|
| I'm usually a lot better at commemorating anniversaries, but last week marked a year since I moved back to D.C.! I couldn't believe it; it seemed like it was just yesterday that I was very excited writing this. But as of Feb. 26, I have been back in the city that educated me for one year (Feb. 28 made a year on the job, which they commemorated with a raise, PRAISE EVERYBODY HOLY!). When I finally wrote about my new Lyphe in the DMV last year, I wrote this:
"I still get a really big thrill about being able to take the train to work. Even time I pass the part when I see the Capitol on my right and RFK Stadium on my left, I smile. Most mornings I have my headphones in, but I take one out to hear them say "Welcome to the Orange Line train to Vienna, by way of downtown Washington, D.C." It puts me in the right frame of mind for my day. And when you've lived in a place where the population was 17,000, it really is the little things. Judge me if you must...lol."
A year later, all that is still true. My day's of riding the Orange line are probably limited since by the time I'm writing my "it's been 2 years back in DC" post, I'll probably be living in Montgomery County and riding the Red line to work (the things men do for women lol). Speaking of women, of course, in my first year back in the Urrea, I got back into a serious relationship with the first person I ever had a serious relationship with. That's coming up on a year too, since we went to dinner for the first the second weekend I was in D.C. She's not here right now, since she's in India (I'm going to write a post about that soon, because I'm going over there to visit her  ). But she's been such a big part of my 2nd Time Around in DC that I figured I should mention her here.
The reason I moved back to D.C. in the first, the job, has been going as well as it possibly could. I mentioned the raise already, which is only the second time I've ever heard that word in the shitty business I choose. I've been on C-Span a couple of times, and done a lot of interviews, and I've been on the front page of the paper and been told they read my stuff in the White House. I have these moments when I say, usually jokingly, that I'm a long way away from Brunswick, which is of course where my humble journey in both journalism and adulthood began. But sometimes, I completely mean it.
A running theme of this blog has been how much I wanted to be somewhere I actually wanted to be awhile. I switched my license over and registered my car in Maryland, and I know vote in Rep. Donna Edwards district, so for the first time, I'm not in Georgia on everybody's paper. That didn't really hit me until I went home and went to buy my Dad some beer in the Kroger I worked my first job in, and the cashier didn't know where my date of birth was when I handed her my license smh. When they asked me if I was relinquishing my Georgia license, a part of me wanted to say no lol. But I'm glad to have taken that step toward stability  .
I'll be back with a real update soon, but I just wanted to (belatedly) commemorate my DMV-aversary!
| | |
| I've spent a lot of time on this blog linking to posts from the past, especially since I got back from my multi-year hiatus last year. But I don't even have to look at the archives to know that I've never started one like this: My girlfriend's in India. Well, not technically. She should be about to land for her layover in Qatar (full disclosure: before this, I probably couldn't have identified Qatar on a map lol). She's scheduled to get to India later this afternoon, but for the purposes of this blog, it's safe to say she's out of my life like Michael Jackson sang, for the time being anyway. (I don't mean that literally of course, because there's Skype and e-mail and Facebook and blah and blah and blah. But y'all know I sometimes have a flair for the dramatic lol!)
Anyway, she's going to be over there, for work, for about seven months. I've known this day was coming for a couple of months, but I didn't write much about it because well, I was enjoying her company while she was still here. Of course I'm sad to see her go (if I wasn't, I probably wouldn't be writing this), but I'm really excited for her. She's going to get to see another part of the world complete free, get some good work experience (she's an auditor) and I'll get a free trip over there at some point out of the deal. I'm something of a long distance relationship veteran at this point unfortunately, so I don't need Boyz II Men to tell me how hard it is to say goodbye, but let me tell you, I'm not trying to be about that standing-at-Dulles-trying-to-get-seven-months-of-hugs-in life too many more times. Or any more times, but I digress...lol. Anyway, that sadness notwithstanding, I'm determined not to be sad the whole times she's gone. In addition to looking forward to the trip over there, which will be my first-ever international foray (good thing I got that passport for no apparent reason last year, huh?), I'm trying to look at it as more of a "I'll see you next week on Skype" than an "I'll see you in April and August." Plus, I have the benefit of living in D.C., which I'm still getting to re-know (yes, I know that's not really a word lol), so I'm going to try to get out and about a bit (I'm going to a Wizards game tomorrow, in fact). Also, I'm going to try to take trips that kept getting put off last year, like Philadelphia and New York, and even see if I can get out to L.A. to visit my LB. And I'm definitely going to NABJ in New Orleans haha!
