moving

Our lease is up at the end of the month, and we're looking for a new place. (Right now we're essentially in a semi-private studio apartment which is the basement of a shared house, and we'd like to get more space and fewer roommates).

We've been casually looking for a few weeks, and looked a bit less casually this past weekend. The first group of places that met the budget we'd decided on were not particularly exciting. Monday, though, we found a place that met most of the criteria we were looking for. We put in an application, and are waiting for a verdict. It'd be nice if it came through, but we've still got about three weeks to look if it doesn't.

We're already gearing up for a move, and I'm not sure we ever really unpacked from the move out here. Moving is the usual way of things, though, as far as I'm concerned. Only once since leaving my parents' house and setting out on my own have I stayed in one spot for more than a year - that was a house in Hattiesburg (which cost less than half - for the whole house - of the rental price of any one-bedroom we're looking at).

mosquitoes

I've lived in places before where biting insects were problems.

I grew up in Montana, where the mosquitoes only thrived for a month or two, but they were big and there was a lot of them.

I lived in Mississippi, where the mosquitoes came out late in the year, when the heat dipped to tolerable levels. As the sun drooped into the horizon, swarms of the little buggers swirled about your head and arms.

I also lived for a time in New Orleans, where I woke up every morning with another bite or two from an unidentified bug, a reminder of just how well the humidity nutured a variety of insects and just how poorly my window unit air conditioner kept the nature of the place at bay.

But the character of the mosquitoes here in D.C. is entirely different from anywhere else. Unlike mosquitoes I'm familiar with, the ones here are tiny and stealthy. You don't have to swat down black swarms. In fact, you rarely see them. But every time I walk outside, I end up with a few more bites.

It doesn't feel like New Orleans, where the bugs just seemed to be an unavoidable piece of the city as a whole. Here, the bites are far more of an aggravation for seeming out of place. And the mosquitoes seem a bit more malevolent for coming in single, clandestine raids instead of frontal assaults in battalion strength.