Living in the nation's capital

A dozen things I've learned while living in the nation's capital

It hasn't quite been a culture shock for me, but it sure has been an adjustment. I no longer have the life, the friends or the car I had in St. Pete. I can no longer wear flip-flops outside, nor can I pop around the corner to my neighborhood Starbucks and cozy up with a nice book in a warm atmosphere.

All of those things (and more) are trade-offs for my new, amazing job in an unbeatable location. I can even see the White House from my bus stop near work! I'm hoping that all the rest (the friends and the "life") falls into place at some point in the near future.

Here are a dozen things I've learned so far while living in D.C.:

1. Walking more slowly than 4 miles per hour on a busy street will not effect dirty looks, and possibly pain.
2. People make physical activity a part of their routine; taking a 3-mile walk home from work is not unusual.
3. No one is single; everyone has a significant other or a rebound.
4. Everyone has a BlackBerry.
5. Brunch is the most celebrated meal of the day, especially on weekends.
6. Good customer service is almost never a priority, not even at Starbucks.
7. People are nicer than you might assume, once you approach them first.
8. Buses and metros are actually sardine cans where no one talks to anyone else, but instead listens to an iPod or plucks forcefully away at a BlackBerry.
9. Everyone takes public transportation, even (and especially) "regular" people.
10. People are usually quite dressy and fashion-forward.
11. There is a grocery chain that is as good as (but by no means better than) Publix; who would have known?
12. Supermarket food isn't ridiculously expensive.


More to come, if I'm ever up to it. ;-)

Two pet peeves I've recently seen.

Roommate has two m's, not one!

Your is possessive; you're is a contraction for you are. Really, it isn't that difficult to learn the difference.

Prime example of yesterday's entry...

Robbery suspects met victims through craigslist (or, according to them, Craig's List). This is a pretty creepy article. I'm not terribly interested in getting robbed, so I suppose that means I should be careful when I meet people from craiglist.

"Craig's List": A common misconception

When I get bored, I tend to spend time on Craigslist.org scouring the classifieds. I find it fun, and I like to compare apartment rates to what I am currently spending. This really has nothing to do with my point, though.
I know for sure that the Web site is Craigslist.org, but what about the actual name? I had always assumed it was just "Craigslist," sans apostrophe and only one word. But lately, I've been seeing the words "Craig's List" so many times I began to question my own grammatical accuracy. So what was the real answer?
It turns out I have been mostly right. After a thorough investigation of the site (which is not sloppily constructed or grammatically inaccurate), I have never seen anything other than "craigslist." The "factsheet" section of the site explicitly answers my question.

Here is my conclusion:

Because the Web site, which is the truest source I can refer to, spells it "craigslist" (no apostrophe, one word, no capital letters) without fail, we must explicitly adhere to that. And, to keep with common practice, we should refer to the Web site name as "Craigslist.org" (one word, capital "c").

I have some news, but I'm not ready to spread it.

Expect for me to announce my big news in the next few days!

Let's just say inspiration is not very abundant....

Well, thank goodness for Jayant and Rajat, who have created Scrabulous look-a-like Wordscraper. While not as "scrabble-like" as Scrabble, Wordscraper is a versatile and fun alternative. Time-wasters everywhere can breathe easily once again!

A friend of mine recently e-mailed me this article about typo vigilantes being arrested for defacing an old sign at the Grand Canyon. Though I'm not quite as bold as these two men, I am with them in spirit. I'm sure a close look at the sign would make any grammarian shudder with anger/grief.

More Scrabulous-related disappointment

In an attempt to play on the Facebook Scrabble application, I foolishly persuaded myself to believe I might be able to enjoy myself. It seems that whenever I click on the "public games" section" and type in my search criteria, which I leave completely open, there is no match. Either no one wants to play this Scrabulous wannabe (that's right, I said it!), or this is just another of Facebook Scrabble's technical problems. And what's more, Facebook Scrabble makes grammatical errors! When I search for public games, this is the answer I get: "There is no match for your search criterias [sic], try again."
In conclusion, Facebook Scrabulous is not only tehnically difficult, but also grammatically stupid.