Reader mail

Ahhh. [Sips lemonade] This is the life.

[Seagulls fly by]

I don't even have to do anything, thanks to Ariana.

[Attendant spritzes James with Evian]

Check it.

I just wanted to take a minute to let you know that I think your weblog is great. I just discovered it the other day (at work...I have very little to do) and my jaw practically dropped since I didn't think anyone else felt the same way my boyfriend and I feel. We moved here almost a year ago from Pittsburgh as young college grads expecting to find it to be a hip, exciting, metropolitan atmosphere. Instead we have found DC to be prohibitively expensive and/or extremely impoverished - no middle ground. Therefore, our only option was to move into the suburbs (Alexandria, namely) where there is little or no excitement and it's still absurdly expensive. I work for the government, which doesn't exactly pay market rate and my boyfriend has still been unable to find squat, so he works temp jobs. DC really bites. I can say that with confidence too, since I was just visiting friends in NYC two weeks ago. Rent may be a bitch there but at least there is some kind of justification for it - and at least there is some sort of a struggling, young middle class (as opposed to the majority of young DC being populated by snotty rich college kids or ultra yuppies).

Anyway - keep up the great work. It makes me laugh and grit my teeth at the same time!

P.S. - here are a couple of my "favorite" VA plates:
1. NGGAPLZ
2. 2MANNISH
3. I GOT DIS

Amen sister girl.

You know, when I started this blog, I basically thought it would just be me bitching to myself in a public forum. And while I've had a couple people say "Hey, I like it here!... but yeah, you're still right", all the reactions I've gotten have been very positive; nobody's risen up to fiercely defend Washington as a good place to live.

Granted, they'd have to send me e-mail, which takes more work than posting a comment or something (and they'd have to figure out how to take the [at] and [dot] out of the link; that's to thwart the spambots). But still, I'm not sensing a whole lot of civic pride going on here, certainly among the blog-reading community.

Anyway, in the spirit of Ariana's e-mail, let's just put this out there right now so that it gets picked up by Google, and anyone thinking of moving here and searching around will hopefully see it:

DO NOT MOVE TO WASHINGTON, D.C. IT REALLY FUCKING BLOWS. MOVING TO WASHINGTON, D.C. IS A BAD IDEA AND SHOULD BE SHUNNED LIKE JENNIFER LOVE-HEWITT'S SINGING CAREER. THANK YOU.