February 26th, 2007, 1:10 am

It gets better, right?

I awoke groggily, with enormous wet white flakes spiraling downward, outside the brick wall that is my view in my cave-like room.

A week’s worth of adventures wait to be summed up - a first week of snow and working again, of networking and emails, discovery trips to new groceries, getting lost and getting on the wrong metro - over and over again.

I’m reserving judgement on the snowbound city - waiting for the thaw to come and for fun to spring up out of the ground like those perennial optimists, daffodils.

But my adventures to date have been flat - honest efforts at enjoyment soured. Snowden and Malajube, at the Rock and Roll Hotel - a $12 show that ended promptly at midnight, with a middling size crowd. Lackluster brunches. Grocery store bills beyond reason - thanks, in part, to recent weather which has decimated US crops. (cough, an Inconvenient Truth, cough.) Saturday DJs at Black Cat who were playing to a room of college girls who couldn’t dance in their heels; $5 beers and music from a Pride Fest in the 90s.

There have got to be pockets of fun in the somber suits of the cityfolk. Dive bars, cheap, greasy hamburgers, homemade chorizo and smoky jukeboxes.

Right?

Fortunately for me, I’m still entranced by frozen water.

My first week in DC

Snow falling outside my bedroom, DC on Vimeo

Goat cheese and arugula sandwich, @ work

Why is fruit, yogurt and granola $12 in the States? Claire breakfast!

You act like I eat pasta while watching the Golden Girls every night.

I found a fast food chicken joint with burritos and decent salsa. Hello Pollo Campero!

My take on Mama’s Portuguese Soup: potatoes and carrots pureed with cabbage and zucchini and garlic. Simple, hearty, delic.

Black cat club. Meh.

… and, of course, SNOW!!!

Snow flying in your face makes your mascara run - or at least, so I heard.