Getting Settled In

There is a lot of little things that I needed to take care to be settled in before I start work on Monday July 16th.  One of them was to have my photo taken for my USPTO badge and get my fingerprints taken.  I timed how long it would take me door to door between my place and the PTO.  It took a little over 16 min in the warm, humid Alexandria weather.  The walk is easy except for crossing one major street, but that can be avoided by talk a pedestrian tunnel underneath it.  The USPTO has 5 new (2006) buildings right next to each other.  All have the same design and are big.

USPTO Madison Building

After that I walked to a few thrift stores that I found on Google.  However all of them were too expensive for me and limited selection.  So I came home looked for furniture (bed frame, box spring, desk, chair, dresser) online and was able to get some leads.  Jon, Ryan, and I will be going out Sunday afternoon to look at some of the furniture and hopefully bring some back!  I don't like having all of my stuff unorganized and all of the floor in my room.

Then Friday night Jon and I tried to get me a SmarTrip card for the Metro.  

SmarTrip Card In Use

The SmartTrip card is a permanent card that lets you load money on it either at the station or online via a credit card.  You can put enough on it so you don't need to load it every time you take the Metro.  They can be replaced for $5.  Another nice thing about the card is that you can just touch the SmarTrip sensor on the gate instead of getting the card out of your wallet, inserting the card, grabbing the card, and putting it back into your wallet.  So we went to a main station near Capitol Hill where Jon thought we could get one.  When we asked a Metro worker where we could get a card she said that we have to go CVS.  Before searching for a CVS we walked around the National Mall.  I saw the White House, Capitol Building, and the Washington Monument.  There were quite a few people there including slow pitch softball players.  Jon tried to catch a foul ball, but he dropped it.  I was surprised to see that the grass at the Mall is so bad (very patch, some weeds).  Eventually we searched a CVS, but it was closed and so was the next one.  So we went back home empty handed.

Today I got my SmarTrip card by going to a station that said it had a SmarTrip machine.  So in Pentagon City I found the machine and got my SmarTrip card.  It took me longer than I expected because there are repairs going on this week and I had to take a bus to the station.  Then I looked at 2 grocery stores that were about a mile away on foot.  The first stop was Trader Joe's,

Trader Joe's Logo

which looked like to me a New Pioneer Co-Op by my old apartment in Iowa City on steroids.  I talked to a worker at the store and he told me a little about the place.  Then I went Giant Foods,

Giant Logo

which is more of a traditional grocery store.  However neither one had Jack's frozen pizza!  After that I went to the closest library to my house and got a few books to read after I got my library card.  Now I am home following up on my furniture search and not sure what I will do tonight.