My Plan To Vote

What's your plan to vote? I have mine. 

Last month I went to the City registrar's office to research it and I discovered: 

i.) I am registered; 

ii.) Early voting opens at City Hall on Friday September 18; 

iii.) The ID requirement now is that I have to bring proof that I live at my registered address. A current utility bill addressed to me at that address will suffice--so I have put my last electric, and gas, bill next to my passport to bring;

iv.) There is no dumb requirement anymore of attesting to a reason why you're voting early. Formerly I always swore that I would be outside of the city limits on that day (it didn't matter when during the day or how far or for how long) and so on election day I would always walk up to the McDonalds a few blocks away and buy a cup of coffee there--it is across the street from Falls Church in Fairfax County; and 

v.) I did NOT make application for a mail-in absentee ballot. If I had, and I did it correctly, I would have to present the actual ballot sent to me by the state or, if I didn't receive it yet (or ever, given the current state of the Post Office under the direction of Trump's yes-man Postmaster DeJoy) or the dog ate it or I lost it or forgot it--no vote for me till I came back with that actual ballot. Or I could mail in the ballot, if it ever came, or I found it, or I taped it together after I got it away from the dog, hoping it would be received by the Friday following the Tuesday election, postmarked before or on November 3, and it fulfilled the proper requirements such as the signature was placed in the proper spot and it matched, by some stranger's scrutiny, the signature on file at DMV or on my original registration. Your signature doesn't change over time, does it? Did you impatiently scrawl that signature because you were in a hurry?

vi.) Voting early in person, and not by mail-in, assures that my vote will be counted immediately at 7 pm on November 3, because the ballot will already be in the polling machine and can be run off instantly electronically along with all the other votes cast in person on November 3. Thus I will not potentially contribute to Trump's possible "red mirage," where he could declare victory on November 3 if he is ahead before the absentee (mail-in) votes can be added to the total and give the true result. Absentee (mail-in) ballots are opened only after 7 pm on November 3 and need to have the envelopes examined for a proper signature, the envelopes slit open and the ballot extracted, smoothed out, and fed into the machine to be counted, a laborious process that could take up to a minute each. Trump could use the time delay inherent in counting these votes to sow confusion and declare further (true) results invalid and give his uneducated, unstable and infatuated supporters all the time and excuse they need to go home and get their long guns to take to the streets in an effort to enforce an illegal vigilante result.

So in summation, here in Falls Church, Virginia, three days from now on Friday September 18th, I will be knocking on my neighbor's door at 10 am and three of us will drive down to City Hall. I will have my utility bill in my pocket, with my driver's license as a backup, and we will vote in this existential election for the democracy we formerly knew.

Oh, and bring a mask. And leave your guns at home, you'll have to pass through a metal detector, and the last time I was there they put my name and phone number down on a contact tracing list.

Full Moon

There's a full moon out.

It's hard to capture on my Canon digital camera in the low light conditions because I can't keep the camera steady enough.

But it's a striking sight regardless.

Enjoy.

Gobble gobble

I was stunned yesterday to pass by a wild turkey hiding in the scrub of the easement to the W&OD bike trail behind my house.  There's a feral cat that lives back there that I see occasionally, and a deer family that I have seen early in the morning, but I hadn't seen a wild turkey before.

It was not happy to be spotted and ran away.  As a matter of fact it ran into my yard to hide behind the evergreen tree in the corner of my front yard by the sidewalk.  The neighbors on one side of me asked if I had caught it and turned it into soup.

The neighbors on the other side of me ignored me when I called over the fence line to ask if they'd seen the wild turkey.  They live in an internet cocoon and aren't much use for anything to anyone in their constant fixation on their cell phones and their ear buds which shield them from prying voices and other-human contact.

After following the wild turkey long enough to get a few pictures of it and shoo it out of my yard, I let it skulk back into the brush beyond my back fence line.  Wild turkeys that get too used to contact with people or which get fed can become aggressive and bothersome, so my preferred wild turkey is found at the ABC.

My Other Race

On May 25th I ran the Falls Church Memorial Day 3K Fun Run, a self-timed, short (1.76 mile not 1.86 mile length), flat and free race that has participation t-shirts at the end.  It's open to everyone.  No times are listed for anyone, you can just note the time on the race clock at the finish line for your own purposes if you want.  (At noon on Memorial Day, I had lunch at noon at the Stray Cat Cafe because you never know who might show up at one of these holiday lunches in Westover someday.)

