Barb’s Burblings

“Did you go home for the holidays?”

This afternoon, I tried to figure out when people stop asking you that. My office opened today for the first time since December 23, and there was a lot of “Did you go home for the holidays?”

There are some problems with this. First of all, I’m assuming most people mean “your parents’ house” when they say “home,” and my parents live in a house they moved into a year after I graduated from college. Over the past 9 years, I’ve maybe spent a month there, if you put all my visits together. (More, probably.) Before that, they lived in Richmond. Because I was still in college when they lived there, it was technically my home and I was a resident of Virginia. But it never really felt like home, though I did spend an entire summer there, as well as school breaks. And before that was Montana, where we lived for the last two years of high school. It was my permanent home for a while, but it wasn’t where I grew up.

At this point, it really should be, “Did you stay home for the holidays?” Because my apartment is my home. I’ve lived in this general area (within, say, 10 miles) for the past 10 years. But, I guess because I’m not married, “home” is still presumably my parents’ house. I can’t imagine asking my coworkers if they went home for the holidays. Once you’re married, you have your own family–so you have a home. It’s assumed that I’m traveling for Christmas. I did host my parents and grandmother once, but that was it. And it’s not practical to host, I know; honestly, my apartment isn’t huge.

But you know what? It’s home.

I drove to the library today and when I passed the shopping center on the corner, I saw a sign in the window of the shop that’s been empty. All it said was “Soon.” But…it had the Chipotle logo on it. I knew that they were planning on putting a store there, but now it’s really real! But for serious guys, I’m going to have to go shopping for muumuus. Chipotle within walking distance of both work AND home? AND a Nando’s Peri Peri going in by the office? I’m going to weigh 800 pounds by the end of the year.

I was on the Metro this evening when I looked up and noticed a young man standing nearby holding a very familiar book. He obviously was either on his way to work or had just come from work, and was wearing an ID badge identifying him as a nurse. And the book he was holding was one I had worked out; it came out last year. I must’ve looked insane, because when I saw it, I just stared at it, grinning like an idiot. I’d never seen anyone with one of my books out like that! And really, we’ve only sold around 1000 copies of that particular book; really, what are the chances of me running into someone with one?

I totally would’ve gone up to him and asked him what he thought of the book, but we were almost at Gallery Place and I didn’t want to lose my seat. Ah well. It’s better this way. What would I have done if he said it sucked?

I’m not sure when the last time I had ridden a bike was. Middle school? High school? In any case, it had been a long time. A long, long time. But for a while, I’ve been thinking that I should get back on a bike. I look around and think how nice it would be to go for bike rides. I even flirt with the idea of buying a bike.

With the gorgeousness of the weather the past few days, though, I knew I had to get outside and do something fun. Steve, knowing of how long it had been since I’ve been on a bike, suggested renting some from a place in Alexandria and riding along the Potomac. Perfect!

I was nervous, though. Can you forget how to ride a bike? When I got on the bike yesterday morning, I wasn’t sure. I was pretty darn wobbly, but I had the balance thing mostly down. Although for the first, say, 20 minutes, I looked like I was bike-riding while drunk. But I got the hang of it after a while.

And it was just super, super nice. Honestly, I can’t imagine a better way to spend the first day of spring. We biked down the Mount Vernon Trail to Teddy Roosevelt Island (which Google Maps tells me is 7.3 miles), where we realized we had no locks for the bikes and thus couldn’t really go over to the island. Ah well. We headed into the city and ate lunch near the Lincoln Memorial, then biked over to the Jefferson Memorial and back to Old Town. It was all very lovely.

Well, except two things. One, we forgot about sunscreen. My forearms are now a bright red. Two, I’m now sore in the area that sits on the bike seat. I’m thinking it’ll get better quickly (right? RIGHT???), but it’s a bit ouchy right now.

Even so, I can’t complain. It was a fabulous day.

I lived in Connecticut during the winter of ‘93-’94. Now, the thing to understand about where I lived in Connecticut is that the town was pretty spread out, very hilly, and the roads were all very twisty and turny. And protected by trees. What I’m saying is that it took a bit for roads to be passable after snow, even with decent snow-removal budgets.

You also need to know that in Connecticut, we got a vacation in February and April.

Now, the winter of ‘93-’94 was not a good one. Not only did we get snow fairly regularly, it frequently came with ice. It was the winter of the ice storm, and we got snow day after snow day. I want to say that total, we had something like 12 snow days.

It was the one time of my life that I remember my mother coming into my room, telling me I had a snow day, and being pissed off about it. Because only 5 days were scheduled into the school year. So each snow day after that was one taken out of the April break. When that was gone, days were added onto the end of the year. SO not cool.

