PHOTOS: DEVOS DO DC pt.3

Click HERE for random photos from July - September

ROUND ONE

McCain is so lame. 'Oooh, I'm going to suspend my campaign to attend to the economic crisis, ooh'l. Obama, meanwhile, points out that as president, you have to be able to juggle more than one thing at a time. What a dude.

So McCain turned up to the first debate yesterday. Well done.

Maxy worked all night so didn't have to go into work until 3pm, so we caught up on some Veronica Mars action, then I worked all afternoon and evening, with the debate on in the background. It took til 1am to finish my work, but hooray! It's done! Roll on the weekend!

I found the debate a little stressful. The way both candidates were recalling facts and figures by rote reminded me of some kind of verbal A-level. And the bracelet wars were just hilarious! 'Oh, so-and-so gave me this bracelet to make me remember their son in Iraq', 'well I have a bracelet, too...'.

On the whole, I found Obama a little longwinded and woolly - not as clear as he'd been in his big speech at Invesco Field (for obvious reasons). But he's unanimously thought to've won, so what do I know?

Maxy was live blogging for Justin Webb throughout the debate so, as in at Invesco Field and during McCain's speech in St Paul, Justin Webb made comments to Max and Max typed them up and posted them immediately on the BBC website. I didn't think much of the blog - Justin was really snipey and mostly annoyed by the moderator, rather than shedding any light on the accuracy or significance of what either candidate was saying. But it was beautifully typed!

Having worked until 1am, I figured I may as well wait up for Max while he did the FactCheck feature for the website. So I found myself sucked into an enthralling episode of 'Deal or No Deal'.

The show is very different over here - no weird cult feeling, no conversations with the banker as ridiculous as those of Noel Edmonds and everything generally more glamorous than 21 people standing around a wooden studio.

The contestant was this crazy poker-playing lady who was convinced that the million pounds was in her case. She kept taking these crazy risks and jumping up and down and challenging the banker and being all certain, until it came down to two cases, $1million and $50 on the board and an offer of something like $375,000.

I've summarised it too quickly to give a sense of just how tense it all was, but it got even more tense when her fiance begged her to take the money and she stood there convinced that the million was in her case. But then she eventually gave in and took the money.

And the million dollars had indeed been in her case.

I got the sense from the dynamic between her and her fiance that there was a lifetime of, 'it's your fault we can't afford a big house', 'we could be scuba diving right now' and 'I knew I shouldn't have listened to you' ahead of them.

After our late night last night, we had a noodley day today. We had a nice impromptu brunch at L'Enfant, the Belgian bar at the end of our street, then went to the supermarket and home for an afternoon of Veronica Mars and the movie 'Definitely Maybe', which was nice enough. It helped me see a little better what on earth Scarlett Johansson sees in her fiance Ryan Reynolds. And Abigail Breslin is sooo cute.

OUT & ABOUT

NICEST REMINDER OF COSTA RICA THIS WEEK: the massive treefrog statue outside the National Geographic building is just like the one we saw but couldn't photograph in Tortuguero! Awww.

I still haven't managed to get this whole working thing down yet. Even though I've only had to do three days of development work (and allegedly half a day of online election stuff, but that's fallen somewhat by the wayside), it's felt like I've been working all week.

I just don't seem able to get down to it - I'll sit at my desk at 9.30am but then just noodle about on the internet or write emails or do online banking or whatever, until about 12.30pm. By which time of course, it's time for lunch, so it's usually about 2pm until I actually start work in earnest, which means, to make up a full day, I have to work until 11pm.

So I've been really tired all week and the amount of work I actually get done represents a fraction of the time I spend sitting at my desk. Of course the irony is, when you're in an office, it's quite unusual to work 9 hours solid - there's much noodling about on the internet that goes on - but working from home, I feel bad if I don't do the whole time expected of me.

Fortunately this week hasn't been *all* work and no play. On Monday, we took the metro up to Friendship Heights, to an old-school diner that plays a different classic movie from the 60s or 70s every night, while you eat your supper. It was really cool - to watch the movie, you sit in a room off to the side of the main diner, where it's dark and quiet. Though it's kind of budget, in that the windows are plastic sheeting and the screen onto which the film is projected is one of those pull-down ones, which in this case had runkled up in one corner, so distorted the film a bit.

But we saw 'Five Easy Pieces', which we'd never seen and really enjoyed - it was a cool thing to do on a Monday night and hopefully we'll become regulars. There were only four other people watching the film and their programme is great, so I'm looking forward to filling in the unforgiveable holes in my film-watching history.

Dinner and a movie. Literally

It was such a nice date night, that we got off the metro a stop early and wandered home from Woodley Park, through streets of nice houses and by Kalorama Park.

