On Monday the city roars to life in what some would call "Type A" fashion. I actually live in Crystal City which is a little bit outside of D.C. and technically in Arlington. Now the interesting thing about Crystal City is that you can get to most places through these inside street/walkways. Everyone kind of refers to them as tunnels, but from what I can tell-they are above ground. So the people of crystal city are kind of like high school kids/moles. For the mole part, it is possible to walk to work without seeing the light of day. For the high school part, crystal city is like this massive high school where the work places are classrooms all connected by extremely long tunnels filled with people you see on a regular basis. I actually can walk the entire way to my office through these "tunnels". However, there is some great photography lining the walls to entertain me including photos from some photo contest during the election. This translates into a billion pictures of Obama and Obama constituents.
Today was actually the first day of the rest of the semester that I dressed business professional. In typical Renee style, I did not allot enough time to iron my blouse correctly and was in a bit of frenzy to get to work, but I made it. However at work, I was very conscious of my less than perfect ironing job. Needless to say, I have the outfit planned and ready to go for tomorrow. ;)
One of the greatest parts of my day actually occurred this evening on my way tunnelling home. As I mentioned earlier, it's like high school so I was just walking along when I saw a familiar face after only living here for 3 days. My brain began to try and register who it was, and I myself was shocked when the answer came. It was the Ralph Lauren Druggie from Day 1, except this time he did not appear to be a druggie. Just a casual guy probably walking home from work. I definitely did a triple take. I honestly wanted to follow him home.
Back at the apartment, one of my wonderful roommates made the most surprisingly delicious pizza. I was fascinated by the fact that I enjoyed it. It was simply a crust covered with pesto, mozzarella, spinach, APPLES, and feta. Apples were the topping that threw me off, but I just loved it. I even bought all the ingredients when we went to the grocery store which was an adventure in itself.
From what we can tell, the best and cheapest grocery store is a little over a mile walk above ground from our apartment. I had actually planned on figuring this out myself this evening, but thank goodness for my roommates who came along. We made our trek to the store in about 23 degree weather where I bought a ton of groceries that I never could have carried all by myself... as was my original plan. We then had to carry them all back. This is going to be a big change versus driving the like 1 minute trip to HEB. Forgetting things is going to be a much bigger deal, and of course, I forgot many things.
I've realized upon moving here that I require a lot to live, especially as I am having to acquire the things that we take for granted that are already in our houses at home. It made me think of Elisabeth Eliot's book "The Savage My Kinsman" which I just recently read. She talks about packing for her jungle trek that she was going to take to live with a remote tribe of Indians. She knew she could carry really no more than 15 pounds of stuff, and her list was minimal to say the least. I probably transported more than 100 lbs of stuff just to live here for 4 months. buh.
Maybe the long walks to the grocery store in the cold will make up for my excessiveness.
I doubt this.
But something will change in me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment