laundry is a key to having a fresh batch of whites within two hours. I'm a night owl and I often get home from work at 9pm. It's natural for me to want to throw clothes in while I am cooking something for myself. So I did one night. No one does laundry at this time of night, I thought to myself. It will be easy peasy, I thought to myself.
I went downstairs to retrieve a load of clothes from the dryer and I kid you not, one of the downstairs dwellers was sitting there waiting for me. She looked up from her iPad and said hello, watching me take my clothes out. I must gain control of this situation, I thought.
"Is the noise from the laundry disruptive for you?" I ask innocently. It's not like I tried to bother her. I just really needed my college sweatshirt clean.
"Yes, actually, it woke me up," she said. "Something in it has a zipper and it's very noisy." (Sweatshirt.)
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize. I get home late from work, you see, so this is really the best time for me to wash my clothes."
"It woke me up," she said again, trying to stay genial. "I'm up."
I had eyes. I had already observed the fact that she was, indeed, awake, sitting upright, and reading her iPad at 1am. I decided not to comment on this.
"Can you please finish your laundry before 9pm," she said.
Well she woke up due to my laundry activities; fair is fair, I guess.
"Yeah I'll try to work with that," I said with a false brightness. I am not in the business of getting my laundry sabo'd in the future or my shrill landlady knocking on my door at who knows what hour of the day (she likes to let herself into the house at her leisure, like on Sundays at 10:30am to scream at people about rent).
We exchanged some niceties; she is not American so conversations end up being very polite to avoid awkwardness. The week after she gave me a delicious peach (when I was downstairs doing laundry), so it's all good, I guess.
The Laundry Culture of a living establishment, along with things like the Shower Schedule and the Morning Rush (not to mention parking) is an essential aspect of the ecosystem of living with other adults, especially strangers. Feel fortunate if you live with family, friends or significant others, who would probably not care that much that you touched their clothes, or were around enough that you could actually tell them to get their shit out of the washer or you were going to do it for them. But for those of us whose best option is renting a room someplace with people we don't know, settling in seems to be respecting the people who have lived there before you, while trying to subtly introduce some rules of your own.
Can we talk about 91.5? Let's talk about 91.5. So I don't come from a terribly populous area, thus classical music on the radio would be played on one station for a couple of hours every day.
Upon moving to the DMV, I encountered the most insane drivers I had ever shared a road with. My hopes of plugging up my iPod to tune into The Story of the Kalender Prince from Scheherazade (fun for open roads) or something soothing for traffic (maybe Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune) vanished as I struggled to change lanes in time to catch my exit.
Thus finding a station that played classical music regardless of when I drove due to my weird work schedule was a blessing. It's not just that 91.5 exists, though. It really is a gem of a music station, one that I have a lot of feelings about.
Firstly, 91.5 has a major crush on Dvorak. Every time I listen to the station, the preview for the next block of music ALWAYS contains something by Dvorak. I never switch the station when the host is talking because I just need to confirm that there's a Dvorak coming on in the next hour.
The first host that came on during my listening was a woman with an absolutely rubbish accent. At least, that's what I thought at the time. It sounds like what Madonna tried to pull of when she moved to England, one of those not-quite-British accents; she hits the consonants but something wonky happens in the vowels. Anyway, a friend informed me that she was South African (I guess it's a posh version). I'm kind of a fan of her now and listen for her to tell me which work of Dvorak she's picked.
I was made aware of the fact that Dvorak's "New World Symphony" is played regularly. It's my white whale; despite how omnipresent Dvorak seems to be I have yet to hear it. I consider Dvorak's best work (maybe on just a sentimental level...I played it in symphony during high school) to be his Scherzo Capriccioso. Like New World, it's richly textured, filled with a dream-like melodies, delicate as lace, that even when rehearsing, would cause me to close my eyes. It's a song that's actually fun for a French Horn, though I played 4th on it and when we performed it, the 1st horns would come in on part of it and fuck it up so I'd get really annoyed. Eventually the orchestra comes together at the end in a galloping finale, the kind that conductors gesture wildly for. I think conductors like to be dramatic.
If you have a classical music station, please treasure it. Classical music is said to make you smarter. Well actually I think that applies to babies and it was proven otherwise recently, but it's one of the lies I tell myself.
No really, I thought I should explain my icon at the start of this thing just so you know. "Salome" was painted by Henri Regnault in 1870. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in which I am a fangirl as much as one can be a fangirl of a museum)
Regnault initially represented this Italian model as an African woman, but later enlarged the canvas at the bottom and right and transformed it into a representation of Salomé. She is shown after having danced for her stepfather, Herod Antipas, governor of Judaea. The platter and knife allude to the reward she claimed for her performance: the severed head of John the Baptist.
For years, the painting was considered a masterpiece of contemporary art.
This is actually the icon for my original tumblr; I guess I was in a sassy phase when I picked it, because this Salome doesn't seem to have any fucks to spare.
I also like Salome because she's hanging in the Met right now. You can go through the recently renovated Islamic Wing (awesome) which you can get to by taking the elevator outside of the Greek atrium (gr9), or by going up the main stairs (popular photo op) and turning left; one hallway takes you through some rotating exhibition space (a recreated Spanish-ish-- wait I don't know, actually) courtyard to your left, the sculpture courtyard to your right through some windows (have fun finding that without a map, HA) and the other takes you through ancient stuff including the badass (my opinion) lamassus.
Anyway, so you get to the long, light-filled hallway (well, all hallways with light are light-filled unless they're dark, BUT YOU GET WHAT I MEAN). In front of the galleries in which hang the Renoirs, Monets, van Goghs, etc (I'll save that for another post), Salome is hanging out in the middle with some other very large paintings tauntingly, as if saying, "I'm a painting hanging in the Met. I have my own postcards. What the fuck have YOU done today?"
And because I'm really weird I usually think back, "Not a goddamn thing, you magnificent bitch," and then walk past to see the Impressionists.
A bit of a placeholder while I figure out what I'm doing with this. My name's Bex, I'm known elsewhere as a fan of crimson nuptials and butterballs named Walda. This is not a fandom tumblr per se, though I don't think I can keep out mentions of pop culture.
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