and

besides the cicadas and the eyeball-scorching heat, it was actually a pretty good weekend. tommy mentioned that friday night, we went to a party on top of the cairo, thrown by jen callaghan and a few other people that i vaguely knew. the party was fun, and the view from the cairo is unbeatable, but tommy's bullet by bullet description of the dc-ness of it all captures it perfectly. i need me some more arlington barbeques or a night at the galaxy hut. actually, i think my roommates and i plan on throwing a summerfest once the cicadas and their rotting nastiness are gone from this world -- late june? we'll see.

saturday night, becca and naomi and i ventured out to clarendon grill, expecting a dj so we could dance the night away. however, we instead encountered some terrible ass-clown band that covered like, linkin park, so we hightailed it out of there and across the street to mister day's, a sports bar/club i'd never been to before. it was fun, and there was dancing, but it was skank-filled to the brim.

at one point, i got tired of dancing to usher's "yeah" for the third time, so i leaned over a table to chat with the girls. i glanced back at the dance floor over my shoulder and noticed a young guy looking at me, and i was all like, oh great, back off you whippersnapper, i've had enough guys trying to get on this tonight, uh huh, so just turn away. then the guy taps me on the shoulder, and turns out it's my young cousin (with a new unrecognizable hairstyle). great. i felt officially ANCIENT and LAME. though it was nice to see him, because he's a sweetheart. apparently he's partying the summer away in northern virginia before heading to ut-austin for engineering grad school.

around 1am, becca and naomi drop me off at tommy's house, where's he spent the night with mark zuckerman playing some retarded assassin video game on the xbox live or whatever it's called when you can come together with other nerds across the world to play the same video game simultaneously. thing is, the porch light's on, and now there are like, oh, FIVE THOUSAND cicadas covering his front door. i screech around outside for about 10 minutes, while mark and tommy do nothing to help me because they are too busy losing at their video game (they make lousy assassins), but eventually tommy holds the door open for me and i hunker down, run up the sidewalk, and make a flying leap through the door. i felt like i should have gone into a rolling sommersault afterwards, but instead just kind of landed awkwardly, skidding into the coffee table.

on sunday, i decided to go to the gym, where i ran four miles. there's nothing for motivation like realizing that in six days, you're going to the beach with a bunch of other bloggers/people with digital cameras, and one way or the other, unflattering pictures of you in a bathing suit ARE going to end up on the internet.

later that afternoon, i participated in a time-honored tradition: Helping Your Boyfriend Shop for Clothes. it was great; we ended up at tyson's mall about 50 minutes before closing time, so the pressure was on and we were able to make all sorts of split-second decisions. should tommy buy those green cargo shorts or the flat front khakis? THERE'S NO TIME -- GO WITH THE CARGOS! leave the khakis behind! GO, GO, GO!

so, in an incoherent nutshell, that was the weekend.

and i just heard from my dad to tell me that my brother lost his wallet and all of his credit cards and IDs in hawaii, and is now on a submarine somewhere in the pacific. awesome.