*Update* She just e-mailed me as I was writing to tell me she's in Doha, which is the capital of Qatar (another thing I'm slightly embarrassed to say I didn't readily know off hand lol).
Anyway, now that that's settled, this is probably as good a time as any to end this post. I'll keep you guys posted on this, and many other adventures, that are going to define most of my 2012. Deuces!!
| | |
| I meant to post these a few weeks ago, and I should have done a final update on last year's #11in11 before I did, but since it has officially been 2012 for almost 12 whole days now, I should give y'all my 12-for-'12 (if you need a refresher course in how these work, go here.)
Anyway, that admittedly pitiful introduction out of the way, here's my list for this Not-As-New-As-It-was-a-Week-and-a-Half-Ago Year:
1) Start a "just in case everybody's right" fund - In 2010, three of my frat brothers got married, including my line brother. But I was single and I've known those guys since 2007 at the earliest, so that didn't hit home like it did when one of my best friends from Howard got married in 2011. One of the guys that I knew since we lived in Drew Hall. There he was, dancing with his mother, and I'm thinking "Wow, that's going to eventually be me. One day in the far off future." I generally had no comment about the timing of any such event (and I still don't, fyi!), but everyone else didn't agree that it was so far off. I'm generally such a horrible prognosticator about anything in this area, so just in case everybody's right, I should probably put a penny or two up. Because if I learned nothing else from watching my boy take the big leap it's that my financial life is sooooooooo not ready. And that bachelor party's are fun, but I digress…..LMAO! 2) Supplement my main source of income - Kind of related, but I've learned in my almost a year (I can't believe it's been that long either!) in DC that I need to make a lot more money to be as comfortable as I would like to be. I'm hoping to get some upward mobility in February, but I'm not all the way sure my job knows those are my wishes, so just in case, I need to stop talking about how great it would be teach at a community college and you know, go teach at a community college. I have a master's degree, I'm a working journalist, why can't I teach somebody's intro to communications or intro to political science class? Well for now, because I don't know how to get into that world, but I'm sure somebody in this awesome group has some ideas. Help me help myself, good people!
3) Visit the homies in Philadelphia! - OK Veronica and Erika, I have to apologize for not coming to see you guys at all in 2011. Here's part of the reason though: I've lived in the south for the past 6 years and cities are further apart there. Everybody assumes I lived near Miami because I lived in Florida, but Miami was 7 hours away from Tallahassee. Even a big city like Atlanta, the nearest major city is two states away in Charlotte (which I went to this week and is lovely by the way.) But anyway, it hasn't fully dawned me yet that it would take me as long to go from DC to Philly as it did to go from Tallahassee to Atlanta, which I did ALL THE TIME. At some point this year, I need to pop the cherry and just get in the car (or on a bus) and do it though. 4) Take at least two "just because" trips to visit my brother in New York - Same logic, different place. I'm sure you probably know that I was born in New York. Both my parents grew up in Harlem, so my whole family on both sides is pretty much there. I consider Atlanta home because I lived there from 8 to college, and somewhere along the way, I came to hate NY for awhile. I didn't go up one time when I was in DC in college. I finally went to visit the friend I was talking about in #1 in 2007 and realized it wasn't so bad to visit (though I still don't want to live there). And then I started going up for family functions every July, which was pretty cool. But it was harder to get to New York from Tallahassee (most times I had to drive 2 1/2 hours to Jacksonville, fly to Chicago or DC, then get a flight to NY). In the less time now, I can be on 125th St chillin. And my brother lives up there, so I don't really have to wait for the big family reunion to go. I should just go kick it with him. And in 2012, I will.