I have my own way of running this affair.  At exactly 9 o'clock in the morning, the time the run kicks off, I run a mile by myself in the neighborhood on a little route I have laid out that brings me into the race course as it traverses down a public street from a different direction, slightly past its midway point.

I join the other runners seamlessly from the side, having already run the same amount of distance as them, and finish the race from there with the rest of the participants.  Actually, my "course" makes the fun run a true 3K length instead of it being a tenth of a mile short.  (After the race, I chatted with another past president of the DCRR Club, my friend Bob Platt, who made sure to point out that he had a faster time than me.)

That has the added advantage of avoiding the incredible crush of massed participants hemmed in on the roadway at the start with kids, strollers, leashed dogs, fast runners and walkers all jostling each other to get to open jogging or walking space, plus I don't have to use up time to go downtown to the start line beforehand, I start the race right from my doorstep.  My "time" this year was 14:52 by my watch for a real 3K(7:58), although the race clock said 16:30 when I finished (I misjudged the race's actual start by a minute and a half since they always have remarks by the mayor beforehand).

Final Dental Visit, Part Nine.

I was on a ten-miler going home to Falls Church from Reston down the W&OD Trail from my final of half a dozen dental visits in three months.  It was raining, but the run was invigorating as my $6,000 worth of dental procedures, just before my trusted dentist retired later this month, were done!

Eight miles in, as I was wearying, I saw up ahead a solitary runner running about my speed.  I caught up with her and lo, she wasn't wearing earbuds.

"How far you going?" I asked.  She looked at me and said, "I know you!"

A friendly runner, not wrapped up in his or her little world as is the won't of many contemporary runners these days, excluding everyone else by dint of displaying a white wire running up each side of the neck connected to earbuds nestled deep in the inner recesses of the ears, ostensibly serving up inspiring running music but also effectively shutting out the rest of the world as undesirable.  As I have learned, here's how the process of offering a friendly hello to a white-wired runner usually goes--an ignored query, then an annoyed look in your direction (you're into the "exchange" by now, unfortunately), and then a petulant ripping out of the bud from one ear coupled with a clearly exasperated ejaculation of --"What did you say?"

Palm Sunday

Yesterday was a full day.  I attended church and we conducted the early part of the service in the frigid cold outside before retiring inside after receiving a palm shoot, where we listened to readers reading a biblical passion passage in lieu of listening to a sermon.

Then I went home and disposed of a pile of Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure t-shirts I found on a shelf in my closet.  This outfit is merely a political anti-woman's choice campaign and not an actual charitable cause (I used to do a lot of these races before I discovered the organization's true purpose) so I slit the logo on each shirt, rendering it unwearable, and dropped the pile into the charity clothing bin nearby so the material can be sold by weight as mere rags.

After that I ran a virtual 5K race on the W&OD Trail behind my house, in simulation of a real race on the trail later that day that I was going to be absent for but which I had been running every year since my return to running in 2011, when I had sixty extra pounds to lose.  I ran the 3.1 miles hard and finished in 25:57, huffing and puffing in the biting morning air.

To cool down after the run I walked around the 'hood and saw to my chagrin that a neighbor's house is for sale, owned by a man in his late sixties who has lived in the house since the early seventies but can no longer afford the property tax in Falls Church of over $7,000 annually on his snug but small workman's home, in addition to storm water fees, an impervious surface fee, inspection fees and decal fees that amount to many hundreds more each year.  The Little City's war on seniors; I'll be following him out of town after I retire when I won't be able to afford on my diminished income the avaricious, always-growing local taxation.

Associations

I've spoken about my friend Trevor before. He works the corner at I-66 & Rte. 29 in my home town.

I caught up with him recently.  I discovered he regularly gets visited by the mother of my children, who lives nearby, on her walks with her current husband meekly in tow. 

Apparently this first-grade public schoolteacher spouts religious platitudes to him, all the while she eschews in my opinion the basic tenets of Christian faith of forgiveness, truth, love thy neighbor and honor thy parents. But it gets weirder still.

As I was speaking with my man, his sharp eyes noticed her driving by in her distinctive Mustang, headed back towards her house, shortly after she had passed by him while walking away from her house, just a few minutes before I happened by and stopped to chat with Trevor while jogging on the W&OD Trail.  I wonder if my ex saw me, doubled back quickly to her house, got in her car and drove around in a bigger circle, coming back in the "anonymity" of her vehicle to check up on my associations?

Hill Running Around Town

I love running the hills around my little home town.  Although the 40-mile rail-to-trail bike path gem cuts right through town (across my back-yard line) and there are quiet residential streets to run on, there are plenty of hills too.

