8 posts tagged “virginia”
And not so sure about it. I mean, where I grew up, things like this did not happen. (Not one at a time, not in groups of seven.) And just 25 miles away. There was a tornado warning in the county where our house is yesterday (it didn't get to the county, but hung a right further south and headed for the water). Still, we've been dealing with the deluge for the last few weeks, and I'm now up to multiple washing away everything I planted incidents, including yesterday when there was such heavy rain it flooded out all of my pots and washed the seeds away.
SIGH.
Meanwhile, we have tax assessments that defy logic to look forward to here in lovely Virginia. Though there are, occasionally, things that one might find endearing about this place. Maybe not enough to counterbalance the illogical tax assessments, but enough to making hanging on for a few possible....
For the first time in months and months I went to the roller derby a couple of weeks ago.
It was great to go, even if I was feeling a bit off with shooting (a lot of shots that ended up trashed once I downloaded them). I brought P and my friend T, who has been staying with us the last couple weeks while she works on getting settled in D.C. after more than five years living in South America. It was the first time either of them had ever been to see roller derby, and they both seemed to enjoy it, though not the drive home so much, which was long and late.
And last week was Memorial Day and P and I decided to take advantage of the holiday by heading for West Virginia, which neither of us had been to before (I once drove through the edge of it at night in a snow storm, but I don't think that counts). We headed west with a carload (literally) of cameras, and rolled around all weekend, taking lots and lots of pictures.
We brought the large format monorail cameras, and I got to play with the tilt/shift stuff while we were in a place called Cass. It was a town created by a lumber company, so it was full of houses that were all completely identical, having been built by the company. There was a company store (now a store and restaurant), and a rail spur that linked to the larger line. And not much else. The houses are in varying states of care or disrepair, from the weekly rental (it's run by the state park service) to the collapsed.
It was a great trip, but for Sunday night, when we popped over the W.V. border into Virginia to find a hotel to spend the night. We ended up in Covington. Not a happy place. Not much by way of accomodations, and what was there was wildly overpriced (oh boy, the romantic view of the truck depot). We drove around the town a bit, and every road we were on was lined with sagging turn of the century houses with couches on the front porch and unhappy looking dogs pacing the front yard. The most posh thing in town looked to be the football field. The high school had a sign of recent vintage in front congratulating itself on having become accredited. We looked at each other, eyebrows cocked, as we passed the Rent to Own outfit in a building that looked like it might have once been a KFC. The sign on the side said, "We have guns!" Rent to own guns?
The main project for this week was to deal with a health issue: basal cell carcinoma. A little thing on my cheek, just under the eye, that I'd had removed about five years ago, only to reappear a few months ago. Both times the dermatologists didn't think it looked like anything to be worried about, but tested it anyway since there is a family history (and, at least in part, to assuage my concerns). Both times it turned out to be cancerous. Last time the guy took to my cheek with a little hole puncher thing. This time was more extensive, though still minor (I had two stitches last time; this time was six). Minor or not, it's really painful and swollen, and I've got a shiner, making me look like I got into it with someone. It's also just exhausting, and I actually took a two hour nap yesterday.
So wear your sunscreen. And a hat. Actually, just stay inside....
Okay, the title doesn't have anything to do with anything... it's from an article about Chinese authorities trying to clean up over-enthusiastic direct dictionary translations in Beijing in the lead up to the Olympics.It made me nostalgic for the days when I enjoyed reading menus filled with oscillating beef (Hanoi), crap soup (Hanoi), fried needles (various, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Thailand), and macho fiesta (Nanjing).
The other night we stopped at the Harris Teeter down the block on the way home from installing at Artomatic. I'd run out of milk a few days before and hadn't had a chance to get more. The situation was so desperate that I'd used whipped cream to cream my coffee two days in a row, and had run out of even that. So, at 11:30 pm, we're in the grocery store getting milk and a few other items. In the frozen food aisle was a woman who was at least eight months pregnant pushing two carts, each with food and a blond boy in them. She pushed one of the carts off and a tall man with very long light brown hair and a long beard walked up to the other cart. He pushed it to the side and turned around, walking back towards a freezer. The boy sitting in it (it only occurred to me later to wonder what they were doing-- this couple with two toddlers, the boys maybe two and three years old-- in the grocery store at nearly midnight) swung his legs violently, dinging the cart. ding ding ding. And then he said, with a childish voice, softening all the r's and l's into w's:
Get me outta hewe you big mawshmewwow head!
The man turned around, looked at the boy, perplexed, and said, "What?" The boy repeated it. Confusion stayed on his face as he turned back towards the freezers. Then he said, "That's so weird."
We've been calling each other marshmellow heads for the last few days.
We had to go to the post office the other day. We went to the one in Falls Church. We were waiting in line and an old gentleman came in, dressed like he was ready to head for the Arctic. He removed his earmuffs, his gloves, his scarf, his coat, his sweater, and looked like he was contemplating his shirt. He stoof behind us muttering, "It's like tropical India in here."
