Tag: Harvard Street

I don’t like to throw away food. I mean, who does? But sometimes you’re left with some kind of random stuff in the fridge, and you don’t feel like going to the store, but you really would like some dinner. What do you do?

Well, if you’re me, today, you order pizza.

Actually, I’m just kidding. What you’d do, if you were me this evening, is go to Hi Market and buy a six-pack of Sierra Nevada, two Vitamin Water XXX’s (Because you’ve never seen that flavor – it’s all rich in antioxidants and stuff), and some corn tortillas. Then you come home and wait for your wife to get home from happy hour. Late, as usual. And her cell phone died over the weekend, and you haven’t replaced it yet, so she couldn’t let you know. It’s okay, though. You just naturally assumed that she’d be late, and it didn’t bother you that much.

Next, you take the leftover onions and green pepper from making veggie burgers the other night. You saute them in some organic canola oil because you just ran out of organic olive oil over the weekend. Then you add some Quorn fake chicken, the spicy black bean salsa you made last week to serve with fish, and serve in the tortillas with some rice.

Your wife might then have to add the tail ends of two bottles of store-bought salsa and a bottle of picante sauce because it’s a little dry, but luckily that’s not enough to give her credit for cooking, so she still has to clean up.

You might later have to do some work, because you’ve been spending a lot of the work day checking your site traffic after not one but two links from Wonkette this week (A slow week, you guess. You swear you’re not paying anyone on staff there. Really.).

Anyway, that’s what you’d do if you were me.

Who steals a trash can? My wife tells me they’re kind of pricey, but seriously. I’m still hoping that someone in the building will offer an explanation, but I really can’t imagine what explanation there could be. I put the cans out at the end of the driveway last night around 10pm. At 6pm today, they were gone. I don’t know what happened in the meantime. Perhaps one of the building residents who parks out back can tell me the last time they were seen, but they haven’t responded to my email yet.

What can we do about this? I don’t think there’s any way to secure the cans and still leave them free enough for the garbage men to pick them up. We can put our address in big numbers on the side, but I don’t think that will be terribly effective.

To whoever has our trash cans: I hope you enjoy them. I hope, very soon, you accidentally place something very dear to you in one of them. I hope you then realize that you’ve done this about an hour after the bins are picked up. To quote my 6th grade math teacher in a moment near nervous breakdown (It wasn’t my fault, it was Lucas’), “Karate Kid says, ‘What goes around comes around’.” I’m not sure he really said that, but it’s true nevertheless.

The Metro was empty this morning. Is there some holiday I don’t know about?

It still amazes me how different a city neighborhood is from a suburb neighborhood. I lived in my condo in Falls Church, VA, for two years. The only neighbor I spoke to more than once was the guy two doors down who signed for my vaccuum cleaner, and the women one floor down because the seal on my toilet broke and started leaking into their ceiling.

Now, I’ve been in the city for about two months. I’ve met a few of the people next door. Someone who lives down the street contacted me through Flickr to welcome me to the neighborhood. And I know everyone in my building, although that’s partly because of the condo association meetings.

I find myself feeling very smug about moving into the city. Walking to the neighborhood market, hopping on the bus to meet the wife for happy hour, listening to people talk through the open screen to the cat sitting in the windowsill . . .

In any event, I’m very happy with our decision to move. I’m glad we decided that we couldn’t afford anything we liked in Ballston and Clarendon.

I realize that this is a little rambling, and I’m not sure I ever really had a point. Maybe I’m just confused because it’s Monday morning and I’m not actually in a terrible mood. There’s probably a full moon or something tomorrow.

I’ve heard many, many horror stories about the DC DMV. In fact, I’ve heard nothing good about it. So imagine my surprise when I got to the DMV on M St SW this morning, just as they opened, and got my brand new DC driver’s license in about a half an hour.

