Day 35

We've been out of our house and living in hotels -- one in Foggy Bottom and one in Alexandria -- for more than a month now. Some days I feel a darkness that's hard to break even with the kind attentions of friends, who may be more than ready to have us gone. That's even as the possibility of one more rousing happy hour cheers the drinkers in the group.

I try to take comfort in the drop-dead gorgeousness of our fair city in the meantime. If you sit on the left-hand side of the Yellow or Blue line as it rounds the bend north to National Airport, you can catch a glimpse of the Capitol and the Washington Monument on the other side of the Potomac over the rounded roof of the airport, and you can't help but think again, what a beautiful city. And Alexandria gets prettier with each brick-lined block I wander down.

But I want to get on with my life. I know the breakfast buffet at the Marriott by heart, I'm sick to death of coin-operated laundries, and I'd like to live in an apartment with more than one room.