Back from DC
I just got back from the DC area, for my youngest sister's graduation from grad school. The only time I'd ever been there before was about 14 years ago, for a wedding, and there wasn't time for much looking around. This time I was there for six days – long enough to fall madly in love with the place and put it on my list of places to visit as often as I can afford it.
First of all, it is so green there. Compared to Utah, I've always felt like Slownoma is pretty lush and alive, at least in winter. But wow. Virginia. The area we were in is pretty densely developed, but every square inch that isn't covered with buildings is growing something green – trees, bushes, vines, flowers, everywhere. The weather was perfect too, with a little rain every day, or a lot on some days, and warm without being too too hot or humid.
The graduation only took a few hours on Saturday, and the rest of the time we spent visiting galleries, museums and monuments. Maybe because DC is more horizontal than vertical, I didn't find it as visually exhausting as other cities I've visited; everything is pretty spread out and we did a lot of walking, but in general you can see where you're going from a long way off, and it feels very spacious and non-claustrophobic. The design of the city is light and open, with traffic signals off to the sides instead of strung across the streets and fairly uniform height to the buildings, at least down around the mall and the river where we spent most of our time. As for the art – I'm officially inspired. Next trip I'm looking forward to really focusing on a few specific collections.
The monuments were actually pretty moving as well, which I hadn't expected. I've been so disgusted with a lot of what's been happening in the government over the last decade or so that I've gotten used to feeling sort of embarrassed about America. On this trip I started feeling proud of my country again, and that is not a small thing.
(I just looked out the window and there's a little pair of California quails walking across the patio. Very cute, with their spots and plumes.)
So now I'm back and after a day off to adjust to the time change I'm diving back into the rest of my life – studying for my statistics final, hospice work, house work, work for money, and exercise. I took my second stats midterm just before I left for this trip last week and got an 88 – not as good as I would have liked, but better than I thought I did. I think I would have done better if I hadn't run out of time; I don't know why they make you hand-calculate all the data tables, instead of just summarizing the values and letting you plug them into equations and interpret them. Nobody does any of that by hand anymore, and I had not planned on spending an hour of the time I'd allotted myself for the test, adding and multiplying endless columns of numbers on the calculator.
Hospice work continues. I have a patient this afternoon, and two in-service meetings over the next couple of weeks. This is probably a good place to mention that Mr. A's mother passed away last week, on Mother's Day. She'd been in a hospice care unit for a few days but was scheduled to go home the next day; we'd spent several hours cleaning and getting her room ready for her before we went to see her on Sunday afternoon. This is really a topic for a separate post so for now I'll just say that the last time we saw her she seemed infinitely better and more comfortable than she had the time before, and we'd really thought that we might have another week or so with her, now that they'd finally gotten her pain under control. I held her hand while Mr. A and his sister talked about cooking shows, and she told us she loved us, and as we were leaving I turned around to look at her again and she sort of raised her eyebrows and shrugged and smiled faintly, like "Well, whaddaya gonna do?" – which is such a characteristic gesture of hers that it makes me tear up to think of it.
Anyway, she's gone and we miss her and now the real hard part has begun.
I've had several work-for-money projects lately and that is mostly a good thing, although I don't really have the time or the technology to take on a lot of new work right now. I'm trying to decide, before I return this phone call, whether I want to try to develop a website for someone who called because they liked some print work of mine that they saw. It's always good to be asked, and in general my policy is to always say yes to work when it's available. This reminds me of why I'm deciding not to keep doing this kind of work though – I really should upgrade my software if I'm going to be building websites, or even just designing for print, but it's so expensive that I'd have to do way more work than I have time for, just to pay for my equipment costs.
As for exercise, I'm finally kind of settling into something of a routine with that. Yoga is happening, and feels good. I'm still walking every day. Not riding my bike as much as I would like, but planning to get back into that this week. And I ran into my old roommate S at the gym the other day and she got me kind of excited about a swimming class that we're going to start together on Monday. It was great to see her – we'd sort of lost track of each other for a few years there, but now that we've found each other again I'm looking forward to renewing our friendship.
Finally, with this trip over and Mr. A's family situation somewhat re-stabilized, at least for the moment, it's time to start getting serious about finding another dog. I've been enjoying our solo time with Tater so much, and raising a young dog is such a lot of work and expense, that I keep finding myself wanting to postpone changing the family .... But every time Mr. A leaves on another business trip I remember why this is not an optional, "nice to have" kind of a thing. Tater is getting too old to do much watch-dogging, and even when he was young he was never as good a guard dog as the Jeeps. It's not like we're all that far out in the country, but we are far enough from our neighbors that I feel better with the kind of security a big, loud, barking dog or two can provide. Especially when it's the middle of the night and it's just me here and I can hear something (or somebody?!) scratching around in the bushes outside – or it's the middle of the day and a truck pulls into the driveway and a guy gets out and starts looking in the windows ....
It seems like getting a decent dog these days is almost as hard as adopting a kid. They want forms and figures, proof of this and that, home visits, pledges to feed only certain kinds of food, a promise to purchase pet insurance, evaluations of existing pets, permission to drop in and check conditions in the home from time to time, blah blah blah. I suppose I can see why all that's necessary, although personally I think we're pretty good dog "parents" and wish we didn't have to spend so much time jumping through hoops. As soon as I take my stats final, this is going to become my top priority.