The metal detectors at the door were a little unexpected, but the rest of the experience was totally pleasant. The staff was, without exception, pleasant and efficient. I have had equivalently nice DMV experiences in Maryland and Virginia, but never better than what I had this morning.

So, kudos to you, M St SW DMV. You exceeded all my expectations this morning, and I appreciate it.

The real test will be when I get back from my friends’ wedding this weekend and try to get my car registered in DC. I’ll be at the Georgetown DMV for that one, because I’ve heard it’s the nicest. I’ll report back after that experience.

Washington Post: Eastern Market: What We’ve Lost

It’s all over the news, so you’ve likely heard, but Eastern Market burned down last night. I’m very glad that I finally made it out there for the first time a few weeks ago. I don’t think I could hope to retain my DC resident status, parking tickets notwithstanding, if I had never been to Eastern Market.

My fear now is that it won’t be rebuilt without some kind of “anchor store”, like a chain grocery or a Starbucks. That would certainly ruin some of the feel of the market. I can’t claim to be a regular visitor, or claim any nostalgia at the market being part of my life, so it’s hard for me to talk about the feel of the market. But even my one visit was nice, and I can’t imagine it being reborn as something like Dean and Delucca in Georgetown.

The Rorschach Theatre Blog: Political

This is not a show about two people fighting for two hours. There are very real laughs and tears. There is sex and hunger and all the colors of the human condition.

I think that does a pretty good job of summing up the play we saw last night as part of my birthday presents from my wife. References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot was written by the guy who wrote the screenplay for The Motorcycle Diaries. And The Rorschach Theatre is literally right around the corner from our place, tucked inside a little church. I would describe the theater itself as “very intimate”. There are two rows of folding chairs on either side of the stage, room for maybe 70 people.

I was pleasantly surprised by the production quality and the acting. I thought it might tend to the amateurish side, since this is a funky little theater in a church. Yes, I know I’m switching between “theater” and “theatre”. The proper name has the “re”, but I don’t spell the word like that.

Anyway, the acting was anything but amateurish. It’s a very emotional and sexually-charged play, typical of Spanish magic realism, and I thought the acting was great. The set was cool. They did a nice job of working with the space limitations and the lack of a curtain.

Now, the play itself. The story is about a soldier returning to his wife, who is bored and alone in the desert. She desperately wants his companionship, to connect with someone on a meaningful level, after spending a lot of time with her cat and the boy next door who is in love with her. He desperately wants to take his boots off and take her to bed.

I’m no theater critic, but this is a pretty good way to spend two hours. The wife and I will definitely go back to see another play.

My grandmother died last night. She had not been well for a while, and they couldn’t really figure out what was wrong.

I think she was ready to go. She had been in a rehabilitation center for a while, and then staying with my dad. She hasn’t been able to walk for months, and she wasn’t responding in any long-term sense to the treatment.

I last saw her the weekend before last. She didn’t really want company, but I went anyway, and I’m glad I did. Our last conversation wasn’t very good. She was upset, and wasn’t terribly pleasant. I’m sad that the last time we talked ended with her upset with me, but I know she didn’t really mean it. We’ve always had a good relationship. I used to spend the night with her and my grandfather when I was very little. She loves to tell the story of how I asked for toasted cheese one night for dinner. She cooked me a grilled cheese. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but in our house when I was little, “toasted cheese” was really just a piece of bread with sliced cheese stuck in the toaster oven until the cheese melted and the bread browned a little bit. I’m not sure I’d ever had a grilled cheese at that point, and there was NO WAY I was eating it. I was a pretty picky eater until sometime in high school. My grandfather apparently made me sit in my chair for quite some time, staring at the grilled cheese.

“You asked your grandmother for this, and now you’re going to eat it.” He said.

“No.” I said. Allegedly. I was probably three years old. I deny this ever happened. I certainly don’t remember it.

I out-waited him, though. She never told me how the story ended, except that I never did eat the grilled cheese. It’s too bad – I probably would have liked it.