5) Appear in person on C-Span - If you would have told me when I wrote my 11 for '11 that I would have appeared on C-Span before the year is over, I would have probably laughed. I had only made on appearance at the time on the statewide version of Meet the Press in Florida, so I didn't even know if I was good enough for them to invite me back. Also, I didn't cover Congress. But life has a funny way of happening, and before 2011 was a quarter of the way over, I did. And I've been on Sirrus radio, stations in California, and C-Span Radio. I even did an interview with the main C-Span, but it was just a telephone interview so they put my name up. I didn't even have my headshots yet, so they couldn't put my picture up like they normally do. This year, I want them to do that, and I want to go in the studio. I don't get paid to do these (yet, b/c the point is to one day convince one of the cable networks to give me a contract to be a commentator), but they're great for my exposure. Last year, no one outside of Howard in DC knew who Keith Laing was. Now, I'm told anyway, they read my stuff in the White House. Not bad for a guy who started out writing about the sewer system in Brunswick, Ga., right? Let me do like I'm doing it for TV, C-Span! (Two points to anybody who caught the Mase reference lol!). 6) Get involved with the HU Alumni Association in either DC or PG County - As long as I've been a Howardite, I've been involved with the Alumni Association. I visited Howard as a senior in high school by going on the Atlanta chapter's bus trip, and I planned the on campus events as a student (I'm a stickler for paying it forward). Once I became Georgia Club president, they told me I had to go to their meetings when I was home because I was always asking them for money. After I graduated, I drove up from Brunswick for events like the annual picnic at the beginning of the school I helped start. When I was in grad school, I loved going to the monthly brunches they had at different restaurants around the city. But then I moved to Rattler Country, and the nearest alumni association chapter in Florida was in Miami (see #3). But now I'm back in a real city (shoutout to achieving #4 on last year's list!), and I need to go back home to my Bison fam. I just need to figure out when the DC and PG chapters meet now…lol. 7) Go to NABJ/my national frat conventions - I've been to a couple NABJs, in Atlanta, DC, Vegas and Tampa. And I'm planning to go to new year's because its in New Orleans, and have been dying to go back because I absolutely love it in New Orleans (except for the football team that plays there, but I digress for the sake of me and Darby's friendship lmao!). But in almost five cold years of being a member of my dear fraternity, I have never once managed to make it to a national convention. I missed it when it was N.O., Vegas, and Chicago. I don't even know where it is next year yet, but as long as its not in the boondocks, I'm going on, just on GP! 8) Visit my line brother in LA - A lot of traveling is populating my list this year, but my line brother moved to LA the year after I moved to Florida, and I still haven't gone out there. I actually should have probably gone when both he and my best friend lived out there, but I didn't make it. Sometime next year, I'm going to try to go. The furthest west I've been so far is Vegas, and I don't have to drive 2 1/2 hours anymore to catch a flight (though I do end up flying out of Dulles a lot, so…lol). But yeah, I'm pretty much an east coast guy and don't want stray to far from that to live, but I do want visit. Like Biggie said, "If I got to choose a coast I got to choose the East/I live out there, so don't go there/But that don't mean a negro can't rest in the West." Only he didn't say negro LMAO! 9) Convince my Dad to come to DC - If you know me at all, you probably know how close I am to my Dad. The older I get, the more appreciate all the things he has done for me - and still does for me. So it bothers me a little bit that I haven't been able to get him to DC. The rest of my family has all come. My brother came down for my housewarming. My Mom randomly came up to meet my girlfriend (though she says that wasn't the purpose of her trip). Even my sister, who I'm not at all that close to, came to see me while she was in DC for something else. But in 8 months of living here, I haven't been able to get my Dad up here yet. It's not that he doesn't want to come, he just is more particular about when he travels than anyone else I'm related to. But my Dad loves baseball, and though I've become a bigger football fan as an adult, I found out the Nationals are playing the Yankees around Father's Day for the first time ever. I'm buying two tickets as soon as they go on sale. If that's not enough, I don't know what will be!
