If I have been delinquent in my blogging, it's mostly because I've been putting together my living space, which has been quite the process. Thanks to IKEA and a fantastic little neighborhood hardware/paint store, I now have a bright green, book-filled, fully alphabetized bedroom and two clean bathrooms, and my housemates and I are coordinating on how to handle our living room, kitchen, and front and back yards, both of which have grown into tiny jungles thanks to a year of almost no maintenance. That, and I'm still trying to find time to upload all of the photos on my new camera (my laptop is 4 years old and can't handle so many high-resolution pictures at once).

But! That's no reason to withhold stories.

Two weekends ago, my friend Joey and I lined up several hours early outside of the Shakespeare Theater Company in order to land free tickets for the evening's show. Free! No other word makes a twenty-two-year-old's heart sing so loud. Free Shakespeare is worth standing in line for, and since the box office opened two hours before the show, Joey and I planned to wait for a while, secure ourselves a pair of tickets, grab a bite to eat, and then enjoy the show.

We didn't plan to get pepper-sprayed. But we know how the best-laid schemes gang aft (hint: agley).

After waiting in line for about an hour, quite pleasantly since staff were handing out playbills that had a Taming-of-the-Shrew word search on the back (hurrah!), I turned to say something to Joey and was cut off, mid-sentence, by a coughing fit that never seemed to end. It was a hacking cough - it felt like something was caught in my throat or my lungs, something spicy and buzzing and interminable. Joey was also choking on it, and I looked up to see every other person on the block coughing, gagging, and tearing up, until we all pulled our shirts up over our noses.

The cacophony faded. People looked around, still breathing through t-shirts and scarves, wiping streaming eyes and gasping: "What was that?" No one seemed to know for sure. I looked at Joey; Joey looked at me; the people in front and back of us looked at each other, and we realized it had to have been pepper spray. Nothing else leaves that nice peppery feeling in the back of your throat to choke on every now and then.

None of us ever did figure out who was spraying the stuff, or why, or how it drifted to our block, but there you have it. I came, I saw, I was sprayed in the face. Oh, DC. Let's be friends?

(The Shakespeare, by the by, was fantastic. I've seen Taming of the Shrew staged and directed a number of different ways, but this one absolutely took the cake. We were in stitches throughout.)

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