There was one guy working the counter, but the line wasn't that long, and no one looked like they wanted sixteen money orders in bizarro denominations, or had a complicated issue involving their mother needing an address change because their brother's best friend had set her apartment on fire mixing a batch of meth. A woman walked into the post office, got in line and yelled at the man behind the counter, a very talk Sikh man with a salt and pepper beard,
You got somebody else working with you? Because I'm on my lunch break.
As one, everyone in line turned to look at her with vague looks of disgust. There was a collective sigh that said, yes, well, you think you're the only one in here with a job? The man behind the counter didn't answer. So she yelled again.
HEY, You got somebody else working with you? I'm on my lunch break!
Without looking away from the customer he was serving the man said:
Yes. I have someone else working with me.
And then paused. Just long enough that the woman was working herself up to a swivet, just about to burst forth with something along the lines of demanding that the other person get on out here because she was on her lunch break, etc. Just as she was about to speak, he finished his thought.
She's eating her lunch.
He then pointedly ignored her. Everyone in the line (but her) smirked a smirk of satisfaction. A few minutes later a woman came out from the back and walked towards another register. She asked us to step forward to do our transaction. As we were walking up there lunch break lady said:
Oh, you're back hunh. Well. Where'm'I supposed to put this?
She held up the address label for a priority envelope and the envelope. The woman behind the counter looked at her like she was a bit crazy and said, "Uhm... on the front?"
Well which one is the front. This one?
And she stuck it to the back. The woman behind the counter cocked an eyebrow and said, "Uh... sure."
I bet that woman complains all the time about getting bad service.
So if you are in the DC Metro area you should come on down this Friday for the opening... and then come again over the next month, because with over 430 visual artists showing their work and performances, workshops, and film programs every night you could come every day til the show closes and not see everything.
Phil and I are showing in room 6D36. Come out for the Artists' Night opening on May 4th and we'll see you there!
Which is kind of how I feel at the moment. I'm in one of those too, too much on my plate loops that periodically roll through everyone's life. Many of the things crowding the plate are things that are steps towards things that will be very, very good when completed... but are a little sticky now. Like the house-- I know that I will love that we're in the house when we're unpacked (I already love that we're together, even if we can't find way too many things).... but at the moment it's a bit of an anxiety not being able to find things, or having the boxes of books still in boxes (not all, but a quarter of the total or so) in the dining room. Making so that seven weeks after moving in we still can't use the dinig room table. *sigh* And of course Artomatic, which is going to be soooo much fun, and which I'm very excited about, but one our millionth trip to Home Depot for screws or whatever yesterday kind of made me want to throw up. There's still lots to do, but hey,it will all be done soon and then we can just enjoy the show! :)
One casualty of the busybusybusiness has been, sadly, my photography, which I haven't done much of the last couple of months. I *did* get to bust the camera out for the Lobsterboy Revue at the Birchmere on April Fools. It was really really nice to get the cameras out.....
There was a belly dancing group, who were very good....
The high point of my weekend (which involved a volunteer shift, a temper tantrum thrown at me, painting the last corner of the space where we are showing, a trip to Ikea and a trip to Home Depot) was when Phil dropped me off at the Chinese restaurant next to the Despot. It's a Chinese restaurant owned by Sino-Vietnamese people. There were certificates on the walls from some local Vietnamese organizations (I now live in Saigon America 1975), the Catholic Vietnamese society of northern Virginia, the Republican party, notices of being added to some local papers' resataurant lists. The owner has a Vietnamese name, but everyone was speaking to each other in Chinese (not Mandarin, I think in Cantonese). When I arrived there was a waiter trying to get the take out order from a woman who was there with her mother. Half of what they asked for was something they weren't making, couldn't make, were all out of, don't make anymore. The man kept repeating back what she had already ordered, and said over and over:
Egg foo young, Communist platter, fried rice... Egg foo young, Communist platter, fried rice...
And I kept thinking, Communist Platter? I wonder what that entails. It took me a little while to realize that it was a combination platter. But I sat happily contemplating the intricacies of a Communist Platter for a while, waiting for my order (which took a while to settle on, as I had to go through a similar retinue of items that were listed on the menu but that were things they weren't making, couldn't make, were all out of, don't make anymore.) After a while a Russian guy showed up and said, "HI AM CHERE WIZ CAKE. HWEDDING CAKE." They looked at him blankly. "HWEDDING CAKE. HWEDDING CAKE." "Oh oh oh, wedding cake wedding cake..." They waved him towards the back of the restuarant where, in the distance, tucked into the many rolls of ruffled lavendar gauzy fabric there was a big gold and red double happiness on the wall behind a dais. As my food was arriving the Russian man was slinking out of the building. The owner of the restaurant-- a short, round, gray-haired man with glasses-- yelled at him as he slunk out of the building.