On Tuesday I had lunch with my friend Cindy, who works at National Geographic and whose husband is an actor who we saw in that terrible play ages ago? We haven't seen her since going for dinner with her and Jim back in June, so it was good to see her again. We ate in the Nat Geo cafeteria and caught up all about our respective summers. Cindy's really into the election and has everything crossed for Obama. She's also doing the Big Sister programme, which I'd really like to've done, but didn't get myself organised in time to commit to the 12 months required.

Cindy showed me around the Nat Geo building, which is an amazing place, located in part in an old stately home-type building. She also showed me the studios, which gave me a small pang of wanting to be back in TV production, but then I remembered how crazy busy her life is and thanked my lucky stars I'm having this break this year.

Dashing back to get on with work, I bumped into Fun Zoe at the post office, which made for a nice neighbourly feel. Then when I got back to the apartment, Max had emailed me this article, in which Aaron Sorkin imagines a meeting between Obama and Bartlet (the president from The West Wing). I totally agree that the idea that Obama is elitist is ridiculous, when he was raised by a single mother and got to where he is through sheer grit, determination and talent - surely the definition of the American Dream - while McCain has literally countless houses and is mega-rich.

And if it's an education rather than wealth issue, then why is elitism a bad thing? Don't we want the people running the country/world to be cleverer than us? I really can't understand this absurd notion that the commander in chief should be someone you'd like to have a beer with, rather that someone with sufficiently superior intellect to cope with situations way beyond the ability of most people.

And the ridiculous thing is that Obama would be an awesome person to have a beer with! He plays basketball, watches The Wire, loves his wife and daughters more than anything, goes to church, has a hilarious sense of humour and is friends with George Clooney - pass me the bottle opener! PLUS he's spectacularly intelligent and has an inspiring vision for the future of the country which will have positive effects around the world. And his smile is nice.

We were meant to go to a baseball game at the Nationals stadium here in DC last Friday, but I was working so late that we had to miss it. Then I discovered that the season is actually drawing to a close, so snapped up tickets to one of the final games and went along with Cindy, Jim and four of their friends last night.

BACK ROW: Jim & Cindy, Tim & Holly (friend of Cindy's from Nat Geo)
FRONT ROW: Maxy, Greg & Rachel (friend of Jim's from drama school)

The team is terrible - the Nationals have lost 99 games this season - and our seats were terrible (right out in the outfield and *under* the scoreboard), but it was nice to see their new stadium and to watch baseball here in DC instead of having to go to Baltimore for the Orioles. The match was so bad that by the 7th inning or so, the stadium was nearly empty from people realising it was a lost cause and leaving, but Jim and Cindy's friends were really fun and we had a good night. And we got these snazzy Nats scarves for free! (I had to pay for the cup, which I've since regretted, on discovering there's nowhere in our kitchen to keep it.)

I guess that's the last baseball we'll see while we're here. Oh well, roll on basketball season! I was sad, because Jim said that American football games (or 'football' games, as they're known here) are impossible to get into. All the seats are either only for season ticket holders or cost such an arm and a leg that you can just forget about going. College football is apparently way easier to get into, but I want to see the Redskiiiins. It's a shame we're not really chummy with Sarah and Geoff anymore, because Geoff said he could get us into any sports games we like (he does the screens and technology stuff for all the big stadiums). Hey ho.

Judging from the size of the massive cup I had my diet Coke in, it won't surprise you to hear that I wasn't at all snoozy when we got home, so we were able to stay up and watch Letterman. It was really astonishing. Apparently McCain was meant to be on the show last night, but cancelled at the last minute, saying he was suspending his campaign to go back to DC to sort out the economic crisis.

Letterman was LIVID! I mean, really furious (you can watch some of it HERE - I think there are six installments of his ire). He's usually pretty apolitical, in fact I think McCain announced his run for the presidency on his show, but last night he just went nuts-o, banging on about how terrible it is that McCain cancelled, how awful it is that he can't leave Sarah Palin in charge of his campaign but has to suspend it, and all this. I thought his remarks would be limited to his opening monologue, but he just kept going on and on throughout the show - every time he came back from an ad break, he'd say, 'It just stinks. Something isn't right...' and go off on another rant about how terrible McCain is! The coolest thing about all of this was that Keith Olbermann stepped in as a last-minute guest and we heart him.

THE WIRE WOZ ROBBED

I've volunteered to help out with Sunday School at church, so went up to the classroom this morning to introduce myself and sit in on a lesson. The kids are very cute and everyone involved seems nice enough, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm probably learning about as much as the children, so have only volunteered to help as a classroom assistant and in fact have only been given I think two shifts between now and when we leave DC, so it's not a massive commitment, but nice to be helping out.

After church, Max and I had to once more sheepishly go round to Anne's house to borrow another DVD boxset. This time, it was Veronica Mars, series 3. Veronica Mars kicks ass. It's about a high school girl who helps her private eye father out after school, while going through all the relationship-y things that high school students do. I gratefully gobbled up most of series 1 on my laptop during the many hours I spent waiting in airports for connecting flights last month, then made swift work of series 2 when I got back to DC and was able to raid Anne and Megan's DVD collection.

However, then something bad happened. Having scoffed at the very premise and not shown any interest in it to start with, Max started spending more time watching it than reading the magazine he'd pretend to be engrossed in while I watched it. This means it is no longer something I can watch during the day at lunchtime - I have to wait for Max to come home, which is reeeeally annoying. It's also really hard to forget that Veronica's dad is played by the guy who plays Elliott, the mook, in 'Just Shoot Me'.

Anyway, it was lovely to see Anne and to sit around hanging out with her on a sunny Sunday morning. Even more lovely was to get home and crack into season 3 of 'Veronica Mars', but we soon realised it was too nice a day to be cooped up, so walked up the road to Kalorama Park, which is really near us but which for some reason we never really go to. Maybe because it's too little. But we don't really need that much space!

It was really lovely and befitting of a lazy Sunday afternoon, to be able to walk to such a nice park just a block away. There was someone working on their laptop under a tree, which put ideas in my head about not being chained to my desk, a couple of girls playing the guitar and banjo and some excellently manic children whizzing round and round on scooters. But it made me sad that it was their nanny who'd brought them to the park, rather than their parents on a Sunday afternoon.

I can't fathom why, but today was the first day all year that we've played frisbee. Oh, it was so fun, because we have a very excellent frisbee, and because neither of us have done any exercise for ages, so it was good to be out in the fresh air, winging a 'bee about. Unfortunately I winged it a little off target, and this is what happened:

whoops

One of the things I was most looking forward to when we moved over here was getting to watch awards ceremonies go out live, instead of having to wait for highlights packages like, three days later. So it was with great excitement that we sat down to watch the Emmys tonight.

It was cool to see all the arrivals on the red carpet and all the pretty dresses, then Anne and Hugh came over for the ceremony. Unfortunately, much like the MTV Movie Awards before them, the Emmys were kind of lame. We don't watch '30 Rock' or 'Mad Men', so couldn't get excited that they won all the awards, especially as I refuse to believe that either of them are better than 'The Wire', which got only two nominations. It's an outrage.

ZOO BLUES

Having had such an exhausting week, I was looking forward to sleeping the sleep of the dead and surfacing around lunchtime today.

But when I was woken up (almost certainly by Stompy) at 9am, I was so exhilarated by the notion that the day was all mine to do with as I wanted, I just had to leap out of bed and get going!

It's been a beautifully sunny day, so we walked up to the Woodley Park area, just across the bridge, to have lunch there. We don't know the neighbourhood at all, but have always thought it looked nice, as there's a main street lined with nice al fresco restaurants and shops, so we thought we'd check it out.

On the way, I had to call my sister for a phone number and was very entertained by her talk of the new series of 'Strictly Come Dancing' which she and Nadge were watching on a dark night in Wales while we were wandering through the sunshine at lunchtime. I was very excited to hear the lineup and almost miss those cosy nights watching Saturday night telly, but not quite.

After lunch, Max suggested popping up the road to the zoo. I wasn't keen on this idea at all. I don't like zoos and haven't been to one since I was little. In fact, I really hate them. But Max said that there's no entry fee at the one here (so it's not like we were giving money to the cause of keeping animals caged up) and that they're all about the ethical treatment and study of animals, so it's almost more like a safari park, where they get to roam all over big outdoor spaces. So I reluctantly gave in.

I can exclusively reveal that none of that big wide open spaces thing is true. Zebras are kept in these tiny paddocks that they can cover in two bounds, elephants are in minuscule cells that they can hardly turn around in and the gigantic hippo we saw had only a pool the size of a paddling pool - shorter than the hippo is long - to swim in.

The giant panda area was pretty big and nice, but for some reason, the pandas were inside, sitting on concrete, mournfully chewing on some bamboo.

I will concede that the baby red pandas were very cute though, and exciting to see as they're massively endangered and rare:

However, the monkeys. Oh! Don't even talk to me about the monkeys. They were all inside, in these tiny stark cells with nothing but a big branch in each and they were just sitting and staring. Their faces look so human that it was hard not to see how miserable they looked. They reminded me of prisoners on hunger strike, or something. It was too sad. Especially having seen so many wonderful monkeys in the wild in Costa Rica. In fact that made it weird with other animals, too - we'd become so used to straining our eyes and peering through jungles to see creatures in their natural habitat, that to have them served up to us on a plate / in tiny enclosures where there's nowhere for them to hide, was odd and unsettling.

I totally get that we are incredibly privileged to be able to travel to places where these animals live in the wild and that that's something not everyone can do, so zoos are wonderful places to introduce children to amazing animals and fire up their imagination. But it just made me sooooo sad to see the animals look so miserable.

I perked up quite a lot when we got to the sea organisms section, where there was beautiful coral and these awesome comb jellies which looked as though they had little coloured electric currents running through them. It's really tricky to describe, but the jellies are transparent and have a u-shaped loop inside them, through which these little dots of colour run in a continuous loop. They were coooool.

With my opinion of zoos firmly unchanged, we headed to Chinatown to see 'Burn After Reading'. I wasn't expecting much, because the reviews have been pretty bad, and sure enough I didn't really like it. Max really enjoyed it, but I just thought it was a little pointless and rife with wide-eyed overacting. However, I'm very happy to accept that I probably missed the point.

By the time we got home, I really didn't want to go out again, but we'd agreed to go to Jean's birthday drinks. Having made the mistake of sitting down on the sofa (deadly for anyone with tired legs who then has to get up again), we put on our moderately glad rags and wandered down to Dupont Circle, where Jean was having drinks in this really rotten Irish bar, called Biddy Mulligans, underneath a Jury's Inn hotel.

I don't understand the fascination with really soulless Irish theme bars here, but that's where Geoff and Sarah had the DC leg of their wedding celebrations, too.

In good news, there was no sign of Jean when we got to Biddy Mulligans. I did several, increasingly embarrassing laps of the bar and even checked the loos, but she and her group obviously weren't there.

In bad news, I hadn't brought my phone out with me, so we had to walk all the way back to the apartment to get my phone, turn it on for the first time today and get the message that Jean came to her senses, realised Biddys was gross and switched location to the nice bar attached to the hotel where Maxy and I spent our first weekend in DC. So, having changed out of my painful heels and into flat shoes more practical for all this schlepping, we headed straight out the door again.

There were only four people in the party when we arrived, so I was pleased that we'd made the effort. We met Jean's boyfriend Joe who looks a lot like John Stamos, and two other girls. Jean was celebrating her 38th birthday, but *genuinely* looks no older than 30. It's the freakiest thing. She and Joe met through online dating, which I find intriguing, and he seems very nice, if kind of stereotypically brash for an Italian American.

Our number eventually swelled to 9 and Max and I spent most of our time chatting to a friend of Jean's from the state department, called JP. Jean and JP were stationed in Bogota at the same time and JP regaled us with stories about how they'd go out partying until 5am and then go to work. It's the Colombian way.

JP's job is to freeze the financial assets of terrorists, which is pretty exciting. I asked if the job ever got him down, because he spends his day faced with the reality of how awful human beings can be, but he said it would do were it not for the fact that he's screwing them by taking their money away.

JP strikes me as something of an international playboy, in that he's always working in a different country and in every place, manages to seek out the wildest parties and is one of those people who won't take no for an answer if he suggests going for a drink. He told us about an upcoming party at the Swedish embassy - the after-show party of a fashion show - which I can't imagine would be as hideous as the polo event at the Argentinian embassy, so we're really looking forward to going.

OH BOO HOO

This week has been awful.

I mean, truly terrible.

But only because I'm a complete mook and can't get my act together. I've basically been working two jobs, because the More4 work has taken way longer than anyone expected. It's been really hard to get publicists and press officers to respond to my request for their news anchors / journalists / pundits and, as you might expect, this is a manically busy time for all of those people, so even when I did get a response, it was usually no.

Meanwhile the people at More4 aren't the easiest to work with, being really vague about what they want and just coming over to New York on Tuesday this week on a whim, despite the fact that I'd only confirmed one interview. So it's all been really stressful.

The booking work has been taking up my entire day all week, so I'd only get to start my development work at about 6.30pm, which has meant I've been working til about 11.30pm each night and am just exhausted.

The worst thing is that I realise that both these jobs are really great opportunities for continuing work when I get back to the UK, so I obviously want to make the best of them but feel like I've not managed to do either one justice and have fallen firmly between two stools.

As you can imagine, I've had no time to either have or be fun this week, as I've been working every evening as well as all day. Max has been characteristically brilliant and even dashed home for lunch on Wednesday as a surprise, when he sensed that things weren't going so well during a phone conversation we had that morning.

That night was the only night off I've had, as I went out for dinner for Oliver's (Max's friend from the Guardian) birthday. It was a very small affair - only Max, me, Fun Zoe (from Screen on the Green) and a jolly Canadian chap called Tom - so I was pleased I went.

Oliver had just flown in from LA on the red eye that morning, so was pretty snoozy, but full of tales of his trip to interview Oliver Stone and Sarah Silverman. I think I should have his job. In fact he's a legend, because before collapsing exhausted on his return that morning, he was kind enough to persuade one of his Guardian colleagues to do an interview for More4 for me.

It was a really fun evening and I really really like Zoe and Oliver (and Tom too, but I don't know him so well) - they're excellent fun. I really hope we see them when we're all back in London, as they're ace. And they're both single, so should get together. Fact.

More4 came to DC today and asked if I could drive them around their various interviews (by then, I'd managed to book lots more people in), but I had to say no because I had to do a full day of development work to make up my 3 days, along with the half-days I've been doing at night. And the half day I'm meant to be doing every week analysing the online activity in the US election for the Lib Dem man back home? That'll just have to wait.

Today was made all the more stressful because yesterday, I was asked by More4 to sort out an outdoor location in DC where they could do their interviews. So I called the Parks Service for permits to film at the waterfront or in the parks and they laughed at the idea that they could turn around a request in such a short amount of time. So I went to recce the roof garden of a handily-located hotel, which looked scuzzy as a whole, but had amazing panoramic views and would look really nice in the confines of a 16x9 camera lens, so no-one would know that it was shoddy-looking just out of shot.

I wasn't 100% sure what the director was looking for because, as with everything else in this assignment, I was given zero guidance, so sent More4 a document with photos and descriptions of the location. But they went ahead and confirmed the place before looking at my document and when they got there this morning were horrified by it being tatty, so had to re-locate, which is the last thing you want on the day of a shoot and I felt rubbish.

Anyway, that's all over with now and I can just concentrate on development work for the next four weeks. And it's really lame of me to make such a meal of working, when I'm really lucky to be given any work while I'm here. I guess I'm just out of practice!

BACK IN DC

It's taking a bit of time to click back into the DC groove. I don't know if it's because we were away for what equates to a quarter of the time we've been in DC, or because coming back from such a long trip, it feels like we should be going home to London, or whatever. But for the first time really since we got here, I've been feeling a bit homesick and ready to go home. Not in a desperately sad way at all - just little longings to see family and friends and drive my scooter around Maida Vale.

I think the main reason is because we've got to kickstart our social life again and get caught up in the heady whirl that was DC before we spent a month away.

That certainly didn't happen this week. I spent two entire days sorting out photos from our travels (me and the Facebook photo uploader are going to fall out...), which was nice because - as you may've noticed - I love photos. But it's weird, having been immersed in them for two whole days, almost the memories of our trips have been reduced to those photos rather than what actually happened.

Then on Wednesday I was really ill with food poisoning, so felt very sorry for myself under a duvet on the sofa. Turns out being ill isn't so much fun if you don't have an office you should be going to - it means it's literally you're own time you're wasting and there's no incentive to give in to being sick and take a day off. That was annoying.

While I was in LA, I picked up an email from the London-based TV company I've been doing bits and pieces of work for over here, asking if I could do 3 days a week for them for 5 weeks, doing development writing for the head of documentaries. This means coming up with ideas for new programmes and/or researching ideas that have already been had in London and writing them up into persuasive pitch documents for my boss to take to TV channels to get commissioned.

Fortunately they don't want me to start until next week, so I had this week to settle back into DC life, sort my photos out and be sick.

But then More4 contacted me because they needed someone to book political people for filming they're doing in DC and New York this month, for interviews that will serve as those ponderous interstitials they have between programmes with thoughtful people like Gore Vidal, Debbie Harry and Noam Chomsky.

Because it's just a booking job that pays astonishingly well and because they're doing the filming next week, I figured I could do a couple of days this week and maybe even a couple next week and it not interfere with the 3 days a week for the other company. Though obviously this means I'm now staring down the barrel of a full week of work next week, which I'm not much looking forward to!

Yesterday we had a fantastic webcam chat with our friends Matt and Jilly. We nattered for two hours and it was as though we'd popped over to their flat for drinks, which was so lovely. Unfortunately they're among the people I miss the most, so it didn't help ease the homesickness but was just so nice to see them and chat as a foursome in a way that phone calls don't really allow.

We spent the rest of the day with another dear friend: The Wire. Series 5 arrived on DVD while we were in Costa Rica and it has caused us physical pain to have to wait this long to watch it, but we've fired through it all this week and yesterday finished it. Forever.

Compared to the previous four series, it hasn't been great, but compared to everything else that's ever been on TV, it's been amaaaaaazing. The writing is just astonishing and the acting is so natural that it feels like the most authentic thing you've ever seen. I think the reason it wasn't as good as the other series is because it had to abandon subtle and slowly unfolding plotlines in order to fit everything into a much shorter series.

**MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT / boring paragraph that will mean nothing to anyone who doesn't watch The Wire** It was a bit horrible to see McNulty revert to type, but I prefer him like that than the lame-o he was in series 4. Amy Ryan's speech about why he should sort himself out was fantastic. And I tried to ignore the fact that I'd accidentally read about two major plot points (Omar and Snoop) but loved the way that Omar died, so simple and bathetic after managing to rule the streets by himself and take on huge gangs of people and come out on top, to then be shot by an opportunistic child. And I liked that Bubbs sorted himself out and that David Simon was clearly settling some scores with the characters in the newspaper office. But my heart literally broke in two at the end of the Dukie/Michael storyline. I sobbed and sobbed and wept and sobbed. Just too too sad for words. And a little hokey that they so obviously set up all the same archetypes as we'd seen in previous seasons: Dukie becomes Bubbs, Michael becomes Omar, Marlo becomes Stringer, etc. Oh, but Dukie - noooooooo! The scene between him and Prez was just amazing.

It's amazing to see how big The Wire has become in the UK - they're having a weekend-long event, screening all of season 5 at the Curzon Soho, with guest appearances by David Simon and Dominic West. Part of me is uncharitably sad that we started watching The Wire back in 2004, when Entertainment Weekly kept raving about it as the saviour of TV, forcing us to get the DVD of series 1 and it was like this little treasure we'd found, but now it's become trendy to say you like The Wire. But of course that's just a function of me being a terrible person, because of course everyone should see it and it should get all the recognition it deserves.

**ok, Mum and Dad - you can start reading again** So the main reason we made sure we were out of DC for all of August was because everyone warned us that the humidity and heat are just unbearable for the whole month and that everyone arrives everywhere dripping with sweat and it's gross and you can't do anything very quickly or you'll drown in your own sweat.

I have to say, in the 5 days we were here between Costa Rica and Denver (with a bit of Florida in between), the weather was just lovely. Really really hot, but not at all humid and just like being on holiday.

Today however has been groooooody. But it's September! Stepping out of the house felt like stepping into a gigantic sauna whilst wrapped in an electric blanket. So we were going to avoid going out once I got back from church, but then we heard about the Adams Morgan Festival that was happening, so tore ourselves away from the documentaries on the Wire DVD (which are excellent) to check it out.

As we were passing the Belgian bar/restaurant at the end of our street, we noticed Megan's boyfriend Jonathan having a drink outside with a friend, so said hello and were invited to join them, which was really nice (but for feeling like we were chickens, slow roasting in a very humid oven).

Jonathan's friend was Eric, who's a lawyer and lots of fun - definitely someone we'd like to see more of. And Jonathan is starting a new job at Oxfam tomorrow, which he's very excited about. There was talk before we went away of him getting a job with the Obama campaign in Central America and the Caribbean, mobilising the ex-pat effort there, and I think they offered it to him, but the Oxfam job was better, or something.

Apparently Megan's having a bit of a hard time of it in Chicago, with Michelle Obama's speechwriting team. It's really hard work, but most of the legwork has already been done, so for example she didn't get to go to Denver, because Michelle's convention speech was written long before Megan joined the team, and she just finds herself editing and tweaking existing speeches and comments, rather than writing anything from scratch.

We felt a little anxious sitting out on the street with Jonathan so near our flat, because it turns out that Anne really doesn't like him AT ALL and I'm sure if she'd seen us with him, she'd have been cross!

The festival was a huge affair, stretching all the way along 18th St from our road and along some side streets, with food, clothes and art stalls and stages and dancing and stuff. It felt like a scaled-down version of the Notting Hill Carnival and was nice and bustly.

It's quite ridiculous, and I don't know why I got emotional - whether it's all the divisive stuff that's been going on in the past few weeks of conventions where people very staunchly pick sides and attack the other side, or whether I was still thinking about poor Dukie - but we wandered past this fun old man doing a karaoke version of 'Sweet Caroline' and everyone standing around or walking by was joining in. There was such an amazing spectrum of age and ethnicity that it made me sad that the world isn't more like that. Though I realise that effectively what I'm suggesting as a creator of world peace is a big Neil Diamond sing-along, which is obviously silly. But it just made me a little sad.

Elsewhere, there was cool African dancing, where a dude span round horizontally in the air a lot. Unfortunately I never quite caught him in full flight:

It was so boiling hot that on the way home, Maxy indulged in that most American/Kwik-E-Mart of refreshments: the bright blue slurpy, which I took disproportionate pleasure in serving up for him.

Tonight, we watched 'The American President', which was written by Aaron Sorkin and bears an uncanny resemblance to 'The West Wing', but isn't as good. It was funny to see the parallel characters and to see Martin Sheen in the Leo (chief of staff) role, rather than POTUS, but after watching 7 series of The West Wing over 2 short months, the movie felt really slight and as if nothing really happened. And Martin Sheen seemed way more presidential than Michael Douglas, which was a bit of a problem. Annette Bening is beeeautiful, though.

PHOTOS: LA

Click HERE for photos of my week in LA

CITY OF ANGELS pt.2

Poor Maxy, he likened being at the RNC convention to being a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Apparently all the nationalism really got to him and the objectionable things being said by people on stage were met with terrifying cheers by the tens of thousands of people in the hall. At one point, Sarah Palin said something derogatory about the 'liberal media' and the whole audience turned to the two banks of journalists and started pointing and jeering at them! Hdddrdrdrr.

It seems that the hurricane that hit Texas was the best thing that could've happened to the Republicans, because it meant that their convention was a more scaled-down affair and that George Bush didn't turn up, which is good news for McCain, who needs to distance himself from him as much as possible.

Because of the scaled-down convention, Max has had lots more time to socialise with the BBC people and has been hobnobbing with his bosses, which has apparently been fun.

I meanwhile had a fanastic rest of the week in LA!

The handover from Tom and Nina to Tom and Bambi happened at a cool silent movie theatre, where they were having a Labor Day event. They showed the first five minutes of 15 incredibly obscure horror movies that no-one will've heard of (Tom Newth had heard of one, which is saying something), then we all had to vote for the one that we'd like to see in its entirity and while the votes were counted, there was a barbecue (to which Tom N brought a pineapple. And no knife).

It was lovely to see Tom and Bam and to hang out with all four of my LA pals, but I was really sad to say goodbye to Tom and Nina. I was also sad that the film I'd wanted to win - Zero Population Growth, starring Oliver Reed in a futuristic tale of a time where procreation is forbidden, so couples wanting children have to adopt programmed robot dolls (cue many crash zooms between the doll's eyes and Oliver Reed's, accompanied by clanging music) - lost by one solitary vote.

I was particularly surprised/dismayed, because I'd canvassed opinion while in a long queue for the loo, and everyone was voting for ZPG. But a man who'd been in the queue came up to me afterwards at the barbecue and very sheepishly admitted that he hadn't voted for ZPG - he just said that to look cool - he'd voted for the 80s psychic comedy starring Bronson Pinchot, 'Second Sight', which the hardcore film buffs in the loo queue had scoffed at for having had a theatrical release and therefore not being obscure enough! I think he felt better after getting that off his chest...

The film that was played was 'Death Promise', which turned out to be an unintentionally hilarious kung fu movie set in New York during the 70s, about a man who avenges the death of his father by killing the syndicate of slum landlords who'd had his Dad murdered to stop him from campaigning against their terrible treatment of their tenants. It was soooo funny!

Tom and Bambi live in a kickass apartment in Mar Vista, near Venice Beach. It was great to see their place and to see their cat Brian again (I haven't seen her [sic] since she was a kittie) and meet Delilah, the cat they got when they moved out there.

On my first morning with them, Bambi treated Tom and me to surf lessons on Venice beach! I was really looking forward to putting my Costa Rica skills into action and was dismayed when the surf instructor (who bore an uncanny resemblance to James Franco and is a well-known radio DJ in his native Australia but came here to become an actor) told us to do everything completely differently to what I was told in Costa.

However, it worked! I had a much more fun time of it this time around and managed to stand up a few times. As I suspected, Tom was a natural and was zooming around all over the place, getting up on the board every time, but I had a nice time only getting up occasionally, while Bam watched from the beach.

that's me!
(I'd ridden the wave in from where that one behind me is - I'm not just standing up in shallow water!)

Bam disappeared for a while during our lesson, and it transpired that she'd gone to move Tom's car to avoid a ticket. But the car wouldn't start, so Tom got a ticket, despite Bam putting an explanatory not on the windscreen. Evil traffic wardens. Fortunately a mechanic man came and, after checking it over, ducked down underneath it and bashed it with a wrench, then the car started like a dream!

We had lunch with Bambi's parents, which was lovely, because I haven't seen them since our wedding and Robert has been very unwell, so it was nice to see him up and about and feeling a bit better. Then Bam took me and her brother's girlfriend off for manicures and pedicures and I felt thoroughly spoilt! That evening we had the taaaaastiest Mexican food I've ever had (they warned me that would happen) at a place called El Cholo. Mmmm, shrimp fajitas.

Tom had two days' work on a film set during my stay, so I spent lots of lovely time with Bambi, which I really enjoyed. We cruised around town in her kickass red convertible BMW and I was able to catch up with her about how things have been in the past few difficult months since her Dad got ill. Despite running her Dad's business single-handed, Bam was a wonderful hostess and very patient, ferrying me around all the local sites and letting me take lots of photos.

Then I joined Tom at work for his second day on set. He was working on a straight-to-DVD, microbudget horror movie, operating the second camera and basically doing whatever was needed. It was such a fun and interesting day - I worked on a film set in LA! Kind of...

The shoot was at a band rehearsal studio on an industrial estate about an hour's drive away. It's a real shoestring production and I was there as a production assistant (runner), so helped decorate the set, adjust costumes, hold the boom and do whatever else needed doing. It was so tempting to chip in with suggestions, but I quickly realised that this was neither needed nor appreciated! The crew consisted of the writer/director (Dennis), Tom and a producer (Dave) who spent most of the day asleep. The cast was made up of unpaid young actors, starting out in the business, and comparing imdb credits, which was pretty funny.

When Dave was awake, he was kind of weird. He looked a bit strange (below) and pervaded this undertone of sleaziness. For example, the plotline was about a group of high school kids who spend halloween in a condemned asylum. So of course, the two hottest girls in the group were lesbians and of course they went to the halloween party dressed as a dominatrix and submissive. And sleazy producer man said to them, in his sniggering saliva-y way, 'heh heh, I'm usually opposed to same sex marriage. Heh heh. But for you two lovely ladies, I'd make an exception. Heh heh'. Hdddrrdrrrdr. And there was a point during a classroom scene when he said to the beautiful cast, 'Heh heh, you know what's funny is that - heh heh - none of you would've spoken to me in high school! Heh heh'.

But it was really fun to see what Tom does and to see this side of movie-making. Plus I got paid $40! Bonus!

Tom and Dennis
(with an excellently decorated fake whiteboard in the background, courtesy of their new set decorator [me])

On my last day with Tom and Bambi, Bam was feeling unwell, so Tom and I headed off to Zuma beach in Malibu, where I introduced Tom to bodyboarding. The drive along the Pacific Coast Highway was great - Tom has a convertible too (it's the LA way...) - and the beach was amazing. Unfortunately there were loads of rip tides, so the waves were gnarly and a Baywatch-like lifeguard kept getting people to come closer in to the shore, so it wasn't really very much fun and Tom is yet to be convinced of the joys of bodyboarding.

That night, Tom and Nina were kind enough to schlep all the way across town to come out to dinner with us, which was really great. All four of them got on like a house on fire, having only met for the first time a few days before, which was lovely for me (and hopefully them).

Unfortunately it was far too lovely an evening and had been far too fun a week, because I was really sad to leave, even though I was of course looking forward to seeing Maxy again. There was something unsurprisingly brilliant about spending time with literally my nearest and dearest, after months of hanging out with people in DC who are really nice, but not people who I've known for years.

So Max and I have already planned to go to LA for Thanksgiving! Can't. Wait.

CITY OF ANGELS pt. 1

I COMPLETELY FORGOT TO MENTION: we got an email from Megan while we were in Costa Rica - she's been headhunted from her DC-based speech-writing consultancy (they write for the likes of Bill Clinton, Warren Buffet, George Clooney, Bill Gates...) to work for Michelle Obama! She's moved to Chicago until the election!

Ok, I'll say it quickly to make it hurt less, like ripping off a plaster - Sarah Palin??!! Good grief. I mean, good grief. Unvetted, inexperienced and unknown. Proof, as if proof were needed that McCain is trying to win an election - with no apparent consideration for life beyond 4 November - while Obama is trying to become president, making decisions and formulating policies with a view to them lasting four years, rather than short-sighted, short-term plans to win votes.

I mean, Sarah Palin??! By now, we all know the various scandals surrounding her, so I won't go on. But my favourite being the theory that her youngest child is actually her daughter's and she's covering up for her, 'Sunset Beach'-style.

With the Palin news haunting us, Max and I left Denver in separate directions. He headed off to Minnesota for the RNC convention and I went to LA for a week of fun in the sun. I stayed Friday to Monday with one of my best friends from university - Tom - and his magnificent girlfriend Nina then was passed, like a child between a set of divorced parents, to Tom and Bambi and stayed with them until Saturday.

I've only been to LA once before, for Tom and Bambi's wedding, and didn't much like it then because I couldn't really get a handle on it. I think it's very much a city you need to see through the eyes of someone who knows it well, so I was really looking forward to my visit, especially as I was seeing some of my favourite people in the world.

Within about 5 minutes of being in Tom and Nina's kickass convertible, winging my way from the airport to their house in West Hollywood, it felt like we hang out like that all the time. It was so wonderful to see them and for it not to matter that I haven't seen them for a few years.

I had a brilliant few days with them, wandering around Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Blvd, exploring the Hollywood hills and seeing fancy houses, gawping at the view from the Griffith Observatory, having tasty brunches in nice restaurants, visiting the amazing gardens and photography exhibition at the Huntingdon Library and spending an afternoon at the site of architectural porn that is the Getty.

I was among the many people who deride the majority of Americans who don't have passports, assuming this meant that they are very blinkered and have had very narrow experiences of the world, sticking to what they know rather than exploring different places. However, this month of whizzing around the States has made me temper that opinion a bit, because of the sheer variety I've experienced within the US. Going from DC to Florida to Denver to LA really felt like visiting four different countries. They all feel very different and in LA, the people even look different, I reckon - DC doesn't really 'do' fashion, so it was a real shock to the system to see these wafer thin people wandering around in weird directional clothes.

It was great to hang out with Tom and Nina and they made me feel really at home in their awesome house (awesome until some Armenian neighbours had a party late one night and had a band playing the loudest whiney music through the most powerful PA just across the street...). I even got to drive their convertible a lot, which made me feel like someone out of 'Entourage'.

Perhaps the most fun thing we did was spend the evening at the biggest, most high concept mini-golf place I've ever been to. There were THREE courses, all with amazing obstacles, like windmills and bridges and water features. It was so so cool. I never got to the bottom of why, but there were also wild bunny rabbits hopping around the course. I really got into my mini-golf and either got holes in one, or took a million goes to sink my ball. It was so so fun. And THEN we got to play air hockey and driving games in the adjacent arcade! Joy.