My apartment is all packed up and I'm ready to head out of DC tomorrow morning. The internet in my apartment was disconnected today, but no one's forcing me to stay home, and I thought you all might like another blog post before I leave, and I might like a coffee, so here I am at Starbucks. This past week has been hard but enjoyable. On Monday night, I met up with Emily in Petworth for happy hour and then dinner in Columbia Heights. We had had brunch the day before, but there's always more to say when the drink specials are as good as they are at DC Reynolds. I have some new opinions that I'm testing out on a few people, so we talked about those, and spent a good deal of time eavesdropping on the couple at the table behind us at dinner (our ears pricked up when the man said, "Well, I used to be an anarchist, but I don't talk about that too much anymore"). Emily will be at school for library science in Boston starting in August, so I at least have the comfort of knowing that we weren't going to continue hanging out even if I had stayed in DC. Plus, Emily has lots of friends in Minneapolis, and I've got family and friends in Boston and here, so hopefully we'll be seeing each other in one of those places before too long.
On Wednesday night I went to a significantly more expensive happy hour at POV on top of the W Hotel. I met Lyssa there, and we (well, mostly I) gawked at the view while we talked about what we've been up to since we saw each other last, who's moving to DC, and a few things I trust I won't be able to talk about with folks in Fargo, like what it's like to date a member of the Secret Service.
On Thursday, I had lunch with a friend from high school, Elizabeth (I know a lot of people named Elizabeth) at a ramen restaurant in Chinatown (Teresa, if you're looking for a good ramen place, I'd recommend Daikaya). Elizabeth is a cook and is planning to go to graduate school in food science, so I always let her pick the restaurant. It's funny the way it strikes me with certain people and not others that it will be a long time before I see them again, if I ever do, and I had that thought as I was saying goodbye to Elizabeth. But, like I've been trying to convince myself, you can't be friends with everyone forever. Maybe my strategy for Fargo will be not to make friends with anyone so that I won't be sad to leave when I do. I'll have to play it by ear.
Anyhow, Thursday is also the last day of the week a lot of people in my office work, so in the afternoon, after Andrew and I had gone out for our last Starbucks date, there was a goodbye happy hour for us at the bar across the street from our building. I was presented with a poster with messages from everyone in the division (best message, from Peter: "You did a heckuva job, Amanda"), as well as a gift certificate to an independent bookstore in Fargo. The next day I was also treated to lunch by the office. We went to Busboys and Poets at Andy's suggestion. I love Busboys and Poets, but I've eaten there so many times in the past three weeks that I'm a lot less worried than I was about missing it. After lunch I signed my last declaration and went to everyone's office to say goodbye. I kept it together until I dropped my badge off at Headquarters, and then had a good cry in the ladies' room. It's time for me to move on, but the FTC was so much more than a job to me, and the people I worked around were so much more than colleagues.
Tonight I'll be having vegan soul food for dinner with Amy and Nabina (don't think I'll be able to find too much of that in North Dakota), then drinks at Hill Country with Ellen and Diana from choir, and then probably just a lot of crying, honestly, with Rachel, who's visiting from North Carolina. Then I move out tomorrow morning, and head to Cleveland where I'm meeting my mom in the afternoon. I'll try to have an update for you the next time I have internet. Till then, wish me luck!
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