BUEN VIAJE!

It has been a week since I interviewed with the Los Angeles Chamber. I'm fairly relaxed and I''m trying not to think about it too much. But I am very excited about returning to LA.

I'm a hobo. I can't stay in one city for too long or I would get bored. Since moving back to DC in 1998, I've had a good run. But I am bored at my job and the city. As the old saying on Capitol Hill goes, once you stop being excited about working on the Hill, it's time to go. I stop enjoying my work a few years ago. Right now I feel like how Brad Penny looks like in this picture.... mad all the time (and I'm not sure I know exactly why I'm mad). The rest of the time I just don't give a shit. I feel like my existence in DC is without purpose, without taste or real pleasure. It's like I'm braindead.

Moving to a "transitional neighborhood" also makes me want to move out of DC. Although Mt. Vernon Square is 100 percent better than Shaw, Jennifer and I still do not enjoy it. Both of us still face daily/weekly/monthly insults of a racial nature, and our cars are still getting broken into (twice in 18 months). Walking Jack and Missouri down the street is an exercise in frustration because of the amount of trash and chicken wing bones we have to manuver through. I know that's better than Shaw (5 times in one year for me and I believe 3 times in one year for Jennifer's car), but that is not saying much.

So on I go dreaming about moving back to Los Angeles. I busy myself trying to network and put myself in a position to get a decent job in LA. In the meantime, I hate being in DC.

On the other hand, I hate being a Dodgers fan from afar. I'm relegated to watching the games on the Internet, and checking the scores on the LA Times and Dodgers websites. So far, this season has been been a bust. At exactly the halfway mark of the season, my boys in blue are 7.5 games out of first in the NL West. They are showing no signs of catching up to the lowly Padres, who currently occupy first place in the conference. Against the hated Giants tonight, it's the top of the fifth and the Dodgers are already down 5-0. I can only hope that they turn the night and the season around soon. But looking at the photo of Brad Penny getting tossed from the game last night, I fear we're not going to make it.