I have a 2.5 mile route to a distant schoolyard that takes me up a half-mile hill on its front leg, which means it's downhill coming back as I'm tiring.  I try to do each leg in under ten minutes to keep up a sub-8 pace, or at least I did before I got injured.

But  the best hill in the region is half a mile from my front door, Highland Avenue, a half-mile long steady climb in one direction and a tenth of a mile precipitous climb on its other side.  It has a steep side spur that, coupled with the steep climb on Highland, makes for a quarter mile "track" that enables you to run what I call boomerangs--a heavy unrelenting hill workout that absolutely saps you if you do twenty of them.

Next to Highland is the next-best hill in town, Oak Street, a fabulous incline that leads up into a dead-end where an elementary school is that also offers two sets of stairs to run on, and its end point--the furthest distance out from my front door before you have to turn back, is exactly one mile.  It's also my alma mater, I went there as a kindergartner in the fifties.

What you see when running

Although it's been a mostly temperate summer, we've had a hot, humid spell here at the end.   I've been struggling mightily with a cold which has invaded my chest and I haven't run for a week to aid my recovery.

Yesterday I finally got back out there, running a mile in the blistering, sopping heat of the noon hour with a running buddy who was returning to work after maternity leave.  She hadn't been running either for awhile, and we walked the mile back.

My last run before yesterday was a few miles about a week ago in Falls Church and Arlington, in the morning before the day heated up.  I was enjoying watching the people I ran past, other runners going by, a househusband walking and cleaning up after the household dog, a Muslim praying on his mat behind the 7-11.

At about 7 a.m. a cherry red Ford Mustang convertible drove by with its top down, a youthful chariot for an old woman, the roadmap of lines criss-crossing the driver's face belying her wind-tossed bleached blonde hair.  It sure was a nice brand new car.

The Little City, the little creature

My home town is called The Little City, a self-proclaimed title as it asserts its fierce independence within the welter of competing governmental entities within the Beltway.  It all has to do with its superior public school system, which props up property values even in hard times, and skyrockets property taxes even for persons without children like me to feed such extravagance.

It's a nice place to jog though, as the forty mile W&OD Trail, a paved over railroad bed, cuts right through the heart of the city, and its streets for the most part are spacious enough and not crushed with heavy traffic.  It also has a nice set of hills, such as the hill which I ran up this morning that goes up to the elementary school, a school I attended half a century ago.

The jog was unsatisfactory though.  First off I lost the five dollar bill I put in my pocket, a fact I discovered after I'd poured a cup of coffee at the 7-11 near my house to take back to my house at the conclusion of my little two mile outing.  The proprietor kindly let me take the coffee anyway, gratis.

A hundred yards and a few minutes before that I had run by a poor little dead cat lying forlornly in the gutter amidst the dirty damp leaves, run over by a car, fresh blood surrounding its head.  I decided to call Animal Control as soon as I got home to report it so they could come pick it up and perhaps alert the owners.  I thought it would be an unwelcome sight for its family to discover if they were out looking for it.

There was a city police cruiser at the restaurant right next to the 7-11 so I stopped in there first and waited respectfully for the officer inside to finish ordering his breakfast at the counter before I approached him.  I asked if the city had an Animal Control officer and he answered affirmatively. 

I explained the situation to him, gave an exact location (if you're going to report something, try to know exactly where it is, such as, "on the western curb line of West Street 200 feet north of the W&OD Trail").  I left to go get my coffee next door as he called it in.

When I went by again carrying my coffee he came out and asked me to call it in when I got home because the Animal Control officer wasn't on duty currently and dispatch would give me another number to call.  The poor guy had a breakfast waiting for him and I said, "Sure, I'll be home in a few minutes."

Below is as best as I can recreate the conversation I had a few minutes later, after calling the police department's non-emergency number just a few minutes ago.

"City of Falls Church, police department."

"Hi, I'd like to report a dead cat in the city limits that I ran by a few minutes ago when I was out jogging, so your Animal Control officer could go pick it up."

"A dead cat?"

"Yes, it was dead, it had been struck by a car obviously because there was fresh blood around its head, and I thought you could go pick it up and alert the owners.  It had a collar."

"Sir, we don't pick up dead animals.  Only live ones or injured ones so we could care for it."

"Well, I thought the Animal Control officer could go get it before the family found it and saw it lying in the gutter dead, covered in blood."

"Our Animal Warden is only part time."