(And pointless, because a lot of people already had reservations for April, which meant that school was practically pointless for those of us left.)

The last day of school that year wound up being something like June 21. The next week, my family moved to Montana. (Which, of course, does not get snow days. But then, the roads there are largely FLAT and STRAIGHT.) I started school there and had to listen to people complaining how short their summers were.

Their last day of school the previous school year? June 6 or so. Yeah.

Anyway, there is something exciting about a large snowfall. The problem here is that we had that in December. Less than 2 months ago. Two huge snowfalls in such a short period of time? Less fun. Of course, at least I don’t have to worry about losing vacation should we have to take a snow day from work. So, there is an upside to being a grownup. (The downside, of course, is that I don’t have a summer vacation from which to take the snow days.)

Unlike the last time–a mere month and a half ago–that I was trapped in my apartment for days by a snowstorm, I don’t have a huge project to work on. So, naturally, I’ve been mentally going through projects to work on for the next couple of days.

1. Work. I have some page proofs to finish reviewing and a catalog to update.
2. Vacuum. The apartment is pretty gross (except the bathroom, which I cleaned recently).
3. Clean the litter boxes. I made a special trip to PetSmart for litter last night. It will be used this weekend. That trip cannot have been in vain.
4. Update my filing. I need to clean out the past couple years’ worth of bills, etc., sitting in my filing cabinet. Totally forgot to do it last year.
5. Catch up on at least one of the two shows sitting on my DVR. I have something like 10 episodes of both The Mentalist and Flash Forward just taking up precious storage space.
6. Make it to Level 8 on New Super Mario Bros. I can do this. I can.
7. Label the pictures on my computer.
8. Sleep a lot. Yay!

I just hope I don’t lose electricity for long. Of course, I do have a large stack of books that need to be read…

What? I would NEVER cause trouble!

I wrapped Christmas presents the other day and put them into the second bedroom, mostly so I could make sure Pem wouldn’t be around them without supervision. And I was impressed, because it took her a couple of days before she took an active interest in them. (How could she not? All that paper to be chewed!) And it was only just now that I realized her plan–a slight modification of her evil morning plan to wake me up.

Step 1. Do something that will definitely annoy Mommy (e.g., get into bag of presents, play on nightstand).
Step 2. Keep doing this until Mommy takes notice.
Step 3. Once Mommy’s attention has been gained, continue until Mommy stops whatever else she’s doing (sleeping, working on computer) and focuses solely on me.
Step 4. Lure Mommy into petting me, etc.
Step 5. Run into other room.
Step 6. Run back to where Mommy is, repeating all steps as necessary until Mommy realizes that it’s feeding time.
Step 7. If running back and forth doesn’t work, sit on her and meow until food is given.

Now, normally I have no problems with snow. I’m OK driving in it; after all, I got my driver’s license in Montana. In December. Shoveling isn’t a big deal, I think snow is pretty, and there’s something special about wandering around in the quiet that accompanies a snowstorm. But I’m not too pleased with this snowstorm. It conveniently waited until 9:30 on a Friday to start, meaning that it wouldn’t interfere with work. And it totally screwed over my plans for today. My day was full and it was going to be awesome. But no, now I’m stuck at home, doing work. (Which, OK, I really should’ve been doing instead of gallavanting around. And I really should’ve been doing for the past few weeks instead of doing the panto. But whatevs.)

My car tires? Mostly buried. From around 1 this afternoon:

I finally accepted that I wouldn’t be going anywhere and settled in. I thought I’d take a glance outside, so went downstairs and opened the door:

Yeah. The snow was higher than the bottom of the door. I’ve since shoveled a little path to the door, easing my concerns of getting snowed into the building.

And the fun part is, there aren’t any signs of it slowing up! Whee!

Yes, I still exist. I’m just very busy. In the meantime, look! When I was in Oregon visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, we went to Astoria (because my dad likes to drive to the coast–about 2 hours away from where they live. Yes, he’s a bit insane that way–but I’m like that, too), and since we were going there, I insisted we visit sites used in filming The Goonies. Without further ado…

Jail the Fratellis escaped from!

Where Mikey and Bran's dad worked

You can visit the Walsh house, but you have to leave your car at the bottom of the hill

Goonies never say die!

The owner of the “Walsh house” actually was taking out the garbage as I was taking pictures of the house and part of me wanted to say something, but I wussed out. On the positive side, my dad wasn’t familiar enough with the movie to require me to do the Truffle Shuffle before taking my picture in front of the house.