What is this? What kine business you run? Huh? Huh? You bake cake, but you don know how to set up? What you think I know how to set up? We not bakers! You baker! You set up! What kine businessman you are? Stupid!
Looks like someone's wedding cake wasn't going to be tiered....
in Arlington, that is. My stuff made the journey across the river yesterday, and I'll be heading over to the Birdcave after work to clean and return keys... at which point I will officially no longer be a D.C. resident. Many thanks to Anita, Rick, Ben, Dan, and the irrepressible Snelson for their much appreciated assistance. (See here)
I expect to be unpacked sometime in 2009. By which point Phil will have perfected the special Birdcage/Nikonshooter dewey decimal system, with card catalogue and all.
We made it to Virginia! Whoo-hoo! 2300 miles is a long time in a car. (I keep thinking of that Modest Mouse song... eight hundred miles is a long time inside a car.... nine hundred miles is a long time inside a car.... a thousand a miles is a REALLY LONG TIME IN A CAR). We got here, unloaded P's stuff, returned the truck and trailer (that was traumatic) and went to bed-- just in time to be woken up Sunday to a blizzard. A real and actual snow storm. Which made going into DC to pack impossible. *sigh*. But I'm really happy to say that we made it, mishap-free, in a reasonable amount of time, ahead of the icky weather. It was actually lovely weather the whole way. (Though I have a lot to say about Texas. Later.) Of course, all of my stuff is still in DC and really really not packed, and me with no time to do so.... so I'm kind of panicking. And I can hardly see my desk for the pile of work that has accumulated in my absence.
But whatevah! We're here! No more airports! No more phone calls! Wheee!!!
Here is a sentence I never thought that I would utter: I am moving to the suburbs. I'm going to follow it up with another sentence I never thought I would utter: I am moving to Virginia. My aversion to both the suburbs and Virginia is well known, but there it is: I am moving to the Virginia suburbs.
Since money is never a motivator for me (at least it never has been to this point, which may be because real money has never been involved in anything that I've been involved in... though I suspect that real money has never been involved because it isn't something that motivates me.), this is obviously about love. And happily (deliriously so), it is. Because, you see, my beloved Phil is also moving to the Virginia suburbs.
Yeay!!!
After a year of living across the country from each other and having spent (I recently figured out) 5% of the last year actually with each other (that works out to a few days every two months or so) we're going to close the distance from 2300 miles to zero. How excited about this am I? I'm so excited that I'm ecstatically happy to be moving to the Virigina suburbs. That is seriously happy.
This turn of events, while being the end result of many months of prodding, asking, applying, planning, scheming, and pursuing all sorts of things here, there, elsewhere, whatever would get us in the same state, unfolded with lightening speed, and is rolling along at the same swift clip. He got the job Friday. Yeay! What do we do now? My apartment is too small. I look on the internets to see if there are things to look at in Virginia, see a lot of high rise apartments (listen to Phil hyperventilating at the thought) and one lonely little house, email about the house Saturday morning, see it Sunday morning, get a call saying it's ours to rent Monday morning. Monday afternoon he is told that he needs to be in his office in VA in two weeks. Five days ago I was in despair at the ongoing physical separation, worried that it would last months more. Now I'm trying to get everything in order to move into a house together in ten days.Yeay!!
Not that we have ten days to get ready to move. A few weeks ago, when this job wasn't on the horizon and it had been almost six weeks since we'd seen each other we decided to go to New York for a weekend for Valentine's Day. That would be this weekend coming up. So we meet up in New York on Friday (yeay! it's going to be soooo fun), I head back to DC & he heads back to AZ on Monday.... then I head to AZ on Saturday and we drive to VA over the next week, roll into town, unpack enough to have a bed to sleep in, he starts work, and the next weekend we get all of my stuff out of my place in DC.
So it is the close of the era of the Birdcave, and the charming bits about it. The bathroom a chez nous is in plain site, there are far fewer places where Phil will hit his head. On to the era of the Orange Line! Which is coming on with a quickness. Egads, I gotta pack. Anyone have any boxes laying around? More importantly anyone free on March 3rd & could help load up on DC or unload in Arlington? Oh, and did I mention that this week has been the week of the best news ever? Yeay!!!
As a side note, I think we're both feeling like the universe is working with us, everything falling into place, one thing after another. Sometimes the universe does have a sense of humor, and I'm eternally grateful, but I think I'm also being chided (which I will take happily)-- when I got off the metro to take a look at the house I thought, hmmmm.... this looks so familiar. Which is odd, because outside of going to the airport I've only been to Virginia half a dozen times, so nothing but National should look familiar. Then I realized why it looked familiar: because I *had* been there before. That would be when I said:
Stepping out of the metro in Virginia (and Maryland, for that matter) is like stepping off onto another planet. Walking from the metro to the theater kind of freaked me out a little.
Home sweet home! I believe my city-lovin' snarkiness just nipped me in the butt. ;) Which is just fine with me.