"Well, Could I have his number?  I'll call it to report the cat's location."

"Sir, she is part time and not on duty at the current time." 

I took this as a No.  I was starting to regret this.  When will I ever learn not to bother with trying to report animal situations within city jurisdictions?

"Well, I'm not sure why the city registers animals then because it looked like it had a tag and you could notify the owners in case they're out looking for it."

(Slight exasperation.)  "Well, I can take down a description in case the owners call in.  What kind of a cat was it?"

"It was a tabby, a household cat." 

"What color was it?"

"Well, aren't all tabbies tan with black stripes?"  (I was wrong about this.)

"Tan with black stripes.  Okay, was it male or female?"

"I couldn't tell if it was male or female even if it was alive."  This was my attempt at humor.

"A neutered cat.  Okay, where was it?"

I gave the precise location, wondering if the dispatcher would even bother to write it down.

Poor little tabby, somebody's family member, lying dead in the gutter of The Little City.

Contact

A friend recently complained that the word recognition guard on the comment section of my blog was hard to manipulate.  Since new blogger, run by the vaunted google I surmise, has spam guard, I decided to eliminate word recognition for commenting and allow anyone to comment freely and easily, just like I used to before scurrilous spam started populating the comment section of my posts a few years ago.

Bad idea.  Within a week I had dozens of Anonymous comments to posts old and new.

Some of the "comments" were for products like parkas and curatives and went on for paragraphs and paragraphs.  Others contained URLs that I wouldn't recommend clicking into.

Word recognition for posting comments is back and I'll see the spammers in hell, where my former family is sure I'll go.  If anyone ever wants to contact me, my email is plamberton@yahoo.com, my home phone is listed in Northern Virginia, my work phone in the District hasn't changed in 22 years and I live in the same house where my three sons spent their formative years all those years when I was coaching or managing their various soccer teams.

Back to Basics

So I went to church, and listened to a sermon about Jesus knowing how he would handle the 5,000 ravished hopefuls coming to listen to him preach but as the horde approached, he tested his apostle Phillip,.  What should we do, he asked?

Phillip bemoaned being able to feed the advancing hungry horde but Andrew said there was a boy who had 5 loaves and two fishes and that's a start.  That's Andrew's Way, that you have more than you think for starters (we know how Jesus was able to make the loaves and fish be enough for all).

Interestingly, afterwards as I walked out of the building I encountered an Eastern Orthodox woman from Russia who wanted to attend a service in the historic Falls Church.  I introduced her to the reigning priest and went home.

With all that exhausting work behind me, I settled in to watch the Olympics on TV.  Women's cycling, volleyball, swimming qualifying heats.  I could care less about that stuff, so at 11:30 am I bestirred myself, turned off the boob tube, changed and went to the curb.

There's a five-mile loop around my greater neighborhood that I used to run often, back in the olden times.  Back then I could usually break 45 minutes and I liked to get it around 42 minutes.

I started out in the noontime heat and humidity, thinking that was a good choice.  For the first mile, I went through all kinds of scenarios as to why I should make this a mile run, or a 2K run or an indeterminate run out the W&OD Trail.

I got past those negative thoughts however and my breathing regulated and got less ragged as I committed to the run.  At two miles I came upon a man standing by his fence line three feet off the sidewalk using a large watering wand to inundate his flowers.

"Hit me!" I cried out to him as I ran towards him, pointing to the copious water flow emanating from the hose nozzle.  He looked at me in confusion.

I gave him a circular motion with my hand, miming water cascading over my overheated body.  He didn't get it till I was past when he suddenly understood and held up the gushing nozzle but I was already heading away from him and not about to stop. 

At three miles I ran by the county golf course and the mini-golf range with its rushing-about children talking excitedly.  This was a hill up and this took me from the shade of the sidewalks to the sunlight of the road's shoulder. 

I was tiring by the fourth mile which I passed at 40:15.  One mile out, a large downhill in front of me fronted by and finished by a couple of short uphills, I tried to air it out a little so I could break 50 minutes.  I had to make up 15 seconds though to do this.

I turned onto my block and then sprinted the last 100 yards to stop my watch at the return to my driveway at 49:59.20 for five miles.  Yes!

A revealing early morning run

I woke up at 6:30 this morning and decided to go for a run. It had been awhile since I have run through Falls Church and Arlington early in the morning.

Down the W&OD I ran eastbound, entering Arlington, until I turned left when I came to Lee Highway. Running over the Interstate on the highway bridge, I continued eastbound on the north sidewalk of Lee Highway towards the bank behind which lay the small park I was going to circle around to get headed back to Falls Church via Lincoln Avenue.

