Wednesday, February 17, 2010

claiming spaces


The kids are finally in school once again after missing seven days of class and eleven days of nothing-doing, overall. I’m not sure who was more punch-drunk from the blizzards: kids or cats. Lemon isn’t overly happy about piles of cold snow and ice underfoot; no worries, she’ll still kill when able. That's her outside on the snow this morning, pondering her kingdom...or queendom.

We got through last weekend and a Sunday dinner party with great fanfare. At some point between waking up that morning, and getting back from the The Lightning Thief with the kids, I contracted some bone-aching type of flu that was doused with a load of Tylenol and an early bedtime. It has somehow managed to hang around this week and I’ll sneak off to sleep early this evening.

There was an interesting bit on NPR this morning about how we’ve moved from the 'everybody help everybody' mentality that we enjoyed during last week’s strorms – when we all helped out neighbors in one way or another – to a 'batten down the hatches and take no bullshit' lifestyle. The most obvious battleground is parking space. Even out on The Hilltop there are only x number of street parking places that we've cleared for our houses. Unfortunately, those who don’t live on the street and are visiting need to park but they'd either have to find an opening at the dead end down the street or ask if there’s an available space from those that live here. It doesn’t take rocket science to sort out which house has cleared and ‘owns’ which spaces but apparently some visitors last week weren’t well versed in rocket science. While we were at the movie some blankedy-blank Audi driver 86'd our dug out plot of land. I thought, for a moment, they may have walked up the stairs and asked if they could park there for a few hours but I was imagining something that wasn’t possible. I eventually (four hours later) left them a note on their windscreen that let them know that courtesy sometimes helps and they should have asked. As expected, they eventually left but with no response or sorry pass along to us. From what I hear, the District streets are even worse with people blocking their spaces with chairs, ironing boards, and the occasional adolescent laid out on the ground holding the space until Mom gets back from the work.

My classes are going well as I wrap up mid-terms this week – nothing stunning to report aside from the massive chicken feast we had on Saturday night after we practiced fabricating chickens. We shared with the baking class and they provided dessert; all in the spirit of cooperation.

Here's a weird little icicle I came upon just off our front porch the other afternoon. Same shot in both; the flash changed the colors.


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