First of all, it is so green there. Compared to Utah, I've always felt like Slownoma is pretty lush and alive, at least in winter. But wow. Virginia. The area we were in is pretty densely developed, but every square inch that isn't covered with buildings is growing something green – trees, bushes, vines, flowers, everywhere. The weather was perfect too, with a little rain every day, or a lot on some days, and warm without being too too hot or humid.
The graduation only took a few hours on Saturday, and the rest of the time we spent visiting galleries, museums and monuments. Maybe because DC is more horizontal than vertical, I didn't find it as visually exhausting as other cities I've visited; everything is pretty spread out and we did a lot of walking, but in general you can see where you're going from a long way off, and it feels very spacious and non-claustrophobic. The design of the city is light and open, with traffic signals off to the sides instead of strung across the streets and fairly uniform height to the buildings, at least down around the mall and the river where we spent most of our time. As for the art – I'm officially inspired. Next trip I'm looking forward to really focusing on a few specific collections.
The monuments were actually pretty moving as well, which I hadn't expected. I've been so disgusted with a lot of what's been happening in the government over the last decade or so that I've gotten used to feeling sort of embarrassed about America. On this trip I started feeling proud of my country again, and that is not a small thing.
(I just looked out the window and there's a little pair of California quails walking across the patio. Very cute, with their spots and plumes.)
So now I'm back and after a day off to adjust to the time change I'm diving back into the rest of my life – studying for my statistics final, hospice work, house work, work for money, and exercise. I took my second stats midterm just before I left for this trip last week and got an 88 – not as good as I would have liked, but better than I thought I did. I think I would have done better if I hadn't run out of time; I don't know why they make you hand-calculate all the data tables, instead of just summarizing the values and letting you plug them into equations and interpret them. Nobody does any of that by hand anymore, and I had not planned on spending an hour of the time I'd allotted myself for the test, adding and multiplying endless columns of numbers on the calculator.
Hospice work continues. I have a patient this afternoon, and two in-service meetings over the next couple of weeks. This is probably a good place to mention that Mr. A's mother passed away last week, on Mother's Day. She'd been in a hospice care unit for a few days but was scheduled to go home the next day; we'd spent several hours cleaning and getting her room ready for her before we went to see her on Sunday afternoon. This is really a topic for a separate post so for now I'll just say that the last time we saw her she seemed infinitely better and more comfortable than she had the time before, and we'd really thought that we might have another week or so with her, now that they'd finally gotten her pain under control. I held her hand while Mr. A and his sister talked about cooking shows, and she told us she loved us, and as we were leaving I turned around to look at her again and she sort of raised her eyebrows and shrugged and smiled faintly, like "Well, whaddaya gonna do?" – which is such a characteristic gesture of hers that it makes me tear up to think of it.
Anyway, she's gone and we miss her and now the real hard part has begun.
I've had several work-for-money projects lately and that is mostly a good thing, although I don't really have the time or the technology to take on a lot of new work right now. I'm trying to decide, before I return this phone call, whether I want to try to develop a website for someone who called because they liked some print work of mine that they saw. It's always good to be asked, and in general my policy is to always say yes to work when it's available. This reminds me of why I'm deciding not to keep doing this kind of work though – I really should upgrade my software if I'm going to be building websites, or even just designing for print, but it's so expensive that I'd have to do way more work than I have time for, just to pay for my equipment costs.
As for exercise, I'm finally kind of settling into something of a routine with that. Yoga is happening, and feels good. I'm still walking every day. Not riding my bike as much as I would like, but planning to get back into that this week. And I ran into my old roommate S at the gym the other day and she got me kind of excited about a swimming class that we're going to start together on Monday. It was great to see her – we'd sort of lost track of each other for a few years there, but now that we've found each other again I'm looking forward to renewing our friendship.
Finally, with this trip over and Mr. A's family situation somewhat re-stabilized, at least for the moment, it's time to start getting serious about finding another dog. I've been enjoying our solo time with Tater so much, and raising a young dog is such a lot of work and expense, that I keep finding myself wanting to postpone changing the family .... But every time Mr. A leaves on another business trip I remember why this is not an optional, "nice to have" kind of a thing. Tater is getting too old to do much watch-dogging, and even when he was young he was never as good a guard dog as the Jeeps. It's not like we're all that far out in the country, but we are far enough from our neighbors that I feel better with the kind of security a big, loud, barking dog or two can provide. Especially when it's the middle of the night and it's just me here and I can hear something (or somebody?!) scratching around in the bushes outside – or it's the middle of the day and a truck pulls into the driveway and a guy gets out and starts looking in the windows ....
It seems like getting a decent dog these days is almost as hard as adopting a kid. They want forms and figures, proof of this and that, home visits, pledges to feed only certain kinds of food, a promise to purchase pet insurance, evaluations of existing pets, permission to drop in and check conditions in the home from time to time, blah blah blah. I suppose I can see why all that's necessary, although personally I think we're pretty good dog "parents" and wish we didn't have to spend so much time jumping through hoops. As soon as I take my stats final, this is going to become my top priority.
1 Comments:
Lucky you--a DC trip! I haven't been for 40 years--the summer of '70. I loved it all--the monuments, the museums (especially the Smithsonian), the philatelic window--loved it all except the sauna weather (we were there in July or August). And I've been dying to get back lately! Someday when I have the money, let's go! Can't imagine a better traveling companion than you--wouldn't we have a gas?
Post a Comment
<< Home