Commuter traffic was starting to pick up as it was now about ten minutes past seven, and I started noticing drivers in the morning sunlight, observing their foibles. A convertible pulled out of a no-outlet cul-de-sac just in front of me, driven by a person with a wrinkle-lined face but a big hank of bleached platinum blonde hair which belied her obvious old age.

After I returned to my town, before I went home to shower I ran up the hill past the first school I ever attended, the sole car parked in the school lot attesting to the earliness of the day. Running early in the morning reveals all kinds things if you are observant.

Memories

I did four and a half miles of hills in my home town today, thinking of my friends just ten miles away to the east across the Potomac River running in the National Marathon and Half, a Rock and Roll entity now. Back in the day, the National Marathon gave me my PR in 2007 and the next year I ran my second fastest HM in the National Half, before I got injured and became overweight again during my layoff.

So this morning, fifteen months into my return to some semblance of running after being away for fifteen months, for fifty minutes I lugged around my extra twenty-five pounds and ran by some old spots. I have lived in this town for twenty years, alone for the last ten, and memories sometimes crowd in as I shuffle along.

I pass by a house where a friend of ours died one night unexpectedly. I accepted the story then that the friend just lay down in bed and died, but I wonder now if it was perhaps a suicide.

Here's the empty parking lot of the elementary school I attended over half a century ago, where the mother of my children works as a teacher now. She has steadfastly refused to share any information whatsoever with me for years about our three children, who turned against me as adolescents shortly after she filed divorce papers, and I wonder if this cruel woman would even inform me if something terrific, or terrible, ever befell any of these three young adults.

I approach the half mile long steep hill that is the crown jewel of hill running around here. I remember taking the person who was my best running buddy ever up it once several years back and laughing as she stood at the top bent over with her hands on her knees sucking wind, and I wonder how she is faring on the west coast where she moved to a few years ago.

The bicycle bridge spanning the highway which provides a slight uphill is up ahead and I think of all the running friends I have accompanied across the bridge on its clattering wooden surface and slightly swaying structure. None of them are with me now, and I have run with only one or two of them at all in the last year.

I am approaching my neighborhood mile, a measured distance from my driveway that used to provide me with my version of speed work as I burned off three or four sub-seven-minute miles in a morning, interspersed with household chores. Now I reflect that the best mile since my return was a solitary 8:02 several weeks ago, and I shake my head as I feel the overhang over my waistband.

I was forty-eight when I started running and for years I ran five times a week, raced weekly and was svelte and swift enough not to be embarrassed; now I will be sixty in a few weeks and I run four times a week, don't race anymore and am overweight and slow enough to be embarrassed. Memories are bittersweet at best.

Where's Your Husband?

The sweat rolled off my brow as I struck my shovel into the rocky ground and threw out a spadeful of dirt. For 30 minutes Cecila, David and myself had been digging a hole in a front yard into which we would soon drop a tree, which was sitting a few feet away, its root system wrapped within an earthen ball confined in a burlap bag.

The city's "green department" had dropped the free tree off onto the homeowner's property two weeks earlier. Five days ago a city crew had marked the exact spot where the balled tree would be planted by spraying a circle onto the homeowner's lawn with white paint.

This was a Saturday morning volunteer effort for the three of us diggers. We were tree huggers, do-gooders, giving back to our community.

It was time to roll the tree into the hole and cut away the wire holding its burlapped root ball together. The homeowner's door opened and a woman came out.

"Hey, thanks for coming, it's so nice that you're here to put the tree in," she said as she walked up to us. I thought maybe she might offer us green-earth do-gooders who couldn't figure out anything better to do on a Saturday morning some ice-tea or water, and I was thirsty.

"Lissen, we were thinking and we decided we don't want the tree after all. I'm sorry, but we've just changed our minds."

Dave spoke up, because he's the city employee. "Okay, ma'am, we can just pick the tree up on Monday."

The hole we'd spent thirty minutes digging was between us and the homeowner. I turned my back on her and leaned on my shovel.

"Oh thanks." She went back inside her house and closed the door.

I turned to Dave and said, "He didn't even have the balls to come out and tell us; he sent his wife out instead." Cecila laughed knowingly.

We filled the hole back in, placed the scalped turf back on top and left. I made sure that every toaster-sized rock we'd laboriously dug out of that hole made it back in there.

I think Republicans live in that nice house on the southeast corner of Hillwood Avenue and Brook Drive in Falls Church. They coulda told us little folks to stop before we had finished digging that hole.