In college, I lived about 20 minutes from her, and I used to take her to the grocery store a few times a month. She never drove, and my grandfather died in 1986. Kind of amazing that she lived in the suburbs of Baltimore for 20 years without a driver in the house.

Anyway, I knew exactly where everything she ever bought was in the Pikesville Giant. She would always buy me a sandwich for lunch, and serve something for dessert. Often it was Ben and Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. Occasionally it was something she made. She was a great cook, and her specialty was old-fashioned New England desserts. Her Christmas cookies were fantastic, too, but I think that may be partly nostalgia.

So, my recommendation to all of you is to go and spend time with the people you care about. Some of them may be difficult sometimes, as I know my grandmother could be. But it’s funny how quickly you can forget the little difficulties.

Washingtonpost.com: High School Senior Killed in Northwest

An 18-year-old kid who lives on my street was shot about three blocks from my house late Saturday night. Maybe it was gang-related, but they don’t seem to have much in the way of details.

When we moved into the city, some people thought we were crazy. Why would we move from the nice, safe suburbs into the scary, busy city? People wondered about Columbia Heights, too. It’s not the most dangerous place in the city, but it’s also not Georgetown (Thankfully. I don’t want to live in Georgetown. It’s a nice place to go shopping if you have too much money on your hands, but I don’t like the feel of the area. Not quite sure why.). But this is the first major crime I’m aware of in the area since we moved.

I have not yet felt unsafe at any time in Columbia Heights. Sure, I’ve passed some people talking loudly to themselves, and I’ve been asked for money. But I’ve never had to cross the street because I felt threatened or anything like that.

We were out at a bar on P St Saturday night, and we were just walking home shortly before this happened. I guess that makes this a bigger deal. I’ve probably scared my mom and my mother-in-law by now. But I’ve talked to my wife, and we think we’re going to be more inclined to take a cab home if we’re out late. I still don’t feel unsafe, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful.

What a beautiful morning. It’s sunny and warm and all the windows are open. My wife is cooking me breakfast. There’s a huge pile of my mother-in-law’s chocolate chip cookies on the counter (I wanted to empty the box they were shipped in so the cat could play in it). This afternoon, the wife and I are going to take a little walk, and my family is coming over later for dinner.

Last night, we went to Merkado for dinner. It was quite good. I had the special, which was halibut over a black bean and mango salsa. I highly recommend it. The fried banana dessert was also great.

This is especially relevant to residents of Columbia Heights because the company that runs Merkado, as well as Grillfish and Logan Tavern, is opening a new restaurant in June or July right at the Columbia Heights Metro stop. They’re going to call it Logan @ The Heights, which I think is a dumb name. Maybe they think that Columbia Heights can’t stand up on its own, and they have to associate Logan Circle with us so we know their restaurant is cool.

In any event, I’ll try the new place when it opens.

I also need to try the Intercambios at Dos Gringos in Mount Pleasant. It seems like a cool idea – it’s a semi-structured informal conversation designed to meet new people and brush up on your language skills. I’ve been saying that I’d like to brush up on my Spanish, so I should actually do something about it.

This morning, I checked my traffic for yesterday and found that it was about five times normal on Friday. Looks like my previous post got a mention on DC Blogs. That’s pretty cool. It appears to have been overshadowed by a somewhat heated discussion on some on- and off-line drama, but that’s okay.

As a follow up, the reason they blocked off the street became apparent this morning as I was woken by the sound of a large construction machine tearing up the street right in front of the house. They removed a chunk of pavement about ten feet by twenty feet, put down some metal screens, and then repaved. Not sure what that accomplished, but they seem pretty efficient at getting it done.

It is also a beautiful day, and we have flag football in a few hours. This is only my second game of the season, and the team’s third, due mostly to rain.

Also, tomorrow is my birthday. Looks like a pretty good weekend.