I found this one in drafts, too, from February of 2006. Janet and Chris are the ones who helped me find my current job. They now have an even bigger and better TV. And Chris still knows things that nobody else I know knows.
So as I was saying, I spent half the weekend up in Northern Virginia (which Southern and Central Virginians believe is not actually part of Virginia). I was visiting Janet and Chris, longtime readers of this blog, who I had met last spring on a trip up to D.C. for a play. This time around, I was finally able to accept their invitation to spend a little time with them because religious school is not held on holiday weekends. So. I left food for the cats, packed my bag, my camera, and my cooler, and headed north, intending to meet up with Janet and Chris about lunchtime.
On the way north, I noticed that the entire population of Washington and the surrounding suburbs was heading south. I swear, there was at least a 30-mile backup, from D.C. alll the way to Fredericksburg. And there was the reverse backup on the way home today. I haven’t seen anything like it even in New Jersey on a Friday during the summer. (You so do not want to be heading south on the Garden State Parkway on a Friday in the summer. Shore traffic is horrendous.)
We had a lovely lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, during which we puzzled over what to call the decor (I think we decided on “overdone”) and where to spend the afternoon, which was deteriorating rapidly into a real, honest-to-God winter day. We wound up driving around the District (I picked up the lingo while I was there) and stopping in the Thomas Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. The T.J. memorial was nice, but I felt a genuine sense of awe looking up at the statue of Lincoln. Even the groups of kids were taking it seriously. I stood next to a bunch who were reading the Gettysburg Address out loud, and not sarcastically.
And then it was off to Janet and Chris’ home, which is quite lovely, what with having four cats and all. I have pictures, but I also have problems in that I have no decent image editing program, and the pictures aren’t compressing down as I cut them. I really have to find some time to get my other computer running, so I can have access to Fireworks again. Buying Dreamweaver Studio or Photoshop is simply not in the budget right now. But I digress.
We went to dinner with friends of theirs, and had a wonderful time. The food was good, the company was good, and when we got back home, the 50-inch widescreen TV was good. We watched the Olympics and mocked the speed skaters’ costumes. Oh. My. God. What were the Russians thinking? Do the Poles not have eyes? I mean, the costumes could have been more hideous, but only if you were standing in front of them.
One of the side-benefits of my trip was traveling to the various kosher butcher shops and markets in the Rockville area. Janet and Chris spent quite a lot of time finding the shops and plotting out a map for me using MapPoint. I left the house with three map printouts and two pages of directions, which I promptly rewrote as I realized there was no way I’d be able to decipher them while driving. See, I work like this: “Go to X street. Make a left.” The directions work like this: “2.4 miles to Y street. Left. Stay straight for .3 miles.” Come to think of it, I always rewrite my MapQuest directions when they do stuff like that, too. Chris says it’s because men think in vectors, and women think in landmarks. Chris, by the way, knows a lot. I don’t think there was a question that came up last night that he couldn’t answer. I was very impressed. Even funnier was Janet’s staring at him and saying, “How do you know that?” and his saying, “I don’t know.” It’s knowledge retention, and going with your gut. I tell my students that all the time. Go with your first instinct when answering a question; most of the time, you’re right.