Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Yay, I am home

Yay, I am home. It’s so great to arrive home, to a familiar airport.

My cab driver had the delightful, memory-filled aroma of cologne and mint gum. All I needed was for him to be smoking a cigarette and I would have been transported back to my semester in Austria.

I am a sucker for good cologne. And a navy blue suit. Ooo-la-la.

Knitting
I sat next to a very nice man on the flight back to D.C. He thought knitting was a lost art, that his mother was a knitter when he was a kid. It got me thinking about the resurgence of knitting. I think the Internet has played a big role.





Sock is coming along. I am much happier with this one. I cast on 60 stitches. I like the purple and green color combination. The flight attendant was impressed, she thought I was changing my yarn to make the stripes.

Dating
I had a message from Charles when I got home last night. I laughed out loud. He’s back. Again. I am still thinking about what to do. I am so intrigued by this man. Yet he is so not what I am looking for. It’s a quandary.

Home Improvements

I am home today, using my comp day, waiting for Frank to bring my radiators, finally. The fur is flying on my condo list serv already. We are being assessed for some unforeseen expenses from last year. And our condo fees are going up to make up for the anticipated high heating costs this year. The issue is that some buildings are really hot and people have their windows open all winter and some buildings are really cold and people have to use space heaters. I fall in the former but have figured out how to work the radiators to keep my unit a reasonable temperature. It is warm all the time, but I can keep it from being really hot. We live in old buildings (circa 1920) and are stuck with old boilers and radiators that aren’t that controllable. But I think people have more control over their too-hot radiators than they think.

And there is one really bitchy woman in my building who does nothing but flame. I don’t even read her missives when they appear on the listserv because they are snide, sarcastic, mean, and offer nothing positive. I feel kind of sorry for her, she must be very unhappy. I had a really bad experience with her that has left such a bad taste in my mouth. How do people walk around being mean to everyone? I just don’t get it.

Ok, ok, I’ll tell you the story.

It was during Ronald Regan’s funeral. I live across the street from the National Cathedral, where his funeral took place. I was watching some of it on TV and thought it was pretty lame that I was watching on TV what was happening outside my front door! So I went down to the lobby, where some other people had gathered, to watch what was going on.

The police weren’t allowing anyone stand in front of the building so we were crammed in the lobby. As the day proceeded, the secret service and police were forcing the general public standing on Wisconsin Avenue to keep walking or go inside one of the buildings. So a number of people came into our lobby. This really pissed Neighbor off because it is her lobby and who were these strangers coming in and blocking her view. Mind you, she is saying all of this out loud, being egged on by one of her friends. So Neighbor got into it with a woman in the lobby, it was ugly, and this woman’s daughter, who looked less than 10 years old, starts crying. And Neighbor just doesn’t quit, bitching and moaning about the strangers in the lobby, and how they should be standing in the back of the lobby so the people who live there can see outside because they live in the building, blah blah blah.

It was the most unbelievable thing I have ever witnessed. I stood there, frozen in shock about what I was witnessing. So Regan’s hearse whizzes by and I flee back upstairs to the safety of my condo, once again reminded that I live with trolls.

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