10) Find some more male friends in DC - This seems to be a problem I have everywhere but Atlanta, which is of course where I pledged, so I have chapter brother's by the bundle. Moving to DC was completely different than anywhere else I've ever moved because I already knew people here, so I had kind of a social circle-in-waiting. About an hour after I got here, Talia and Veronica convinced me to come to a party at her house for the promise of chicken and waffles (I was hungry after 7 hours on the road!). But therein kind of lies the problem: most of my friends in DC are people I know from school. The male-female ratio being what is (2.5 to 1, not 14 or whatever to 1 btw. I wrote about it in college), my social circle skews female. Which is very cool of course. I love women as much as the next guy. I'm dating one, for goodness sakes. But sometimes you want to get together with the guys and do man things, like watch a game or something. Or have get-togethers at my house and my single female friends not be like "you don't have any guy friends?" (Not that everybody hasn't fallen over one of the few I do have, but I digress #noshade LOL!). Anyway, I'm not out here trying to make a Bromance movie, but it be good to have some fellas to kick it with too. 11) Stolen from a dear reader: Open a credit card solely for work expenses (so that my balance doesn’t get out of hand) - I completely stole this from my favorite Hamptonian (see Talia, I got it right. Though I can't believe those words just came out of my mouth lol!). But one of the biggest difference between this job and my last job is the publication I work for now is kind of a big deal. When I was in Tallahassee, I started most conversations with potential sources explaining for 10 minutes what the news service I worked for was. Now people want to talk to me a lot. Over coffee, over lunch, over whatever else it is you can name. So I expense a lot more. Typically I've just been putting it out of my primary account because I generally know what I'm going to get it back, but that life is not the one I want to leave, so I need to get a card just for that purpose. Life has a way of getting in the way of my other financial plans, but this one, I should probably try to work out. And with just five hours to spare (Editor Laing note: this was written on New Year's Eve), my #12, courtesy of another dear reader in good old Tally Ho - Join a rec basketball (or other sport) league - You've got your career going exactly the way you hoped right now. Love life seems on lock, you have plans for financial betterment and even threw some trips in there. But you want to make more male friends and it's not as easy as sharing a dunkaroo on the playground anymore. Win or lose, men bond over competition and smack talk. You're an incredibly social person and build good relationships with people, not just superficial ones. But a lot of times it comes down to location, location, location. If you're not in an environment that's conducive to creating a bromance, your amazing Keith Laingness can never be shared with the other Y chromosomes of DC. And hey, even if homeboys don't come out of it, a little cardio once a week will help us all live longer! Love ya!! So there you have it, my 12-for-'12. Y'all hold me to these, and should try it yourself if you're so inclined (it's really fun, I promise!). I'll be back with my 2011 progress report, and just more stuff, because I'm going to have a lot of time on my heads very soon (which I'll explain in my next post.)
Until then though, DEUCES!!
| | |
| I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here, but if you talked to me outside of this blog anytime in the last couple of weeks, you probably know I was really excited about going home to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. But after I got there, a funny thing happened: I was kind of over it. Last year I think time, my trip home was about reclaiming *MY* city. But this year, after spending a day with my family, and a day with the good bruhs (WHO YA WIT?!!!!!!!), I was ready to come back to D.C. Atlanta's been the center of my social city since 2005, so I never thought that would have happened. But I already told y'all here that I love D.C. equally as much as I do ATL, and the more I think about it, the more I realize the same thing happened the first time I moved to D.C.
