35

Last Thursday I officially hit the big 3-5. It’s the midpoint of my thirties, when the pendulum of time begins its downswing toward 40. Only 15 years are left until I’m an AARP member!

I took both Thursday and Friday off work. On Thursday I spent the day at DC’s National Museum of Crime and Punishment, which was somewhat overpriced (especially in a city where so many of the museums are free) but definitely worth seeing, albeit without the loud teens (the proverbial bulls in a china shop) plowing through there on a school trip.

The America’s Most Wanted studio in the basement of the
Crime and Punishment museum. Students were
attending some sort of class in there, so I couldn’t explore.

This was followed by a far-too-rushed exploration of Artomatic, where I somehow managed to miss two entire floors. It was wonderful; I saw so many things I wanted to buy! I can't afford any of it, of course, but I do plan to keep an eye on those particular artists’ websites, with the hope of being able to buy one or two of their pieces in the future.

The view from Artomatic: rain, construction,
and the US Capitol building sheathed in smoke from a nearby factory.

In the evening I met my friend Susan for a birthday dinner at Fado, an Irish pub in Penn Quarter that I really like. All in all I’d say it was a successful, pleasant day (despite the rain)—one with a giddy undercurrent of knowing that in exactly one year I’d be tripping the light fantastic in Chernobyl and Kiev.

On Friday Susan and I tackled some DIY stuff in my condo. We laid peel and stick floors in my foyer (a slower process than it would seem, due to the corners that needed to be cut) and began the arduous process of painting my kitchen appliances with stainless steel paint. At night we went out to dinner with our friend Cynthia for my birthday. Saturday was filled with more appliance painting (I wanted layers and layers of paint on those suckers so it would last) and I miraculously managed to do all the tiling in my kitchen on my own. I wanted to do the bathroom, too, but was leery of the tile cuts involved around the toilet and decided to postpone the project.

The new floor in my foyer.

My faux stainless steel fridge. I haven’t
yet figured out what I’m going to do with that glaring
white water dispenser!

song heard most recently before posting:
Generosity—Mirah