Three beautiful things from the week before a long weekend:
1. The windows in John’s condo are huge and look out over 16th Street.
2. A tiny girl, who clearly was still mastering the freestyle walking thing, staggers up and down the street as her mother follows. When her father emerges from a restaurant with the stroller, she lurches over to him to help push. She and Rudi engage in a series of “hi!’s” and waves.
3. With his new haircut and strolling around the Burrow in his boxers, Rudi reminds me of an underwear model. (But don’t tell him, okay? This will just be our secret…)
Two acquaintances from the Dean Days have been roaming the country, correcting the irksome misspellings and typos found on public signs.
In a case that should chill the heart of teenagers everywhere who fail to perceive the danger of posting every action on the internet, Ben and Jeff were recently arrested because of a blog entry.
Apparently while they were in Arizona back in the spring they stopped at Grand Canyon National Park, where they fixed some punctuation problems on a sign, which, it turns out, was not appreciated by the Powers That Be. Someone alerted the officials to the blog post, in which Jeff and Ben discussed what they’d done, and the former roommates were arrested.
This week in Phoenix, they were sentenced to probation, banned from national parks for a year, and ordered to pay $3,035 to repair the sign. My question is: How will the National Park Service fix the sign — will they go with the correct grammar or add in the corrected edits, but in an appropriate yellow color to match the original text?
The singers are Jack Johnson and Ben Harper (who wrote the song).
This is a PBS ad that aired last night during the convention and that, I feel, helps demonstrate the tone of the first night. I’ll be buying the song from iTunes.
Even though I keep thinking today ought to be Friday, I’m having a tough time understanding how it got to be this late in the week already. Nonetheless, here it is — time again for three beautiful things from the past week:
1. As I hurry to the metro, I pass a man in paint-spattered pants out on his front walk. He is painting bright splotches on a large (4′x6′, maybe) canvas.
2. I ride downtown Saturday afternoon, cutting through Lafayette Park on my way. Because they’ve closed Pennsylvania Avenue nearby to cars, it’s a great, safe place for pedestrians and tends to attract a lot of foot traffic. A guide leads a tour group, explaining tidbits of information about the area. A little girl in a white lacy dress and flowers in her hair runs down the path to my left. Women in matching gowns are clustered to my right and I glance around, searching for the bride. She’s walking behind the flower girl, looking lovely. Meanwhile, a ferocious game of street hockey is going on in the closed street.
3. Jordi and Charles (a D.C. for Dean friend) got married on Saturday night and were kind enough to invite us to help celebrate with them. The ceremony was simple and quick, held in an outdoor courtyard under an unseasonably pleasant August sunset. There was little fuss and you could tell from looking at the two of them that this was really a perfect match.
We adjourned inside for the reception, where photos of the couple and their friends and family covered the shelves around the room. A note indicated that we were welcome to take shots we loved home with us as their gift to us. A group of us grabbed a table together and we spent the evening talking and refilling our plates from the buffet lines and generally making merry. The music started early and continued late and covered every decade from the 1940s on. Our crowd, being perhaps a bit older than most of Charles and Jordi’s friends, particularly enjoyed the ’80s hits. Both Charles and Jordi spent lots of time out on the dance floor and you could see that the two of them were actually having fun at their own wedding!
By the time you’ve lived a third of a century (stop gasping, Mum, it’s true), you so often come away from weddings with a list of things you would have done differently if it had been you. Not so this time. It really was the perfect day.
Life seems to have a two-tone quality to it these days. Knitting progresses (I’ll finish Row 83 before bed tonight), but I’ll be glad to move on to a different project when the Ravelympics concludes at noon on Sunday. Will I be done with the super secret project? Ummm… it’s hard to say at this point. Definitely maybe.
And while I’m knit, knit, knitting along, I’m also watching record amounts of tv. I have seen a variety of sports — from beach volleyball to the steeplechase to BMX racing — and have enjoyed almost all of them. I admit some of them make me nervous; I hate seeing athletes get hurt. And I refuse to watch the equestrian events for that reason: it’s bad enough if the person gets injured because they, at least, chose to compete; it’s just devastating to see an animal get hurt. (I have no reason to believe any horses have been injured during the Games thus far; if you know otherwise, please don’t share…)
But while I can be a nervous fan, I also really enjoy watching athletes go out and give their very best. Sometimes they come away with a World Record or a medal. But so much more often, they come away with nothing (imagine being last in the 100m qualifier and having that be your only event!), and it merely was enough for them to have competed for their sport and their country and to have put in their hardest effort. The athletes are (generally) gracious when interviewed — either in victory or in defeat — and I find myself very hopeful about the future of the world when I watch the Olympic coverage.
And, I suppose, that’s really not such a bad thing after all.
This morning I was out the door two hours before I normally wake up. My fellow night owls may find it comforting to hear that although there are some crazy people out and about at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday that there were fewer people than I feared they would be. And none of them chirped at me, which was good. Even after I returned from BWI, hitting the grocery store just before 8 a.m., streets were still somewhat empty. Of course, Dupont Circle was bustling half an hour later, which just pained me.
Actually, getting up and out was easier than I thought it would be. Of course, that could be because I’d only had four hours of sleep, so perhaps my body thought I was just getting up from a nap. I’m definitely starting to feel like it’s time to go back to bed. It is 9:30, after all.
We’re off to a friend’s wedding this evening. One minimizing bra later and I was able to go shopping in my own closet. This was especially exciting since I’d bought the bra (on sale!) to wear to last night’s strapless bridesmaid dress fitting (for Karen’s fall wedding) and wasn’t really expecting it to help me out this weekend. I even own shoes and a bag that will go with the dress I found, so although I’m going to run over to Macy’s and Filene’s Basement to see if I can come up with a summer shawl, the purchases for my wedding outfit will be minimal. I may go in pursuit of a pedicure this afternoon, though. I didn’t particularly enjoy the last (and only) one I had, but you really can’t argue with how nice your feet look afterwards. Maybe I’ll text some local friends and see if they have other suggestions for places to go.
Okay, I’m off to have another mug of strong tea and then to run some errands — or, y’know, take a nap.
Buildings in D.C. have all sorts of cool decorations on them. I captured these expressions last Friday during lunch and while on the way to my Ravelympics get-together (I’m now on Row 67).
These two are from the same building on F Street, N.W.
