Last night, went to a party announced at last notice. Unbeknownst to me and a couple of friends, everyone was supposed to be dressed punk. We couldn't be more square—I was sporting a blue polo shirt. My friends fled. I stayed. I stood out like a sore thumb. Had a decent time anyway, even with sweat drops streaking down my face (from humidity, not humiliation). Somebody told me I was the only bona fide article in the party because to be a punk is not to conform. LOLOLOLOL %$&#%$&#^%@*&##* BLAH!!!

Last night, I chatted with a guy from KY who worked at Aspen deaf camp during the summer. He said kids from rich families went there and he was stunned by how they were jaded and savvy beyond their years.

That reminded me of a kid at KDES when I was subbing. She was a Korean, in 6th or 7th grade. A rich family from VA (The Martins) adopted her. Turned out Josh, the KY boy, somehow knew the family and said they owned a part of the Cincinnati Reds (?!). Anyway, the Martins had about 30 kids at a time and bought an entire floor of a high-rise Condo building as their home.

There were lots of "siblings" that were older than that girl and they didn't hestitate to introduce her to the world of debauchery. In one class, she piped up to me about partying with her brothers, getting hammered on shots of vodka and puffing the magic dragon. She was a coupla years away from HS. Moments like this make me feel like I grew up in the 1950s.

Josh said, "Now I know how my parents felt when bringing me up."

At this rate, our grandkids'll be hiding pipes by the time they're 18 months old.

Watch "Kung Fu Hustle". You've never seen a martial arts flick like this one, trust me.

Seems like every summer camp has its own drama. My cousin told me what transpired at the camp he worked at, worthy of a groundbreaking HBO series (btw I take back what I said about 6' Under...it became less funny as it went on). For instance, this camper with severe ADHD hit a staffer's head with a big rock. He got sent home.

Makes me wonder what's an ADHD-only camp like.

'Tis a Saturday night and I'm stuck home alone because my housemate hasn't returned my key and he's been out all day. It's moments like this that make me hate people without pagers with temporary passion.

Saw a lot of old faces lately thanks to Gallaudet's summer programs for professionals. None of them older than Terry's—we've been friends since the first grade. He's newly married, living in Italy and running a tour guide business, Hands on Italia. During its first 2 years, he felt it was going nowhere and mulled about a new line of work. Now it's doing so well he's thinking about expansion. Taking bunches of people to the best spots and the finest restaurants in Italy and making money off it—he's certainly living a good life.

When we were 8 years old, both of our families moved into a neighborhood called Woodstream. It was wild having my best friend living just a few houses away. There were also other deaf friends in the same neighborhood—about 5 less than 500 feet away. So growing up I didn't feel like I missed much by not having siblings. It's only until adulthood that I began to appreciate the value of them: having somebody to make fun of your parents with.

The sun has set on the Woostream era. Everyone has migrated south except for my parents.

The heydays:


Glenn, Terry and I making a tunnel @ my house.



The next door neighbors were an elderly German couple. They worked at Library of Congress before retiring. They'd give me surplus books from the library. Very nice people. I like their backyard—German industriousness at work. They take a lot of trips to Germany and always return with Teutonic chocolates. But flash a little Nazi salute to them, just for a split second? Boom, 20 years of good neighborly relations up in the smoke. :)

All kinds of people are vital to the civilization's survival. We like to criticize certain types of people, such as closed-minded people. But if everyone's so open to new experiences, we wouldn't have farmers, janitors and guys to scrape gum off the seats at movie theaters. Everyone'd want to travel the world and rise to new heights. We need xenaphobic drones for the most mind-numbing tasks. They're our worker bees.

My last night here before my life goes back to DC. Farewell to having a clean kitchen sink.

Yesterday at Pourhouse, a friend and I met an earnest girl who's learning sign language at Gally. I wasn't in mood for a "how do you like Gally so far?" convo with a stranger signing haltingly so I opted to concentrate my efforts on convincing her that the campus was designed by a 19th century pornographer. I told her if she looked at the layout from a high elevation, say the Washington Monument, a female nude would be visible. The circular road in front of KDES and another circular road in the back formed a set of racks and so forth. My friend went along and tossed in some details of his own making. We told her that Edward Gallaudet didn't know about it until it was too late.

She was skeptical until she asked a random guy what kind of picture the campus formed. The jig was almost up but I managed to give him the correct answer just outside her "eyeshot" and he accidentally formed the perfect "you didn't know this?!" face as he said, "woman."

That did it for her. You should've seen her face.

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