I recently came across this interesting car with camouflage paint job on a morning dog walk.
I recently came across this interesting car with camouflage paint job on a morning dog walk.
One of Washington D.C.’s newest monuments is “Black Lives Matter Plaza,” a portion of 16th Street Northwest closest to the White House.
A new mural of sorts recently materialized in NoMa.
The rooftop dog park is one of the best things about my apartment building.
I briefly started ordering fresh-cut flowers a few months ago — I’m working from home so I finally have time to enjoy them, right?
Posters in the neighborhood are very common — movie advertisements, parking restrictions, political art, lost pets, protest statements, cries for help, etc.
However, this morning, we came across something new — a “stolen bike” poster.
Like everyone else, I took up baking since this great work from home experiment. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that I purchased a mini-muffin pan and regular-sized cups until I started mixing…
The biodiversity in my apartment has taken a hit lately. One of the few plants that I haven’t managed to kill are these Haworthia succulents.
New artwork is sprouting across the District lately, including here in Ivy City.
I went to downtown D.C. this morning to take a look at the aftermath of last night’s George Floyd protests. I was early enough to be among the first sightseers watching bewildered store owners surveying the damage.
Drag Race has been my favorite TV show for over a decade and marked important parts of my life so far.
Face masks are not the only thing junking up the neighborhood lately — COVID-19 physical distancing drastically increased the number of abandoned rental scooters and bikes littering the area.
I did some outdoor exploring around Northeast D.C. this weekend and came across this interesting mural by Baltimore-based illustrator Jasjyot Singh Hans.
The murals are along of the Metropolitan Branch Trail in NoMa — a biking and walking trail along the train tracks between NoMa and Catholic University.
Apparently this mural was added last year as part of the Pow! Wow! DC mural festival, which is responsible for many of the noteworthy murals in the area.
The District’s stay-home order has done more than normalize telecommuting and transform buying cleaning supplies into a scavenger hunt. It also creates an incentive for me to frequent different businesses in Northeast D.C. for pickup and delivery.
My new favorite spots are typically within a 45 minute one-way walk from my apartment. This is the ideal distance for weekday dog walks before and after work. (This is also coincidentally the maximum safe distance from apartment toilet since most places are closed).
After about 2 months, the coronavirus restrictions still do not feel normal, but I’m getting used to things.
In the Netflix movie Bird Box, people walk outside with blindfolds because of the threat of invisible supernatural creatures that drive people to commit suicide. We find out quickly that some mentally disturbed individuals are immune from the creatures. These characters run around killing people by forcing them to take off their eye-coverings.
This means that Sandra Bullock spends two hours dodging invisible creatures and serial killers.
Although there aren’t serial killers stalking my neighborhood yet, things have taken on a Bird Box-like feel lately.
The past month of working from was less disruptive and far more mundane than I expected.
I used to work from home full-time at Thomson Reuters, so I am used to the early morning dog walks and days spent in front of the monitor. The time that I save commuting is mostly lost to an increased number of webinars and emails, but the fridge access is worth it.
The Coronavirus spread rapidly across the country last week, so my firm announces Friday that we can work from home starting Monday.
I grab my equipment from the office over the weekend and start the “social distancing” experiment along with most of the city on Monday morning. Working from home reminds me of my prior gigs, but there are major differences this time, including unusually heavy email traffic and the inability to work from coffee shops.
However Monday turns out to have more than emails and bored dogs in store for me…
My apartment building has a shuttle to the NoMA Metro Station during the weekdays, which means that I pass the “Rain” art installation almost every day. Rain is a series of changing lights that illuminate the underside of the M Street NE underpass near Red Bear Brewing.
State and local tax attorneys from across the country recently came to Washington D.C. for the Council On State Taxation (COST) annual conference. The conference was held at a hotel downtown, but the reception was in Chinatown at the National Portrait Gallery. A group of us went over after the work day, and it was a fun time.
After the COST conference reception, my firm held a client-only private dinner across the street at Dirty Habit in Hotel Monaco. There was a ton of food, but this was my favorite part: