poorboyoftroy

On his way out the door, a muscle-bound guy approached the girl sitting behind me, said, "You look really busy, so I don't want to bother you, but I wanted to give you this," and tossed a piece of paper with his number onto the table. Without a word from her in response, he about-faced and left.

What signal did the otherwise dormant katydids receive this past week notifying them that it is time again to awaken and take up occupancy in DC?  They are out in droves, he noticed, perched in the elms and dogwoods along Wilson Blvd, hunkered down in the oak trees of Farragut Square Park, and ensconced, he assumed, in the balance of DC's ample greenspace that he never sees.  The infernal chorus, which lasts somewhere between 5-20 seconds with intervals of roughly equivalent length, no doubt shocks tourists as it did him during his first summer here two years ago.  At that point, his body was still grasping for equilibrium with the punishing mid-Atlantic climate.  He was trying to determine the sacred ratio all DC-ites who manage to live and work here year-round seem to know: how much exposure/in what type of clothes, multiplied by a coefficient for level of exertion = a relative level of comfort in this ambient extremity?   The katydid chorus only seemed to a...