I guess it makes sense. Outside of my family and my chapter bros (neither of which can be duplicated anywhere else lol), there's not really much I can do in Atlanta that I can't do in D.C. If this is anything other than you're very first time reading this blog, you can probably guess that I didn't feel like that was the case in my previous incarnations of home away from home. I would be driving down I-75 South (you go the same way to both Tallahassee and Brunswick until you get to Macon lol) thinking about how the social life I wanted to have was in my rear view mirror. I was usually on the phone with someone I had either had a lot of fun hanging out with or someone who understood all I wanted out of life was to love where I lived as much as I loved what I was doing. But this week, by the time the weekend came to end, all I wanted to see was Dulles Airport (I never thought I could be so excited about an airport that's basically in West Virginia LOL!). When I got on the Washington Flyer, I felt like I was back to normal. Even riding almost the entire length of the Orange Line didn't damper my DMV fever (though my train ride definitely took me through all three parts of that acronym lol).
I think part of what brought this on was that for the first time in basically ever, I didn't sleep in my own bed when I went home. (Well when I was in Brunswick, I took the bed from home with me, so I sleep on an air mattress in my old room, but work with me here lol). Anyway, this time, my 18-year-old cousin from New York is staying with my parents in Atlanta so he can try to go to school. I know what it's like to be in an unfamiliar place, clearly, and I believe we should throw a party anytime a black person gets an sort of certification from an educational institution, so I didn't want to throw him out. Though my Mom said I could. Instead, I slept in my brother's room, which was only cool because he was in the Dominican Republic for the weekend since he couldn't get Thanksgiving day off work (that's another story ENTIRELY!). But yeah, sleeping my brother's room was cool (it was better than sleeping on the floor), but it was all So. Unfamiliar.
But really, I think it was a little deeper than that. It was that other than my family and my frat brothers, Atlanta represents my past now. I spent almost 3 years in Tallahassee longing for the fun I had in grad school. Now, I don't really want to be that guy anymore. Being a super neo and being in the club every weekend was fun (especially for a guy coming from Bruswick), but I'm not really about that life anymore. Now my ideal Friday is a few drinks with well, anybody really lol, and then a Red Box movie with The Boo (yes, I capitalized that on purpose lol). Four years ago this time, at 11 o'clock on a Friday, I was getting into somebody's line at somebody's *it* club. Now at that time on a Friday night, well, let's just say I'm not trying to get into the club lol.
But really, I guess because Atlanta meant (and will always mean so much to me), it just personified my growth this weekend. It was kind of like going back to where you used to be and thinking "that was fun back then, but I wouldn't want to do that now." Kind of like living in Drew Hall. Or Searching for the Light in the Spring of 2007. Although it definitely wasn't my plan, I'll always be glad I ended up doing grad school in Atlanta, especially if my career writing about and being around national politics ends up keeping me in D.C., because I got to live there as an adult and had a ball doing it. But I guess now, it feels better to be D.C. Chillin!
DEUCES!! (from the DMV!)
| | |
| I told y'all way back here that I was basically a gagdet ho.
But the thing about being a poor black journalist not being that different than being a poor black college student is that life has a funny way of getting in the way of what I typically *want* to do. Like when someone helped themselves to a happy Homecoming with what was in the back seat of my car. But anyway, since the humbling begins of both this blog and my career, I have always tried to buy myself a big electronic toy at the end of the year. Last year it was a 160G I-pod. The year before that, it was a Wii. This year, it was a new laptop! I know you're probably thinking "so what, people buy laptops all the time these days," but I've had two cars since I brought my last computer, so work with me here...lol.
I've probably needed a new one even before the haze that was my move to be DC Chillin, but this summer, it became REALLY clear I needed a new one. First my battery stopped recognizing my charger all the time, like you know, it should. Then, my enter button stopped working. Seriously. Something got under it and it never recovered. You never realize how much you need an enter button to do on a computer until you don't have one anymore. I got to a screen one day that requiring press enter to get the computer to come back on and I had to take the key off to even have a shot for it to work. I was using html code to update my website (::shameless plug alert: KeithLaing.com  ::) because I couldn't create new paragraphs. I had to use my phone to comment on Facebook statuses because in the new set-up, you have to present enter to submit them. In short, my computing life was basically a mess. 
