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Things I Will Miss About Arlington

Obviously I am super-excited about moving into the Takoma neighborhood of DC, and more importantly moving in with Charlie, and I’m looking forward to it a great deal.

But there are things I will miss about Arlington. Namely…

  • Carvel’s amazing soft serve ice cream
  • Pio Pio’s Peruvian style chicken and rice (and just around the corner, El Pollo Rico with their chicken, fries, and cole slaw deal)
  • Whitlow’s brunch buffet, especially the fried chicken and waffles (although the mac and cheese is a close second)
  • TJ Rec Center’s amazing Wednesday night spin class (but I do have a few more months, and I’m going to see if I can still continue it beyond that!)
  • All of the cosy and cute houses I see on my jog down Pershing Street
  • Container Store! Container Store! Container Store!
  • Ten-Barton Community Garden next to my apartment complex
  • Two great bike stores just around the corner (Revolution and Conte’s)
  • The annual Arlington Tour des Bibliothéques
  • Living around the corner from Karon, Steve, and Britt
  • A ridiculously short commute to work
  • Living somewhere that offers FiOS for my television/internet
  • Guajillo’s chocolate flan
  • Ray’s Hell Burger being just a short walk away

Now with all that in mind? I’m dying to find all the things around the corner in our new home that I’ll learn to love, too. And I’ll still see the friends that won’t be quite so near, of course. Knock on wood, closing in one month!

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Taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakoma!

It’s been a busy May. An intensive project at work (not bad, just really busy!), helping someone out after their surgery, multiple trips up to Pennsylvania (including for my grandmother’s funeral), not feeling well for about a week and a half (and having to scratch a planned triathlon), that sort of thing.

Oh yeah, and Charlie and I put an offer on a home.

We’ve been talking for years now about buying a place together, when we found the right one. We’ve talked about different neighborhoods in DC as possibilities (Downtown, Logan Circle, U Street, Atlas District, Southwest Waterfront, Brookland, Brightwood Park, you name it) and casually checked out open houses and such. But nothing jumped out at us. So we continued to bide our time and figured it was still a ways off, until we saw a listing for a condo in Takoma that just screamed, “You must buy me.”

The listing was too good to be true, so we went to see it at an open house… that turned out to be a glitch in the system and there was no open house. (Fortunately one of the owners was home and graciously let us in to look around.) Ten minutes later, we were in love. Two days later, we’d gotten a pre-approval letter from the bank and put an offer in. And the next evening, we heard our offer was accepted.

Now obviously until every last paper is signed things could still go south. We just had the home inspection, which went well. But the bank still has to do their appraisal, and of course this is the age of nervous banks. So even though all our ducks are in order something could go wrong with the appraisal, or perhaps Venus will eclipse Mercury and the bank will freak out and decide to grant no one their mortgages for the next two months. But, knock on wood, so far so good.

It’s funny because while we both love the Takoma neighborhood of DC (and the neighboring Takoma Park, Maryland), neither of us figured we’d find anything there. But sometimes a winner just drops into your lap. We’ve got great restaurants, retail, grocery stores, the pool, a farmer’s market, a library, the metro station, and yoga studios just a short walk away. It’s in many ways the perfect mix of small town and big city all in one.

So, more updates to eventually come. In the meanwhile I am playing the game of starting to sort, pack, and discard books. It’s going to be a busy June as well, it seems!

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Gravy Rainbow

This morning I saw a post on Facebook from Gregory Feeley about an article called “Fired.” It talked about what happens when you’re suddenly (and with no warning) dropped as a friend, and I was entranced by it, in part because so much of it sounded awfully familiar.

After writing a long blog post about it, I carefully saved a draft on my computer, then deleted the post itself. It didn’t seem to go anywhere, and it was ultimately going to hurt the feelings of someone. Just wasn’t worth it.

So instead? My friend Dan just sent me this music video for “Gravy Rainbow” and he has declared it the official Thursday themesong. I am down with that. Enjoy!

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Airline Safety

Let’s face it, no one (including myself) watches airline safety videos any more. They’re all the same old thing, right? Well, Air New Zealand is determined to make people pay attention, and credit where it’s due: I watched this, wide-eyed, from start to finish. Willingly.

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Good God, People, Just… No

If you are sitting at home wondering how you’re going to cook chicken, trust me, there are lots of better options than dropping huge globs of cream cheese onto it and stir-frying. Seriously. Trust me. You can do better than this.

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Not Doing So Well, In Terms of Shoes

I think I pissed off the patron saint of athletic shoes.

About a week and a half ago, I went to buy a pair of cycling shoes at a local bike store. When I did so, I also asked for a pair of cleats. “I want to use these at spinning class,” I said, “so all I need is a pair of cleats to go with these.”

“No problem,” the clerk said. “A pair of cleats for spin class.” It wasn’t until I got home that I looked at what he sold me, and it was in fact a pair of pedals (that came with cleats), which cost $70 more. (And also explained why the overall price was higher than I thought.) I ended up returning the entire purchase (the manager was extremely apologetic the second I explained what happened), and I’ll try another store in the area this week to get my spin shoes and cleats.

Later in the week, I called up a (different) local running store and asked if they had my running shoes in stock. Because I need to get them in a 2E wide size, they sometimes don’t have them in and need to order them. They didn’t, but they said they’d call the other stores in the chain and get back to me. After about 20 minutes, they called back and nope, didn’t have them in, but they’d be glad to order a pair for me when their weekly order to the distributor went in on Monday.

Fast forward to Tuesday morning (today), I get a call from the running store. A different employee called to say that because this was a type of shoe they didn’t carry, they wouldn’t order it until I came in and paid a $20 deposit. And in my head, I’m thinking, “…which means the order won’t go in until next week. Great.”

So, I told them that meant I wouldn’t have the shoes in time, and to not bother. Went online and in less than 2 minutes I have a pair of the shoes heading my way and they’ll be here by Thursday, because I no longer have time to play these sorts of games.

None the less, I can’t help but feel that I have pissed someone off. If my next attempt to get my spin class shoes goes equally awry, I will get the hint. (I do have four pairs of my old running shoes in the trunk of my car right now to drop off at the recycling bin at one of the local shoe places. Maybe I need to sacrifice one of them?)