I'm not there yet...

I ran four times last week as I try to come back from injury, short runs that totaled slightly over ten miles. Although all the runs were slow and rendered me shockingly out of breath, it was a start.

I kicked off the week on Sunday with my familiar mile-run around my neighborhood in 8:52. I don't think I could have gone any faster than that.

I ran twice during the week at work with co-workers, each time running to the Washington Monument from near Union Station and back again at a twelve-minute pace. During one of those runs, tourists hurrying to be on time for their scheduled entrance into the monument jogged by us and outdistanced us as we dawdled along.

My best run was two and a half miles around my home town on Friday, a slow, meandering journey up the hill to the school and around some of the cul-de-sacs I used to traverse on my early-morning runs back when I ran five times a week. On Saturday I got a workout of a different sort when I took a pickup truck load of furniture from Not Born to Run's old place in Maryland to her cool new digs directly across the street from the National Cathedral.

Stand up, Leon!

I don't get out much but when Leon Russell comes to town, well, that's a gimmie. He was the musical driving force behind Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour in the 70s, and he went on to have his own illustrious career after that in that twilight zone between rock, country and folk, including having a featured role in George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. The title of this post, of course, comes from George's admonition to Leon during the concert while he introduced him to the Madison Square Garden crowd.

He came to the State Theatre in Falls Church on Friday night, and I was there along with a bunch of other old rockers who don't know the 70s are long gone. After the backup band played, Leon came out with a cane and sat down at the keyboards.

He played many of his old standbys, including his rollicking rendition of Jumpin' Jack Flash and the haunting ballad Humming Bird. His band members left the stage while he sang The Island Song alone in his raspy Oklahoma twang, then returned for a rousing finish to Wild Horses.



I last saw him at the State Theatre in March, 2006. Back then he had a classic encore routine. He sat at the piano, told the crowd to imagine he'd just gotten up and left and was now back and so, this was going to be the encore as he launched into Delta Lady. This time he actually stood up and then sat back down for an encore, Prince of Peace Returning.

Leon, ten feet away onstage with his face totally obscured by his gigantic white beard, cowboy hat and aviator style dark glasses, kept the crowd on the dance floor swaying and moving with his rocking performance. Watch out now, take care, beware of soft shoe shufflers, dancing down the sidewalks...

Storm Two

We're supposed to get rain today or tomorrow which might finally wash away the piles of dirty snowbanks lying everywhere from the double set of blizzards we were hit with earlier this month. It's been the snowiest winter ever in DC.

The first storm was fun, because you could go down and play in it as it fell and afterwards, although it was deep. The second storm arrived four days later and was brutal. It came with a howling wind, causing it to snow sideways. It was frigid, left an icy shell of top level snow and was no fun. It forced the snow inside the house.



The next day did dawn, however.


The streets were impassable.






Some people had fun with it though.

Storm One

Here are some pictures from the first of two heavy snowstorms that hit the DC area this month. This is the twenty-five incher (in my town). The blob on the left is my pick 'em up truck; the two black tips are the ends of the extended windshield wipers.



It took all day to dig out.







The next storm, the bad one, was coming.

Ruminations on snowy weekends

DC’s third snowstorm in ten days only dropped a trace amount of snow last night so federal offices opened again after a two-hour delay. Walking anywhere by navigating alongside moving traffic, because many sidewalks along arterial roads are not shoveled, is still tricky. The temperature has hovered around freezing since the first storm so no melting is going on.

The city was filled with huge construction equipment working over the weekend. Tracked earth movers filled dump trucks with frozen blocks of snow from snow piles on every street corner for removal, improving sight lines immensely and helping finding parking. Whenever a heavy piece of equipment clanked on down to the next corner, its tracks scuffed and scarred the streets and tore up asphalt patches in the roadway. This is a series of storms that will keep us paying for street paving well into next summer.

Around my house I have been able to observe the use of my yard from trails in the snow across it, which is interesting. There is a feral cat that lives in the open space behind my fence line (the W&OD Trail) and he uses my yard a lot for concealment during the day. He leaves tell-tale tracks going across the undisturbed snow in my back yard each morning. I have also discovered that a group of boys regularly vaults my anchor fence and uses my side yard to get from the street to the open space and back again, which is okay. After all, I was a boy once too.

There’s no warm-up in the foreseeable future, so the snowy conditions are going to be here for awhile, apparently. I have a sibling who lives in the Twin Cities who would feel right at home at my house.