#ThrowBackThursday

My friend Greg posted a photo outside the National Gallery of Art’s East Building yesterday, and it reminded me that I used to work there -- my first job in Washington after leaving The Orange County Register in 1993. (I'd nearly forgotten!) I was crashing on Capitol Hill with my brother Bill at the time -- Terence lived just a few blocks away in an apartment he referred to as "the suckhole" -- while I tried to "reinvent myself" (at age 25!) after a few years in Los Angeles. The night I arrived on US Air (as it was known then) at National Airport (as it was known then), it was snowing like crazy as Bill and I raced home to watch Steffi Graf vs. Monica Seles in the Australian Open final. (Monica would win in three and be stabbed by a crazed Steffi fan -- who wasn't me -- weeks later.) In classic Bill fashion, he took control of my job and apartment hunt -- filling out my SF-171 and finding my efficiency in the Ravenel off Dupont Circle. The job didn’t last long -- I worked in the gallery’s library and I missed being in a newsroom -- but it was a fun experience and I will always cherish those five years my brothers and I turned the nation's capital into dateline: WALSHINGTON

My ultramodern computer 

Christmas on Capitol Hill, 1993