Right now I feel so very small and insignificant and lost.  Like a little girl alone in a Metro station whose train never comes.  One day I've found the answer, the next I completely reject it and doubt myself before embracing the discarded answer once again.  What does the future hold?  Which train will I board?  How do I know it's the right one?  Why am I incapable of maintaining and rather chafe at relationships?  (The answer, I think, lies in far too much independence and no sentimentality whatsoever.  Really, I mean NO sentimentality -- whatsoever.  But then again, I may discard this answer tomorrow and staunchly adhere to it on Wednesday.)

I'm looking up a website on how to join the circus, and sites dedicated to learning those arts, if that's any indication.

So D.C. was awesome.  Some highlights include:
* Taking off in sleet and snow.
* Watching the sun rise while above the clouds.
* Riding the Metro.
* Giving and getting directions.
* A really spiffy hotel room with a kitchenette and separate dressing room.
* Going to Georgetown district.
* Seeing three homeless people on the way who yelled to themselves and inanimate objects (like a fallen bicycle).
* La Madeleine, a fantastic genuinely French bistro.  Polished wooden tables, heavy glass tumblers, baskets of artisan bread, glazed fruit tarts, Oranginas, and caramel creme brulee!
* Even the Georgetown CVS was in a historic building.
* Walking four miles to the National Gallery.  In the rain.  And when I say rain, I mean pounding torrents that drench you to the mid-thigh when you have an umbrella.  And me in white corduroys.  It was fun.
* A PROTEST!  Oh, my God, a PROTEST!!  It was soooo cool!  They had stickers, people wearing and carrying signs, a massive stage, people protesting the protest, a guy singing songs he wrote for the protest, people in the crowd playing a tribal-execution-drumbeat which was actually kind of scary, and AN EFFIGY.  Oh, my God, AN EFFIGY!  Twelve feet tall if it was an inch.  I took pictures.  It was delightful.  "Kelly, don't encourage them."  "But they have an effigy!"
* Aforementioned state of sod(den) made it rather difficult to appreciate the new Cezanne display at the gallery.  Fortunately, we were dry upon entering the Medieval galleries.  That building is superb.  Really, truly superb.  Hah, the painted Napoleon was taller than the live Napoleon.  I find that funny.
* Luigi's Italian Restaurant.  Been there since 1943; my granddad ate there frequently.  It's so typical Italian restaurant!  More with the polished wood tables, and water in hefty wine glasses, checkered tablecloths, native speakers, opera, and candles in empty wine bottles!
* Staying up late watching Silence of the Lambs the day before auditions.  Holy crap, I want that movie on DVD.  Anthony Hopkins only had 16 minutes of screen time, and he STILL got the Oscar for best actor!  Holy cow.  Sixteen minutes.  "I'm having an old friend for dinner."
* Compulsively drinking three cups of coffee the next morning out of sheer nerves.
* Tensing every time someone at an adjacent table started talking about monologues.  We were seriously plotting demise.  Mum: "I have a plastic fork!"
* Finding the only other person from Tennessee in the blasted program.  Yayyyy!  We talked God-knows-how-long.  Awesome-awesome.
* Large black granite heads of George Washington delineating the boundaries of the campus.
* Large black granite statue of a hippopotamus.  Did you know those beasts apparently inhabited the Potomac?  The Washingtons would watch them in the river from Mount Vernon.  Hippos, the African safari critter, in the Potomac.  Crazy, eh?
* Walking by my future sorority house, Kappa Kappa Gamma.  They have the most/best parties.  I'm so philanthropic.  *Sarcasm*
* Charles Dickens action figure in the GWU bookstore.  Plus, Famous Writer Finger Puppets.  And stuffed hippos.
* Making the judges laugh in both the comic monologue and the interview.  "If you guys don't let me in, I'll keep applying semester transfer until you admit me out of sheer annoyance!"  We had a nice chat.  Until they told me there was no shame in going to MTSU for a semester or two.  There is no shame, they're entirely right.  But I felt like they were trying to tell me something.  Way to smack me down, guys.  But we still had a nice chat.
* Trading Metro stops for various stores with Only-Other-Tennesseean-Emily.  Filene's Basement is near the Pentagon City stop.  That's all I remember, though, lol.
* ADD in the Shoppes Of Georgetown.  "United Colours of Bennetton!  Kate Spade!  Bebe!  H&M!  Mexx!  Gahhh!  *Bliss Seizure*"
* A townhouse painted bright white with the most vibrant pink trim you can find.  That thing looked like Barbie Dream House Goes Historic District.
* Our flight getting cancelled.  Wahooo!  You could see Mum's blood pressure spike.
* Hopping on another conveniently-empty flight to Charlotte, and then to Nashville.  During the flight between Charlotte and Nashville, the captain kept us updated on the Superbowl score.  "Current score at takeoff is 3-0, Pittsburgh, annnnnnnd..... Pittsburgh's gonna win."  *Mixed response from passengers*
* Going to bed, at home, in my sheets, at 9:45.  Ahhhhhhhh, bliss.

Wow, that was overly-long.  But explanatory.  Ciao.