Friday

Today started a little before midnight last night upon discovering I could no longer use the internet. The ongoing problem seems to be mine alone: all night I beat my head against the digital wall (restored, cleared, defragged, and combed the event logs of my computer; tested, pinged, and IP-checked the network itself), while Sunshine's computer accessed the network just fine four feet away. My good mood crumbled early and never recovered. I tiptoed around whispering frustrated invective and softballing breakables into the overstuffed couches and stomping the carpet silently with bare feet. I took breathers on our sub-freezing slab of windy balcony. I laid in bed mad, I woke up late, and resumed my frustrations this afternoon, only louder. By the time Sunshine returned from class I needed to flee the house, so we attempted dinner and a movie in the District. We thought we'd try the cleverly named Ten Penh (at the corner to 10th and Pennsylvania Avenue, serving, I suspect, pan-Asian food). I got the bright idea to detrain at the McPherson Square stop, since that's near the Whitehouse, also famously on Pennsylvania. The Whitehouse is, of course, on the sixteen hundreds block, so we had to walk six blocks in twenty-degree city wind-tunnel to where 10th St. happens to be located, one block from the very next Metro stop down the orange line. These little growing pains are funnier when it's warmer outside. This is a short story: Fridays are not the time to straggle into the District's tony little boutique eateries without reservations. We eventually ate blessedly-nearby Texican fast food instead, finishing about eighty minutes before our movie was scheduled. So we gave up, walked the block, and came home to watch TV. Thank you Qdoba for one romantic uptown Friday night experience! [Cavin]