My birthday trip to DC

I had a great time in DC, despite the oppressive heat. And it's funny cuz everyone said that while I was there - that it was actually cooler then than it had been recently. I was like, huh? Cooler? Once you figured in the humidity it felt like it was 120 degrees. How on earth could THAT be cooler?

Livin out here for the past seven years, I forgot just how freakin hot & swampy DC gets in the summer. And it's like the heat has been stickin around longer and longer lately. Back in the day, by Labor Day there was a hint of chill in the air, and we hadta take jackets w/ us to school. Not anymore. We didn't even need a jacket at night. Global warmin, indeed.

This time around I managed to see several of my cousins, my uncle, my aunt. One of my cousins threw a cookout and we had a ball!

I also got to see one of my best friends since 7th grade. She made it over to the house the day before I left. She still looks the same. It was great seein her.

I didn't get a chance to see my Grandmother, though. I wanted to but since I didn't have a rental car, I was at the mercy of other drivers in the house, and somehow we never made it down there. She was really lookin forward to seein me, and I her. I'll have to muster up enough courage to give her a call and apologize.

The day I left my folks made me some seafood. Fried soft-shell crab, shrimp, fish - but cuz I wasn't that hungry I just at the softshell crab (Mmmmm) and the shrimp. A coupla days earlier they made some deeeeeeelicious fried Channel Bass. Mmmmm, that's some good fish.

I got absolutely NO writin done while I was there. First off, it was too freakin hot to do much except sit around and practice shallow breathin, and also I was barely able to get online. See, my lil bookie (my nephew) couldn't remember the security key which I needed to get online usin my laptop (wireless signal). So I hadta resort to usin some neighbor's signal, which barely registered one bar. So it was rare that my lil laptop was able to get online. So there was no way I was able to finish writin our horror piece (it's currently stored online). Guess it's just as well, cuz the heat was so oppresive that God only knows what I woulda added to the script. LOL!

My lil bookie is drivin by himself now! He got his license in June and he's been drivin everywhere since. I wanted to take some pics of him drivin, but he didn't want to. He's actin all shy in front of the camera now, but when he was a lil kid you couldn't keep him away from the camera. Heck, he even asked if he could be in the pic w/ me - the pic that I took for my license. I thought that was so cute. Now he acts like he doesn't like takin pics. The joys of teenagehood.

Been chattin w/ this cool cat that I'm diggin. He's from Atlanta but he lives out here in Cali now. Been out here as long as I have. He's handsome, charmin, intelligent (he recently obtained his doctorate). Coinkeedeenkally, he was home in ATL durin the same time that I was home in DC. More than once, I wondered how long it'd take to drive from ATL to DC :-)

We spoke almost every night. Incidentally, he's the inspiration for my puttin up the video, "Bed", by J. Holiday. And also Raheem DeVaughn's poetic stuff. In short, he's fire.

Here's a link to some pics durin my trip.

http://tinyurl.com/2ph5cy

Mariama