Anyway, because of all that, and because I'm going to be a compulsive Skyper soon, so I needed one with a camera, I decided it was time to Santa Claus myself a new computer. This would have been a pretty short blog post if that was all that had happened, but you've been reading this long enough to know my life is like a sitcom (my line brother told me recently something that happened to me was like Seinfeld). So here's where it gets funny. I decided on whim to buy the computer Saturday, which is about 2 weeks ahead of when I was planning to do. So I hadn't really been looking at any, which is how I normally make "big" purchases. Also, this was the first time I was buying one in the store, because my last two computers have been Dell's I ordered online. So anyway, I decided after going to Best Buy and finding one at what I thought was a good price to buy it. Only they didn't have anymore at the Best Buy near my house. So to get it I had to drive all the way out to Columbia, Md. (which is in a different area code for the non-DMVers in my small, but loyal, readership lol). But I was going with my girlfriend out there so she could get some stuff anyway (yes, yes, I know. Shopping with the boo, it must be serious. Yadda, yadday lol).
But anyway, all should be well that ends well, right? No, not even a little bit. As soon as I got home, I had a pretty severe case of buyers remorse because the one I got was 17 inches (which is almost the size of the TV in my bedroom lol). I was prepared to accept it being bigger than I wanted (the one I was replacing was 15 inches, so it wasn't tiny, but those two inches seemed like a whole lot ::pause:: lol), but I found out Best Buy had a smaller computer with better specs for the same price that was online, but not in the store. So I start calling around on a whim asking if I could possibly exchange the computer. Only I remember I threw away the bag it came it came in on my way to work, which of course, had the receipt it. They tell me I can because it's been less than 14 days, and (luckily~!!!) they can pull up my receipt on their system using my card info.
There's a catch though: I have to go to Wheaton to get the computer (about halfway of my normal journey around the Beltway, again for the disinclined). I'm cool with that because it'd give me an excuse to keep going on the Beltway, so I go home and delete all the programs I had put on the computer I brought over the weekend. Then I call Wheaton and they tell me they don't have anymore of the replacement computers and I'd have to go to Germantown, which is of course, significantly farther away from where I live in New Carrollton (or Lanham or Landover Hills or Hyattsville depending on who your talking to that moment. Stupid Maryland lol). Anyway, Georgetown tells me they have some, but they won't tell me how much. And they won't hold it unless I buy it online, despite the fact 1) I already brought a computer and 2) I'm coming from basically the other side of the world. OK, not really the other side of the world because that's part of what prompted me to get serious about the new computer, but still. So I hop in the Gray Lady (yes I still refer to my car after the New York Times, despite the fact that I now work around the corner from the Washington Post) and I start driving. An hour and 15 minutes (!) later, I get to the Germantown Best Buy, only for them to tell me they're sold out of the computer I was calling about. They try to sell me another one that costs a $100 more than the one I brought. The manager offers to take $50 off to "split it with me," but I tell him I put half of that in my gas tank to get out there so I don't want to spend that much more than I already did. I find another one that's $40 more, that's ironically the 15 inch version of the first computer I brought, and he agrees to take $20 off, so I go with that.
So short story very long, I paid a little bit more for a smaller version of the computer I already had. That could be a sitcom episode, right? I bet most people's computer shopping doesn't turn into a Where's-Waldo-if-he-worked-at-Best-Buy episode lol! But anyway, I'm the proud owner of an HP G6 something or another. (The fact that I didn't remember the name belies the fact that I really like it now ). May this one serve me as well as my last two did! If for no other reason than I'm not willing to drive all over Murrland again anytime soon!
If I was writing this from said new computer, I'd say I'm going to play with it now. But I'm not, so I'll just settle for saying DEUCES!!
| | |
|
