Gotta get in at least one May post

Funnily enough, one of my coworkers/friends was the first to give me a hard time about not posting on here recently.  And it was even at his going-away party - I mean really, he took the time out of his busy shot-taking schedule to note that I hadn't written in far too long.  So clearly, as a farewell gift, I must write again.  Al, this one is for you...

To be honest, I can hardly remember what has passed since last I wrote.  Perhaps it is easiest if I work from most recent and work my way backwards in time?  It won't be thorough, but it'll be the best I've got.

So let's start with Memorial Day weekend:

• Maggie-Moo spent Thursday through today (Monday) with the Spousé family in Falls Church, VA, as I had long ago promised to attend Morgan's wedding in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Which means that she spent basically five days with (the new) Grace (the mildly anti-social dauschaund) and Julie (the amazing Veezlo who Flashdances to Maniac), her newest best friends in the world.  We've had a couple of doggie dates with the extended Spousé clan and it has done wonders for Maggie's anti-social behavior, so when my regular dog-sitters a) decided to get married in the OBX, and b) flew to the midwest for the long weekend to visit a sick relative, my first thought went to Grace, Julie and their ever-pleasant owners.  Lucky for me, they love dogs and seem to think Maggie is cute (I didn't contradict them until after they had said "yes," of course).  Maggie is now back home, but I think she already misses being with the Spousé family - she is just lying on the floor, all dejected, with her head between her paws...

• As I alluded in the previous paragraph, I had a wedding to attend in the Outer Banks this weekend.  I had a plane ticket, which I forewent to drive down with Anthony, whose plane had plans other than to actually fly him into Norfolk (the closest airport to the wedding).  He got into DC late Thursday night and shortly after noon on Friday, we were on our way.  For those of you who, like my mom, are worried that I may have had some sort of emotional breakdown upon seeing Anthony for the first time since we broke up and stopped living together, let me just reassure you that all is fine.  And it turned out to be really nice to actually know someone else at the festivities other than the bride and groom.  I find that at weddings, most people have been friends since the beginning of time and they aren't using such an occasion to make new friends so I am often the odd man out.  And even though Anthony was one of the groomsmen (actually, he was basically the ONLY groomsman; the other "groomsman" was actually the best man) and sat at the head table with the newly wedded couple, it was nice knowing that I didn't have to spend the whole event forcing my conversation on random friends and family members I will likely never see again.  (Heck, if I've gone this long without ever meeting them, it's looking likely that it will be a while before we meet again.)  But it was a pretty good use of my diplomatic skills - talking intelligently to strangers will definitely come in handy at the cocktail parties and other social events I'll be required to attend as part of my job in Buenos Aires.  In any case, the wedding was quite beautiful - Morgan and Erin prepared their own vows of love, which were deeply touching, and I wish them nothing but happiness forever and ever amen.  If anyone deserves a happily ever after married life, it is my friend Morgan.

• My stepdad was also in town for the long weekend, staying with my sister Preyasha in Glover Park.  As Anthony and I left the wedding Saturday night and immediately hopped in the car to drive back to DC thereafter, I was back in the District by 3AM on Sunday morning.  Which clearly meant that I had time to meet with them for dinner at my favorite neighborhood restaurant, Mandu.  I don't get to see my family nearly enough, so it is always good to get together over a meal and catch up on life.  The late Sunday night latte and creme brulee wasn't so bad either. 
• And a holiday weekend wouldn't be complete without something going disasterously wrong with the condo: last weekend, a leak from our apartment started damaging the apartment below ours and all our tenants have had quite the week.  It took until Friday to determine that the original leak might have been caused by the A/C unit freezing (lack of freon), then thawing and dropping condensation all over the floor of the utility closet (turns out there was a crack in the catch pan underneath the water heater) - and moreover, that our five-year-young water heater had a crack in it.  So new freon was added to the A/C unit and the entire water heater was replaced on Friday morning.  On Sunday, I received a call from the owner of the downstairs condo who proceeded to inform me that our apartment was leaking again.  Many angry phone calls later (to my disastrously incompetent management company and to others), we finally got a plumber to go back in and check on the A/C and water heater.  Turns out that the plumber is also disastrously incompetent: no one thought to check to make sure the condensate drain wasn't clogged, so things had backed up and more water leaked all over our downstairs neighbors' utility closet.  The plumber went and took care of that this morning and now all is well.  Well, well-ish anyway.  The next step is to determine if we actually needed to shell out money for a new water heater in the first place.  And to figure out who will actually be paying for all the damage to the downstairs unit.  But, as far as I'm concerned, the most pressing part of this issue is now past and Anthony and I can now move forward in pursuing a different management company - i.e. one that actually returns our phone calls.

So that was this weekend.  Last week I also said goodbye to at least 3 of my Foreign Service classmates - Stacey, who left us for Sierra Leone; Al, who hasn't quite left yet but will be off soon for Belize; and Max, my resident carpool driver, who left us for Nigeria.  It has been anti-climactic, to say the least.  Going through orientation and training is very similar to summer camp, wherein you're with a small group of people day-in and day-out, from the beginning of the work day to the late-night end of happy hour... Even on the weekends, there is a party, a tour, a hike, a dinner, whatever.  And then people just randomly (or so it seems to me) start to drift away to their overseas destinations.  We've had friends leave for Dubai, Hong Kong, Mexico City, South Korea, Jamaica, Brazil...our colleagues are all over the world these days.  It's hard to believe that we're not all still here, or even that we've only known each other since February.  What a wild, wonderful world the Foreign Service can be.

Ran out of time - gotta go get Chasity some lunch!