I'm Nicole and I live in DC. I'm a writer, knitter, cat lady, social media lover, nonprofit worker, and beer and food enthusiast. Want to know a little more about me? 
Kids do the darnedest things on the Metro. I ride it every day yet would never think to do the things they do: twirling around on the railings, pretending to surf, memorizing all the stops on Red Line, and even sitting on the floor.
Most of the time I only notice the bad kids. I’m, admittedly, one of those people that isn’t even close to having kids, yet I think I know how my kids would behave in that situation. When I take a step back and realize I’m criticizing a stranger, I feel guilty.
Then, I think about it a little more. Would I call my son Gigi Wolfboy on a crowded subway car? Would I allow him to go up to people and sniff them and growl at people who backed away? No. I wouldn’t. And, yes, that’s an assumption I can make without having children.
Occasionally, I wrestle with the feelings of wanting to yell at their parents for letting them do the things they do at inappropriate times and wanting to get up and join them because I’ve never had that much fun on the metro and I’ve probably ridden it more than a thousand times.
Tonight, I saw the most well-behaved children I’ve ever seen on the metro. One girl was sitting on the floor because the train was empty, but had the appropriate impulse to get up and find a seat when it started to get crowded. They were having a polite conversation, holding on to the railings without letting go, and talking to their mother in a normal voice. Yes, they were all siblings and they didn’t hate each other and they weren’t yelling or doing anything obnoxious. They were so good, I almost wanted them to do something bad so I remembered they were kids again.
I’m hitching on to the Twilight bandwagon next week. I resisted the urge for a long time until a coworker offered me a spare ticket to see the 9PM showing of Twilight and the midnight showing of Twilight: New Moon at my favorite DC theater, The Uptown.
Thinking about the movie reminded me of a knitting project I’ve been wanting to start for a long time: Bella’s Mittens posted on Subliminal Rabbit.
It’s been nearly 8 months since I’ve had a completed, finished object (FO) and I finally dug through my yarn piles to find enough yarn to make these gloves with. I settled on a green to match my last FO – my Unemployment Scarf.
I’ve only completed one thus far, but I’m hoping to have the other one done before the movie premiere. Yes, I’m going to be that girl. No, I don’t really like the movies that much. The gloves are just really awesome.
Take a looksy:
Filed under: The District | Tags: brooklyn, cspan, dc, health care, politics
I used to think of myself as “cool.” When I lived in Brooklyn, I was surrounded by a sea of much cooler people who knew it and constantly showed you just how lame you were.
I lived in D.C. for five years before moving to Brooklyn and never realized how much D.C. culture had worn off on me. For the longest time, I’d do things that I thought were normal, but Brooklyn people didn’t get…
I waited for people to de-board the train before I got on.
I’d go straight home after work instead of go to two happy hours, a concert, and stumble home.
I talked politics regularly.
I had hobbies outside of work.
While these habits seem normal and healthy, they were very un-Brooklyn. I almost always got home at a reasonable hour and kept up with all my television shows. Also, every Sunday, I was basically unreachable because it was football day. Toward the end of my stay in Brooklyn, I slowly started to change my habits and started going out more and more.
Now that I’m back in D.C., I notice myself quickly falling back into my old D.C. habits. I won’t go out on Thursday nights because it’s Must See TV on NBC (!!!). I vow to clean my apartment every Sunday, but wind up watching the Redskins lose instead. I’m also home every night by 6 or 6:30… if I go to happy hour, I’m home by 8 (in New York, I didn’t even get off work til 7).
Last night, Saturday night, I promised myself I would go out and do something. A friend was having a party in Virginia, other friends were out and about in the city, and there were plenty of movies playing that I wanted to see.
Instead, I stayed home.
What does one do at home on a Saturday night when nothing’s on but Law and Order reruns you saw during their original airings?
Watch the House of Representatives approve the health care reform bill.
Yeah, I’m 23. I shouldn’t be doing that. And I know it. The funny thing is, I wasn’t the only one who did it. Based on my Twitter and Facebook feeds, I was not the only person I know who stayed home to geek out with CSPAN (although, I might’ve been the only one who teared up a little).
Only in D.C. can I get away with these uncool behaviors and I like it.
Filed under: The Internet
Breaking up is hard to do. Really. It’s a song title for a reason.
My former boyfriend and I were together for nearly three years before I ended the relationship about a year and a half ago. We kept talking for another month until I cut off all communications one day after a fight.
For the last little bit of our relationship, he lived in California while I lived in DC and much of our relationship happened online. He’d email me in the middle of the night while I was sleeping and I’d email him in the morning when I woke up. Then, on those rare occasions when we were both sitting at our respective computers at the same time, we’d gchat for hours.
At that point, I was barely on Facebook (only checking it when someone friended me which rarely happens because I’m highly unsearchable), didn’t have a MySpace profile, and Twitter wasn’t big yet.
A friend in New York was on tour with a band and offered her two-week sublet to me so I took the opportunity to go on a vacation. While on vacation, I wound up finding a job and an apartment and uprooted my life from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. to Brooklyn.
Just a few months later (then the height of the economic crisis until about a month later when it got worse again), I got laid off. When I was laid off in April, I really got back into social media… mostly because I finally had the time to.
I also saw rebuilding my personal brand as an opportunity to get a job in social media and I slowly started joining/rejoining various social networks that I hadn’t kept up with in years. Most of the social media platforms have features in which you can import contacts from your email and quickly have a large list of followers before you even get started. This is excellent for people looking for a lot of their friends to new online network. However, this is not so excellent for people who haven’t talked to their boyfriends in 9 months.
When I joined Twitter, he was the first person recommended to me based on my email records. I also regularly get friendly “reminders” to join his network on LinkedIn or become his friend on Facebook because we have multiple mutual friends. Now that Facebook has expanded beyond college students, I’m getting this with a lot of friends from high school and middle school as well.
I’m not really sure how to make this stop … other than to email friends constantly to make them appear at the top of my “suggested friends” list whenever I join a new social network or block him from every social media platform I join. All I know is, when Neil Sedaka wrote “Breaking up is Hard to Do,” I don’t think he envisioned just how difficult it might become in the future.
Despite the lack of regular posting, I’m constantly thinking about my blog and where it should go.
I really feel every blog should have a theme, a mission, a purpose and I haven’t had one in a while. It’s tough because, in the blogosphere, everyone’s an “expert” on everything. I don’t claim to be an expert on anything, even the potential topics covered in my blog.
So if I’m not an expert, why should I blog? Yet another question I’ve been struggling with lately.
I got an amazing compliment from my boss this evening saying that people have mentioned I have a great “voice” and that I’m a strong writer. To hear that is highly encouraging and makes you want to act. Now.
I bought the URL nicoleindc.com because it was almost too easy to do it with WordPress. And then I thought, “So, what do I have to say about DC?”
It took me a long time to think about that and make a decision as to what I’d cover in this blog and I think I’ve finally got it.
Stay tuned…
