It is more or less inevitable that early March has me whining about the weather. It's not that it's been that unbearably cold, but I'm just tired of bundling up. The days are starting to get noticeably longer and that has me getting impatient for sunshine and warmth. Friday was particularly dreary as it was extremely windy and all the way to and from the Metro station all I could think about was how bloody cold I felt.
My week was fairly hectic. It was made more so by my being away from the office for two days to go to the astrometry forum at the Naval Observatory. The conference was reasonably interesting and I saw several people I hadn't seen in years. But it meant that other things didn't get done, of course. It also gave me the opportunity of getting some decent walks in during the week. It's a mile and a half from the nearest Metro stop (at Dupont Circle), which is a better option than dealing with the Beltway during rush hour. And I like walking up Massachusetts Avenue and trying to identify the embassies by their flags. (The embassy game is one I've played for years and I'm still appalled at how bad I am at it. Too many flags are just random stripes of three colors, with nothing especially distinctive to them.)
The catch was that Thursday morning there were announcements of some sort of major delay on the Red Line. I decided that it couldn't be all that much further to walk up from Foggy Bottom instead. It's maybe a mile more (not quite, as 23rd hits Massachusetts at Sheridan Circle, so you cut of the westward part from Dupont Circle), which was fine, though I really don't understand why my briefcase weighs as much as it does. To add to my mileage, I needed to go back to the Embassy of Ghana to pick up my passport and decided that the easiest thing to do was just walk there from the Naval Observatory. It would have been a nice couple of mile walk up 34th Street if I hadn't gotten caught in a couple of downpours that reminded me that I'd forgotten to put my new umbrella in my briefcase. The one I had with me wasn't totally useless, just inadequate. Oh, well, it worked. And, after a frustratingly long wait, I did get my visa. What was most interesting was how many of the people waiting were obviously employees of the various visa services. I can't imagine what it would be like to be spending all your days just running from one embassy to another, but there must be good money in it.
As for the weekend, about all I managed to do was some grocery shopping. That did get me to finally make tomato sauce and make a pan of lasagne, most of which I'll stick in the freezer for future use. How did people who live alone survive before Tupperware?
Copyright 2006 Miriam H. Nadel